Page 96 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Hit the smoke machine,’ whispered Lily into her walkie-talkie. The Grief Guys started up the machine, and the floor grew white and misty with the clouding smoke. Cousin Atticus huffed heavily on his inhaler in between reminders to everyone around him that he had a severe case of mild asthma.
‘Ooh, smoke. It’s like being in a pub in the Eighties,’ said Grandma Darla, who’d been a bingo caller back in the day and was apparently nostalgic for a nice cancer-causing ambient smell.
The tinsel-wrapped doors to the venue swung open. The choir, bless them, remained true to the requested programming, and continued to hum Mariah Carey on repeat as Christmas tradition demanded.
A murmur of approval went up as the bride made her entrance on the arm of her father. She was clad in an off-the-shoulder red velvet number with white fur trim and a fluffy white pillbox hat with string lights wrapped around it. Ornaments swung from her snowy train, clinking and gleaming as she walked.
‘I found those in Then Again,’ whispered Lily. ‘Tink helped me sew them on.’
Mort, in spite of his inherent lack of festive joy, felt his heart swell (romantically, not dangerously). The bride looked so joyful and excited as she minced down the aisle on her stepfather’s arm. Her smile was as high-wattage as the lights in her hat, and tears shimmered in her eyes around the glitter that also shimmered in her eyes.
Maybe there was something to this matrimony business after all.
‘I’m going to have so much glitter to clean up,’ whispered Lily. ‘You’ll be finding it on my corpse when you embalm me. Which is probably your thing.’
‘Wow, sexy. I love it when you talk necrophiliac to me,’ said Mort drily.
Lily winked. ‘Death is but a small inconvenience.’
‘Shut it, Santa and Santa’s Little Helper,’ shushed Great-Aunt Adeline, a tad judgementally for a woman whom Mort had learned had had affairs with no fewer than three of the great-uncles and was therefore destined for an evening on table 8, the table for extramarital mischief makers. (Lily and Mort had eventually decided on a sort of Dante’s Inferno approach to seating arrangements, and had grouped people together according to their particular proclivity for a specific type of awfulness.)
But still, Mort and Lily shushed, Mort clapping his false beard over his mouth in a way that made Lily giggle again.
This invited a fresh round of shushing.
‘We should’ve put her on table 12 with the suspected murderers,’ whispered Lily, hiding herself behind her Christmas-tree-shaped songbook.
Mort bit back a laugh.
The bride had reached the altar now. As she reached for her soon-to-be husband’s hands, the best man stepped forward with a snowdome, which he opened to reveal the rings.
‘Nice touch,’ said Mort approvingly. ‘Almost as good as the goths with their skull.’
The starry-eyed couple stumbled through their vows, which were an odd mishmash of the traditional lines and tortured Christmas metaphors.
‘Do you, Rina Morgan,’ said the celebrant, who was dressed as Olaf fromFrozen, ‘take this Elf to be your husband, in naughtiness and niceness, in snow and sunshine, and agree to follow him down the chimney of life?’
‘Ho-ho-ho,’ whispered the bride, barely able to contain her grin.
‘And do you, Emmett Smiley, take this snowy bride to be your wife, from North Pole to South, in cookies and milk, and let her be the Rudolph that guides your way?’
‘Ho-ho-ho,’ assented Emmett.
Mort wasn’t entirely sure these vows were legally binding, but he also wasn’t sure he entirely cared. Lily was right about weddings: they offered as many ways to show your love and joy as there were people in the world.
Olaf’s carrot nose waggled as he said: ‘I now pronounce you Elf and Snowy Wife. You may kiss Mrs Claus.’
The celebrant held up a sprig of mistletoe.
‘You know what to do.’
The newlyweds embraced passionately, and Lily joined in with the chorus of whoops and cheers andho-ho-hosthat rose up from the crowd.
She nudged Mort with her velvet-clad elbow. ‘Go on, you old grump. Don’t pretend you’re not feeling the love.’
Mort was indeed feeling the love. But it was directed elsewhere. Where was that roving sprig of mistletoe when he needed it?
‘Ho-ho-ho,’ he managed, a bit croakily.
