The little girl was still wearing her flower-girl dress when she arrived at 7:40 that evening, and she was holding the bouquet Delia had chosen months earlier. She told me she’d carried it down the aisle because somebody handed it to her right before the ceremony, but at the reception she’d asked why Delia wasn’t there. At first the adults told her Delia was sick. Then she heard her mother tell somebody that Delia had “decided she didn’t want to participate,” and the girl knew that wasn’t true because she’d been with us when Delia practiced walking in those shoes. She said she got angry and told people Delia hadn’t changed her mind at all — she’d been told four days earlier that she wasn’t coming.
I didn’t call Delia’s father that night. Delia sat on the edge of her bed holding the bouquet and finally cried for the first time since the email arrived. The next morning, though, the wedding planner called me. She said she’d heard what happened at the reception and wanted to correct something because she didn’t want her name attached to it. There had never been a seating problem, and the photographer had never suggested reducing the wedding party. Delia’s place card had been printed, her meal had been paid for, and she was still listed in the final procession schedule three days before the wedding. The planner forwarded me the last version of that schedule, and Delia’s name was right there between the maid of honor and the flower girl.
Then she forwarded the email that had instructed her to remove Delia. It had been sent from the bride’s account, but the planner said something about it had bothered her because the wording didn’t sound like the woman she’d been dealing with for eight months. Attached was a revised seating chart created less than an hour later, and Delia’s seat hadn’t been removed at all — somebody else’s name had simply been typed over hers. The person sitting in my daughter’s place was her father’s sister, and when I called her, she went completely silent before admitting that Delia’s father had called her four days before the wedding and asked her to take the seat because, in his words, “my new wife doesn’t want a reminder of the old family in the photographs.”
