Now here they were, the two mothers ready to walk down the aisle together. Alexa, tall and proud, took her place next to George. Abigail, on the other side of her husband, looked stunning in a vintage Lela Rose midnight-blue floral gown that she’d picked up on the clearance rack at Saks after selling a set of nineteenth-century Windsor chairs that had been stacked in the basement since the seventies.

“You both look amazing,” Madison said, then spoke into her headset. “It’s go time. Cue the music.” The first chords of a string quartet playing the Cure’s “Pictures of You” could be heard. Madison gestured to the trio to proceed, informing whoever was on the other end of the headset, “Here come the MOB and the MOG.”

George asked the women on his right and on his left, “Ready?”

And the MOB and the MOG snuck a look at each other and said at the same time, “LFG.”

Wedding of the Year

Wedding of the Year:

Penelope Diamandis and Chase Ellsworth Blakeman

La Mariposa

Montecito, California

December 29th

It was a rainstorm of epic proportions that sealed the Montecito wedding of Penelope Diamandis and Chase Ellsworth Blakeman with a (soggy) kiss. Maybe you’ve seen the viral video? The one with a happy couple leading an enthusiastic crowd of family, friends, a baron, a mayor, and a cabal of well-heeled women in the Cha Cha Slide when a suspicious tent gave way under the weight of the water and doused the crowd with rain, glorious rain? Yes, that wedding. Yours truly, a lifelong friend of the Mother of the Groom, was in attendance, sheltered by a portico when the deluge happened. Did that fact go viral? No, but I can vouch that before the tent collapse and in its aftermath, the Diamandis-Blakeman wedding was filled with love, butterflies, beautiful people, dancing feet, wonderful Greek food, romantic Irish poetry, sly British wit, and enough love and goodwill to take on the rain. And win.