“August sixth we can’t do anything,” Sébastien warned, returning to the table with the chicken. “Anna, Ken, Sue, and Dwayne are coming in, and we promised to pick them up at the airport and show them around Paris.” My sister and her fiancé as well as our two best American friends had decided to join us again. Two weddings on two continents just to make them accessible to both families, and people kept choosing to attend both. Our families stubbornly continued to demonstrate that an intercultural marriage didn’t mean a choice between two cultures but a choice of both. I, meanwhile, kept wondering if a choice of both wasn’t going to lead me to a nervous breakdown. I remembered telling Adela a long time ago that getting married would limit my life to trips to Disneyland. Well, at least I couldn’t say that had happened yet.

“And you need to meet the mayor.” Claudine grinned.

“The mayor? Why?”

Claudine clapped her hands together. “It’s a surprise! She’s going to marry you, too.”

“She’s what?”

“When we were having trouble finding a priest, she offered to do a pretend civil ceremony.”

“But we did find a priest. So . . . ?”

“Well, I don’t want to hurt her feelings,” Claudine said, astonished at me. “Besides, as soon as she suggested it, I knew you’d love it. You can have the complete French experience, a civil and a church ceremony, just like you did in the U.S.”

I sat blinking.

“Imagine that!” Claudine said happily. “Four weddings!”

“I am.”

“Most people only ever get to have two.”

“Well, one, where I come from.”

“And you get to have four! Isn’t that wonderful?”

“It’s . . . that’s . . .” I met her hopeful, happy eyes. “When are we going to do this?”

“The same day, of course! A real civil ceremony would have to come before the church wedding, but in your case, it doesn’t matter. We can fit it in after if that works best.”

I tried not to think about the reaction of my American family and friends when they got here in a few days and learned we were having a fourth wedding. It didn’t seem like something I was likely to live down before the next family reunion. If I collapsed from the stress of a cross-cultural couple before the next family reunion, they’d use the four weddings in my eulogy.

By the time we reached dessert, night had fallen, and the tiki torches were all lit. Bottles of wine were scattered all over the table. I went to get a tray of sliced fruit, and Bruno carried out his accompanying fondu au chocolat. We dodged hissing geese, and my foot squished on a plum.