“What are you laughing at? I mean it,” Penny said. “Understanding the outrageous price of floral design would have been helpful.”

So she had lost her sense of humor, Alexa thought. Damn. She was hoping to open up a conversation about their Athens family attending the wedding. Because as far as Alexa was concerned, if she couldn’t have her family at the wedding, she didn’t even want to tell them about the wedding. They would never understand a snub like that. But Penny didn’t seem open to discussion on this or any topic.

“This is a basic rundown, but I have extensive notes on each line item. I’ll send you the complete deck, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you at lunch.”

That sounded like planning the whole wedding to Alexa, but she said nothing. She was waiting for her daughter to laugh and say, “Just kidding.” But Penny wasn’t kidding. “You hired a wedding planner?”

“Of course. I need someone like me on the ground to run the wedding the day of the event. Brides don’t have time to produce, Mom.”

Again, Alexa waited, hoping for the laughter to break out.

But there was nothing on Penny’s face to suggest that she was anything but deadly serious about this festive event. “Chase and I agree. We’re paring down. This is not going to be some three-day bacchanalia for everybody we went to college with so they can party like it’s 1999. This is a grown-up wedding, curated by grown-ups for grown-ups,” Penny announced. “No matching dresses. No endless photo sessions. No bottles of wine labeled with our wedding logo. I mean, of course there will be a logo, but we’re not going to rebrand the wine, like Katie did. Or give each guest a bottle from the family vineyard like Savannah did. Remember Jillian’s wedding? The bridesmaids had to walk down the aisle twice because the wedding video director didn’t like our cadence. We had to do a retake in the middle of the ceremony. There won’t be any of that! Oh, and there will be one dress and one cake.”

At least that was a cost-saver, Alexa thought. And seriously, did brides really have more than one cake?

Penny’s voice switched pitch, and she was shaking as she spoke. “I don’t want any of that. I don’t need the picture-perfect wedding. This is not an Instagram event; it’s my life. I want a wedding filled with love and joy. Is that too much to ask?”