Vegas Knot (✔️) | Love Travels #1

Four

The bell above the bridal shop door isn't even finished chiming when we are greeted by a small army of sales people, bestowing champagne and chocolates on us.

"Welcome! Welcome. Which one of us is Divya, the beautiful bride?" the tallest one gushes, her silver dress glittering like a disco ball.

Divya is stunned into silence, probably by the seventies attire for the salespeople. Fortunately, Lorena is unscathed. "This is our beautiful bride, Divya. We're looking for something to make her look even prettier than she is. No pressure."

The forced laugh from the lone man in the group echoes around the room for no more than a second before the disco ball lady brings it back on track. "Oh, I'm sure we can find something she'll just love. When is your event?"

"This weekend," Carla answers, as Divya shoves a strawberry into her mouth and follows the entourage of employees deeper into the store. The strawberries look delicious, but I don't want to risk getting anything on these extremely expensive dresses, so I follow behind the group empty handed.

"What kind of dress are we looking for?" One of the women holds open a notebook, pen poised to write as we walk.

"The event is outdoors, so nothing too formal. But my parents are my parents, so nothing too casual. I know, good luck to us all."

"We could go with something structured and floor length," I suggest, earning gaping mouths from my friends. "What? I can't know fashion?"

"Have you looked at what you chose to wear here today?" Divya raises an eyebrow. "Fashion is obviously not your problem. I just didn't expect you to know so much about wedding dresses."

"I like to watch reality television. I know things."

The sharp-featured lady from before interrupts us. "And what is the budget?"

"My parents are paying for everything. I'm sure there is a budget but I'm not going to get anywhere near it no matter how hard I try so just bring me things that look nice."

Those are the magic words, and the whole room picks up the pace to double speed, pulling dresses off the rack and asking Divya her opinion.

In under fifteen minutes, Divya has two whole dressing rooms full of gowns for her to try on, and the rest of us settle into the couch that is probably made of concrete as we wait and watch her parade the dresses out in front of us like the runway model she is.

We see her in four or five dresses that are beautiful but not her and are waiting for the next one when Carla slides over and wraps her arm around my shoulder. "So, how are you holding up?"

"I'm not sure. Mostly I'm just pretending it doesn't exist."

"Well, maybe it doesn't exist. Did you check? Maybe he just gave you a ring and it's not legal, you know? You just find him and give it back and it's all over."

"Yeah, maybe."

Not really, but I don't want to talk about this now. Any amount of paying attention to my own life leads my brain down paths and conclusions that I don't want to reach, so I choose to redirect her before she gets too far into the weeds. "What else do we have planned for today? Any exciting bachelorette things?"

And that's all it takes to set her off on an infomercial, telling me all about her plans for the evening and an adventure tomorrow and something about a fancy snail, maybe. I really hope I heard that wrong.

Our attention is drawn away from our plans when Divya reemerges in a beautiful golden gown with white and red accents. All the air is sucked out of my lungs with a faint 'wow' as she twirls around and adds a deep red and gold veil to her hair.