We eventually have to leave the cozy cocoon of our hotel suite and get back to reality. Reality starts with our usual Sunday night dinner at the Mackenzie house. I've been to many Sunday night dinners there. I grew up next door to them, and Mr. Mac and my dad were fraternity brothers and best friends. I've always been close to them, but when my parents were killed in a car accident my senior year of high school, they pretty much made me one of their own. I don't know what I would've done without them or the Diamonds.

Still, I'm nervous for dinner.

I'm officially going to marry their son, and I know it sounds odd, but I feel like I need to make a good impression. So I put on a pair of dark jeans, a new flouncy pale peach top with rosettes at the neck, and a pair of silver heels.

I look romantic and happy.

I see now why as soon as Lori got engaged to Danny, she started trying to set me up with Phillip. She felt all sparkly, gooey, and magical, and she wanted her friends to feel that way too.

I get it now.

I feel pretty sparkly, and I CANNOT stop looking at the sparkle on my finger during the drive over.

But when we get there, Mrs. Mac doesn't seem to notice my sparkle, how I'm dressed, or how Phillip keeps being quite naughty and running his hand dangerously high up my thigh under the kitchen table.

No.

Mrs. Mac is focused on one thing.

Which is good because I can't seem to focus on anything other than the fact that if Phillip doesn't stop it, I'm going to drag him up to his bedroom and show him exactly how I feel about him.

Oh, sorry, where was I?

Oh yes, I was saying, Mrs. Mac is focused on one thing.

And that thing is wedding planning.

Seriously?? We've been engaged for, what? Twenty-two hours?! And she's ready to start planning?

I mean, I'm still in shock that I'm even dating Phillip, let alone engaged to the boy.

Isn't there some kind of engagement buffer? Where you get a few days (weeks, months) to get used to the idea before people start bombarding you with questions about an event you're totally not mentally prepared to deal with????!!!!

The answer to that question is apparently not because she's already prepared a wedding spreadsheet of some kind. Not surprising, really, she probably has to make a spreadsheet before she can do laundry, so she does it in the proper order. To say this woman is organized is a supreme understatement.

She hands it to me, and I scan it.

Looks pretty typical. Once we figure out when we want to get married, then we'll be happy to use her list and start planning.

But I'm not in any hurry to get married.

We need to date for a while first.

Ashley, Phillip's sister, says, "So, JJ, I would recommend you start by picking a theme and your colors."

"A theme?" What is this, a frat party? "What kind of wedding theme?"

"Oh, wow," she says, "there are so many things you could do. You could have it black tie, casual, country, or beachy. Fairytale weddings are big right now. You could do like a fall wedding or even a Halloween wedding!"

"A Halloween wedding?! Like a black and orange wedding? How fun would that be? We could have people dress up and hand out candy!" I laugh. Ha! "Phillip, did you hear that? We could get married on Halloween! We could just have people ring the doorbell, stand outside, and we can get married in the entryway. We could be all dressed up and then go out and get candy for our reception! Our favors could be dozens of eggs, forks, Fruity Pebbles, and toilet paper!"

"PHILLIP DAVID Mackenzie!" Mrs. Mac yells. She squints her eyes and gives him the mom glare. "You told me you had nothing to do with the Robertson's house that Halloween."

"What Halloween?" he pretends.

"The year their whole sidewalk was covered in Fruity Pebbles. Then it rained, and the color stained their sidewalk. We thought it was never going to come off! You swore to me that you had nothing to do with it!"

Phillip scrunches up his nose and laughs. "What are you gonna do, Mom? Ground me? Besides, I was in charge of the forks, not the Fruity Pebbles." He gives me a pointed grin, so his mom will think it was my idea.

"Jadyn!" Mrs. Mac scolds.

"Uh, so maybe a Halloween themed wedding is a bad idea," I say, quickly switching the conversation back to something that won't get us in trouble. Besides, the Fruity Pebbles were all Danny's idea, but we won't mention that. Knowing Mrs. Mac, she'd be calling his mom.

Ashley continues. "Well, you could do winter wonderland or like a down home country style wedding. Some people even have Husker themed weddings. You both love football, maybe you should do something like that."

"I do love football, but I don't think I'd want that for my wedding."

"So what do you want?" Phillip's mom asks.

"I have no idea. I got surprise engaged on my first date, less than twenty-four hours ago. I really haven't gotten that far yet." They both stare at me like I'm nuts, so I'm like, "Phillip, what kind of wedding do you want?"

"Um..," he eloquently says, "I don't know. The kind that involves us getting married?"

Mrs. Mac and Ashley both roll their eyes at him in that, He's just a man, what could he possibly know, way.

"JJ, have you seriously never pictured your wedding? Every little girl dreams of her wedding day," Ashley admonishes.

Gee, I'm apparently a failure as a girl.

All I ever dreamed about was marrying a prince, but that was really as far as I got. To me, it was all about finding the right boy. I guess I sorta thought once you found the guy, the wedding just sort of fell into place.

I mean think of Cinderella. The whole story was about her and Prince Charming's courtship. It's only at the very end that the wedding bells ring, birds fly, and they kiss. No one asked Cinderella what kind of themed wedding she wanted. The wedding just happened.

Didn't it?

I know most of my sorority sisters have planned out their ideal weddings. I listened, thought they sounded amazing, and encouraged them. But my wedding seemed so far off, I never really thought about what I'd want. Plus, you have to remember my two best friends are Phillip and Danny.

Boys.

I can tell you with all certainty that they never once stood around the pool table planning their dream weddings. The only real discussions we ever had involving weddings was Danny praying some girl wasn't pregnant, so he wouldn't have to marry her.

"Uh," I say, "honestly, not really. We used to have weddings for Barbie and Ken, but those mostly involved a wedding in front of Phillip's LEGO castle. They'd drive off in her Barbie jeep and then have a Barbie baby. And sometimes, they went on a honeymoon to the blow up Barbie pool, where they would kiss, swim, and get their hair wet. Oh!" I giggle. "And sometimes, instead of Ken, she married G.I. Joe."

"Bigamy Barbie," Phillip quips as he sets a beer down in front of me.

"That's true, but you loved when she married Joe. You'd make him jump out of a plane or rappel down the wall, and then they'd get married. Joe always made a big entrance. It was all very exciting. Ken was really sort of boring, but he was there for her when Joe went off to, I don't know, fight in wars and shit."

Phillip laughs.

I can't help but laugh too. We had so much fun when we were kids. "She also married Robin Hood. So she was more like trigamy Barbie," I tell Phillip.

"Trigamy?" Ash questions.