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couple of nice newlywed dinners (complete with champagne) and we were looking at a honeymoon that would cost upwards of $6,000 bucks. Not too shabby.
    Okay, I thought. So I guess I’m one of those lucky girls whose parents give her a platinum wedding.
    I could get used to this.
    A few days later: “Mommy, what do you think we should serve as our main course for dinner?”
    “Oh, definitely lobster,” she replied. “With truffle oil. You need something special, but you should go with seafood because your father won’t eat any animal he would own as a pet.”
    My pupils turned into little dollar signs.
    “Mommy, what venues do you like for our reception?”
    “Well, there’s this resort about half an hour from our house—you should rent the whole thing out. And make sure you get the spa, too, so we can all get massages the day before!”
    I liked the sound of this so much that I never stopped and reminded myself that my mother is a romance novelist. She spends her days spinning fictional tales for her heroines, sending them off to castles and lobster dinners and personal day spas without ever once having to worry about cost. Because NONE OF IT IS REAL.
    She was treating our wedding like one of her books. And why shouldn’t she? We were in the idyllic, brainstorming stage of wedding planning where the sky’s the limit. I’m like one of those buxom babes whose ample bosom threatens to burst from its bodice as her open-shirted hero whisks her off into the sunset. It was only natural for my mom to mistake me for one of her characters.
    But in my blissed-out, newly engaged state, I heard my mom’s over-the-top ideas and figured she was giving me clues about how much dough my parents were ready to fork over for the wedding.
    My search terms on wedding planning sites began to shift. Instead of “affordable A-line” I typed in “Oscar de la Renta silk tulle ball gown.” “Seattle weddings under $3,000” became “eye-poppingly elegant Seattle wedding venues.” “How to have a wedding without flowers” was replaced by “Ten-foot centerpieces with Swarovski crystals and custom lighting.”
    It was with this (okay, greedy) state of mind that I commenced planning the wedding. Again, I don’t remember how we got onto the subject, but suddenly my mom said, “Would you elope if your dad and I gave you twenty-five thousand bucks?”
    Um. What?
    Okay, maybe she was kidding about the (gulp) elopement idea, but did this mean $25,000 was our budget? Really?
    But…an Oscar dress (Mr. de la Renta and I were on a first-name basis by this time) cost $15,000. That would only leave…$10,000 for the rest of the wedding with nothing left over for the honeymoon.
    In my mind, I saw Château Frontenac bursting into flames.
    My lobster tail shriveled and became a saltine cracker adorned with a squirt of Easy Cheese.
    My towering, glittering centerpieces toppled over with a deafening crash.
    Twenty-five thousand bucks wouldn’t even cover a fraction of the wedding I had cruelly been led to imagine.
    I tried to buy myself time by asking the question I thought I already knew the answer to. “Why would you want us to elope, Mommy? Don’t you want to see your only child get married?”
    “Well, honestly, Elizabeth, it might be a good idea to focus on practicalities. You know that. Most people who get invited to weddings would rather send a gift and not have to go and pretend to enjoy gummy buffet food and cheesy DJ music.”
    “But…what about the lobster?” I whimpered.
    “Lobster?” she said. “Ha! Can you imagine how much that would cost? A nice lobster dinner’s gonna run you a hundred bucks a head…if you have 150 people at your wedding, that’s fifteen thousand bucks just on food. That’s insane!”
    Was someone playing a practical joke on me? Hadn’t she proposed the lobster?
    I tried a different approach. “Well, twenty-five grand would be great for eloping, but we want to have a real wedding. I mean, we don’t