You can all breathe a sigh of relief. I found my copy of the novel. Meanwhile, though, I could have been writing about how I started watching shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway? and Wedded to Perfection to try to learn just how much the author missed as it's pretty obvious she has no idea what Angela should be doing as a wedding coordinator. The author is not a wedding coordinator and did not befriend any wedding coordinators. However, as I type this, I'm realizing she missed the mark with the unemployed sister, too—and the author has been unemployed.That's not very fair to Bev. She's not unemployed. She's supposed to be taking care of Mama. That's her full time job. Who pays her to do that is very unclear. There are mentions of asking the church for help and how little money they have, but the book doesn't say anything about how the utility bills get paid, the hospital bills, the mortgage... Money simply isn't a concern. But even if I could tell you how the groceries get paid for, I have no idea when those groceries are purchased. It's really unclear how the house isn't falling apart. Bev has plenty of time to make love potions and read tarot cards. She's never faced with a stack of dirty dishes or a floor that needs to be swept or a school project that needs her attention. The weight of the world is not on her shoulders. Bev can go hang out in the garden and take a break from massaging Mama's feet or brushing her hair. Feeding Mama seems to be the only real thing on her to-do list and it always gets done without a problem. It never strikes her just how immensely sad and frustrating it is that she's spooning mash into her mother's limp mouth. She feeds Mama, she brushes her hair, she changes a diaper, she moves on. Her mother's dirty diapers never send her over the edge. She never lashes out at someone who hasn't provoked her because really she's upset that her mother is in diapers and can't talk to her anymore.
Enough about Bev and her lack of problems, though. This was supposed to be an entry about wedding coordinators. I went to Tumblr to start a new blog where I would spend 20 minutes every day writing a novel about a wedding coordinator whose mother has a stroke. But even before I started to do "research," I felt this was just too impossible. The coordinator would be faced at some point with having to give up her clients in order to help her mother.
Angela is supposed to be highly in demand. However, she never seems to be attending to any brides. Her phone never rings. She never has anything she needs to be doing—no linens to look at, no florists to visit, no cakes to taste test. The story is set during the summer. Wedding season. And yet there is nothing to do. I don't think Angela has to love her job—it might be more interesting if she flat out hated brides—but give us something. She's supposed to be planning the most important day in somebody's life and she approaches it like she's ordering takeout because she just doesn't feel like cooking.
All those episodes only made me want to forget about this story (and its potential counterpart on Tumblr) even more. There is more drama in watching these yahoos on TV pick a color for the napkins than there is in the almost 500 pages I read in this novel. Reconciling the woes of a bride who wants to be just plain tacky on her wedding day with the magnitude of a mother who is now in a vegetative state is too much to be a carefree writing exercise. If I were Angela, I would tell the bride to go frack herself, but that's probably because I'd just be angry I couldn't tend to such trivial things as decor on top of trying to heal my mother. And there you have it. A novel. Man versus himself. What happens when Angela is pushed that far? The wedding TV shows and this novel will never tell us.
