Okay, before I get into any details I will admit the truth, I lied to get us here. I was brought up right to know better so hear me out let me explain where we are at right now — before you judge me.
Imagine this, White lilies lined the entire approach to the church — both sides of the stone steps from the sidewalk all the way to the great entrance doors, cascading arrangements that stood taller than the guests passing between them, their fragrance hitting you a full half block away on First Avenue and stopping you the way a woman's beauty can stop a man in the street, especially when you least expect to see such and my reaction — I had stood in that fragrance for a full thirty seconds before I went inside, partly because it was extraordinary and partly because I was stalling.
With the smell of white roses still in you as you walk inside, the white suddenly changes to red. Red roses — thousands of them, arranged along every pew from the entrance to the altar in dense, architectural displays that lined the aisle on both sides like a corridor of controlled extravagance. Not scattered. Not decorative in the casual sense but well designed forming shapes of wedding rings. Someone had spent weeks designing this, and the result was that walking down the aisle of St. Thomas's Church on this particular Saturday felt like walking through the inside of a painting that had not yet decided whether it was a love story or a statement. The scent of roses filled the nave from floor to vault, covering the old stone smell of the church, and the combination was the kind of thing that lodged in the memory forever and you would want to experience it over and over again.
I wore a custom tuxedo that cost more than my first car, watching five hundred people rise to their feet in perfect, synchronized silence, while an orchestra I could not have named but had certainly heard of began to play something so achingly beautiful that the woman in the third pew on the left was already crying into a handkerchief she had apparently brought specifically for this purpose.
The church itself was doing things to my nervous system that I was not prepared for. St. Thomas's was not a building that apologized for itself. It rose in French Gothic magnificence above 33rd Street, its limestone facade carved into a precision of arches and saints and vertical ambition that made you feel, standing beneath it, you could feel this place is for high net worth individuals.
The programs had been placed on each seat by white-gloved attendants before the guests arrived. I had picked one up when I first took my position and turned it over in my hands for something to do with my nerves. It was not paper. It was cream card stock with a weight and texture that in no way looked or felt cheap, and the text — every word of it, the names, the order of service, the scripture readings, the musical selections — had been engraved in gold. Actual gold. Not gold-colored ink. Not gold foil. Engraved, pressed into the surface of the card in a typeface so precise and deliberate that it looked less like a wedding program and more like a document that you have to keep and trust me I am a engineer I know gold.
I had kept mine. It was in the inside pocket of my tuxedo jacket, pressing against my chest, for I want to remember this for the rest of my life.
The guests were extraordinary in themselves. Every one of them dressed as though they had understood, at some deep and instinctive level, that under dressing for this particular occasion would be an act of disrespect to the Church. Women in gowns that caught the candlelight — and there was candlelight everywhere, tall ivory pillars in standing candelabras positioned between the rose arrangements, their flames reflected in five hundred pairs of eyes. Men in expensive dark suits and morning coats, all wearing them with ease like it's just another day and I had recognized three faces from the financial section of magazines and newspapers.
I was thinking to myself, Noah Daniels. Son of Julie Daniels, Engineer, Inventor. The man who had spent the better part of three years in a laboratory that smelled of solder and cold coffee, talking to no one, going nowhere, wearing the same four shirts in rotation because there wasn't money to buy a fifth.
And then the doors opened.
The orchestra shifted — a transition so smooth it felt like a change in the weather rather than a change in the music — and the processional began, and the five hundred people who had been murmuring and adjusting and checking their phones went collectively, completely still.
The bridesmaids came first. Six of them, in gowns the color of deep champagne — not gold, not cream, but the precise shade between the two that a designer has to be very good to find and very confident to use. Each gown had been made by the same hand and the craftsmanship could be seen all the way to the altar, the fabric moving with the bridesmaids rather than simply hanging from them that would shortly reveal its greatest work, and the craftsmanship was visible even from the altar but more surprising to know each one costs ten thousand dollars.
Then the flower girls — two small girls in miniature versions of the champagne gowns, scattering white rose petals, were incredibly focused for their age it seems they understood how important the job was.
Then the doors at the back of the nave opened fully, and the orchestra lifted into something that filled the vaulted space from floor to ceiling just as Erica came in.
She came in on the arm of a long trusted family friend. This had to be as her father was no more, it looked like their steps were practiced with people in the crowd waving and everyone with their phones up recording, what a moment it was, my view from the altar was red roses on each side, people staring with my beautiful bride in the middle.
The gown was ivory silk, floor-length, with a cathedral train that stretched eight feet behind her and was attended by two bridesmaids who had broken from the processional specifically to carry it, walking in perfect step, keeping the silk from the stone floor and doing it carefully as they knew what it was worth. The designer had worked on the piece for four months. The bodice was hand-embroidered with seed pearls and micro-crystals in a pattern that caught the candlelight as she moved and threw tiny points of light across the roses and the stone and the faces of five hundred people watching her. The neckline was structured and precise. The sleeves were sheer, barely there, the kind of detail you only noticed when the light hit them at the right angle. The train moved behind her like something alive.
I would later on find out that the gown had cost one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars for a dress, how much I spend per year is less than that but I kept my mouth shut when I heard it.
She passed her mother, who I will describe later before she reached the altar and looked at me, and whatever I had been thinking about the cost of things dissolved completely whilst looking at her up close.
The ceremony moved through the program with precision, as even though it was something rehearsed it still felt new to me. The readings were beautiful. The vows were ours — written by both of us separately and read to each other for the first time here, the vows felt so truthful and honest even though there is a whole story behind it all.
And then the rings.
The ring bearer — a boy of seven, carried them forward on a white velvet cushion.
The rings had been made by a jeweler whose name who I have heard the name before but never in a million years who I have bought one from. A Platinum set with natural diamonds — not synthetic, not enhanced, not any of the modern alternatives that exist for entirely sensible reasons. Natural, certified, ten-carat diamonds, one in each ring, of a clarity and color that the jeweler had described using a technical vocabulary that I didn't understand but nodded to when told — what I understood was the number, Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Per ring.
One point five million dollars. In rings. On fingers. On our fingers.
I had held Erica's ring for a moment before placing it, feeling the weight of it — which was considerable, a ten-carat diamond being not a small thing.
"With this ring," I said, and meant it.
Have you gotten the idea of the Church service, good let's move to the Reception.