Choose a dress that leaves something to the imagination. Sexy dresses make guests uncomfortable, like your Aunt B. Save the skin for your wedding night. (If you ever leave the after-party.)

Choose a dress that is timeless. You’ll thank me on your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary when you look at your wedding photos and think “Beautiful.” Instead of “Was I under the influence of an influencer?”

Big Kiss & Wedding Bliss,

Your Aunt B

Next Week: Should I force my bridesmaids to learn complicated choreography to a nineties hip-hop anthem in hopes that it will go viral?

Chapter 9
The Dress

The Mother of the Bride

Of all the traits passed from mother to daughter, the one that Alexa was most proud of was her daughter Penny’s ability to make things happen, quietly and gracefully. Alexa had watched her own mother, Leni, welcome tourists from all over the world, those seeking meals after closing time or a room for two that they could share with five people, and her mother had accommodated these strangers as if they were family. Leni would commandeer sightseeing guides or boat tours on the spur of the moment for their hotel guests. She almost never said no and almost always succeeded in making the visitors’ trip memorable. She had a network of others in the trade, from bartenders to cabbies on Patmos to innkeepers on other islands, in Athens and the Peloponnese, not an easy task in the days before the internet. They worked together to keep the tourists satisfied and the economy humming. The guests appreciated the effort so much that they sent their friends and relatives from Germany or England or Australia or Canada to their small island for vacation instead of the splashier Greek islands like Santorini or Mykonos. It was playing the long game in what travel experts would call word-of-mouth marketing now. The currency of human connection.

Alexa herself absorbed the lessons of hospitality and used them to her advantage in her Hollywood career, saying yes to any request and then figuring out how to make it happen afterward. When she started Odyssey, she learned that high-income clients had high expectations, like special shopping hours at boutiques, meals created just for them by the chef, a tour of the vineyard that went into the cellars normally closed to the public. She had to make those experiences happen in new cities all over the world. She learned to work from the ground up. Her signature move? Picking up the phone and speaking to the shopgirl or the restaurant manager as if that person were the CEO of the company. Her tone said, “I respect you and we’re all in this together to make something special happen.” She knew that her daughter had watched her and learned to speak to every individual with the same attitude to create opportunities where everyone could benefit even if it required extra effort.