Liar's Guide to True Love (12 page)

Wedding Planning Tip: It’s okay to tie the knot even though you haven’t known each other for decades. When you feel like it’s right, it probably is.

“You must be mad, Cassandra. You cannot start a relationship based on lies.” Suzanne has that tone, that lecturing here-I-am-repeating-myself-over-again tone. “Aside from the fact that you
love
being a wedding planner. It’s such a part of who you are, and you’re going to hide that now?”

Kate is swirling the straw in her Diet Coke. “Nick is a dear old friend, you know. You want me to lie to him to keep up this charade?” She shrugs. “I’ve done worse. Just don’t get me caught.”

“Is this what you were doing in my building this morning? I thought maybe you were meeting a client.” Mia seems disappointed that my emergency meeting wasn’t about something more dramatic. She even checks her BlackBerry before tossing it back into her work bag. Am I so predictable that my friends are so nonplussed? Well at least they have agreed to cover for me until I can figure this out. I don’t need to worry about Suzanne—she would have no reason to see Nick.

“You guys, I really like Nick. I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Do you like him more than Kevin?” Suzanne asks.

“That is entirely different and you know it.

“So you don’t think Nick will call you to ask about me?” I ask Kate. I don’t know what I want her answer to be. On the one hand, if he calls it means he is interested, right? Well, I know he is at least a bit interested, but if he asked her about me, it might mean he was
really
interested. “He won’t call and back you into a corner about what I do for a living?”

Kate gives me that are-you-kidding-me look that I’ve seen her use on many men who had the audacity to think that she was in their league. “We are not in eighth grade, darling. He isn’t going to call to find out if you like him, like him, or just like him. Nor will he ask me for your resume.” She takes another bite of her pasta, and smiles at someone behind me. We are at a
diner
—does she ever turn it off?

“Mia, I need a crash course on account management. Does Greyson even handle Maybelline?”

“Ummm, no. You said Maybelline? You couldn’t pick something more—obscure?” After I groan, she tries to be reassuring. “But Nick would never know that, unless he’s an industry insider, which he isn’t. They probably use more than one agency anyway, so even if he saw something in the paper about them, you could always say you handle a different part of the business. And if you’re not around your office building, you can always say you’re with the client.”

“I guess you’re right. Hopefully we won’t be talking much about work anyway, if things go well.”

Later that night I do a little internet search on Maybelline. Just in case. As I am sitting at my laptop, I see a message from Nick pop up in my inbox:

At the bottom of the message is a photo that he must have taken in the mirror. He’s pulled up his undershirt a little, and unbuttoned the top of his khakis to show the waistband of his white Under Armours. Nothing vulgar, mind you. Just a peek.

He is clearly flirting, so I call him—it’s only 10 p.m.

A few minutes into the phone call, we are talking about our families again. I’ve relaxed about any possibility of having to talk about my fake job. As I am telling him about Emma, another twinge of guilt comes over me for not trying harder to reach her.

“Emma has always been lucky, you know? Since we were kids she has led that charmed life. Things just come easily for her. Winning school elections by a landslide, getting in early to the college of her choice, finding her soulmate her freshman year, she’s
that girl.
”

“Was that tough growing up with?”

“Not really. You might think it would be, but we were just so different. There wasn’t really any competition between us. It’s gotten kind of hard to connect with her to be honest. She talks a lot about what’s going on on daytime TV, and decorating her house. She loves the suburban life—all she’s missing is the dog because her husband is allergic. She also lives five minutes from our parents. I love the city
and
a little bit of distance, at least physically. My mother still calls eight times a day.” I chuckle, thinking I really am fortunate for my family. It’s easier to appreciate them when I’m talking
about
them instead of
to
them. “Emma and Robert are trying to have a baby now. I can’t believe it, my baby sister having a baby.”

“My little sister has three kids, two girls and a boy. It’s great visiting them—”

“Just no diapers” we both say at the same time. We both laugh, and it’s completely silly, but I am glad he can’t see this stupid grin I am wearing.

He continues to tell me a little bit more about his family and about his job. His birthday is on Christmas Eve, and his parents thought to name him after the good old Saint, rather than a more obvious tribute to the season—like Jesus, ha ha. He wishes he were closer to his dad—it seems it took him a while to learn to appreciate him, like his dad’s sense of humor in insisting on naming their pet cockatiel “Flip” when Nick was a little kid. It wasn’t until he was in junior high, Nick said, that he was daydreaming during math class and nearly laughed out loud at the thought of “Flip the Bird.”

He has always wanted to be an architect ever since a family trip to Europe when he was in junior high. While other kids that age would be truculent about traipsing after their parents and older sister around foreign countries, he was awestruck by flying buttresses and duomos. I am genuinely impressed by this and tell him so—it seems that so few people actually pursue their childhood dreams, and instead stumble into a career either through serendipity (like me) or some pressure to grow up and make money (like Kevin).

By now we have been on the phone for almost an hour, and it feels almost like those marathon phone calls from high school days, when you just wanted to be connected to the person on the other end, even if what you were talking about was completely trivial. Our conversation is so easy, I feel like I can satiate my curiosity by asking about his ex, a topic normally taboo this early on in a—dare I say it—
relationship.
I find an easy segue when he mentions almost moving to a great brownstone in Brooklyn (what is it with men I’m involved with moving to Brooklyn with their S.O.’s anyway?).

“Were you planning to move in with your girlfriend at the time?”

If he feels awkward talking about her, it isn’t at all apparent. “Yeah, we thought we were going to move in together, then get married eventually.”

“What happened?” Again, no pause at all. He seems oddly comfortable talking about this.

“Looking back on it now, there were a bunch of things that made us wrong for each other. We never communicated all that well. I often felt like it was pulling teeth to get her to talk to me. I just felt like a relationship should not be that hard from the very beginning, you know? But what sealed the decision to break it off for good was that Nicole was dead set on not having kids. Ever. I just always envisioned having kids one day and I couldn’t commit to that. It was a really difficult decision at first.” He begins to sound a little wistful. “But that’s all in the past now. It was the right thing to do, and there are no hard feelings.”

I try to lighten up the conversation again. “Wait, you and your girlfriend were ‘Nick and Nic’?”

Nick laughs. “Yeah, that should have been a reason to break up by itself.” We finally hang up about two hours later, when neither of us can stay awake even though we both want to. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to anyone for this long. As sleepy as I am, and as happy as I am to have finally clicked with someone, I am kept awake by the fact that Nick still believes I’m an ad exec. Suzanne is right that I shouldn’t be starting a relationship based on dishonesty, but let’s face it, when was the last time I
didn’t
start a relationship that way?
Kevin.
And look at how that turned out. Nick and I had only gone on what, a date and a half? This advertising ruse is a bit much, granted, but who knows where this will go? It’s not that uncommon for a few half-truths to be told at the earliest stages of a romance, right? Eventually I convince myself that I’m expecting too much too soon, that true honesty will come with time, if we even get that far. The most important thing, I tell myself, is about who we are, if we have chemistry. My job does not define who I am, and in every other way I’m showing him the real me.

Wedding Tip: Don’t expect to fulfill your entire life’s dreams while you’re engaged.

Soon-to-be-marrieds decide their Wedding Day is the reason to sign up for ballroom dancing lessons, cooking classes, scuba certifications, personal trainers. And they inevitably miss dance classes due to unavoidable cake tastings or just plain stress. Even worse, some brides miss their Pilates/belly dancing/stripper pole-dancing classes and don’t fit into the dress they ordered a size too small (against my advice, of course).

But I am convinced that you don’t have to be Engaged to be engaging. So like others who devote a few hours every week to church or breakfast in bed, I devote a few hours to celebrating that I am independent enough to sign up for continuing education classes alone.

Since my revelation on how to remain an interesting person while maintaining a successful full-time career, I have taken drawing classes, Chinese watercolor painting, flower arranging and introductory photography. I figure the latter two are at least related to my line of work, and are therefore a tax write-off. But there have been even more tangible benefits to these classes aside from the financial. In my drawing class, I met an older Upper East Sider who introduced me to a friend who was getting married, and absolutely
needed
a “darling girl” like myself to plan her wedding. In watercolor painting, I met a fabulous up-and-coming
artiste
who I commissioned for a bride and groom who didn’t want “boring photography” at the reception, but instead have a collection of watercolors to commemorate the occasion. In flower arranging, I met a
beautiful
man with whom I flirted every day for the eight weeks of the class. He turned out to be gay (okay, so I should have recognized that), but he was so nice to look at that it didn’t matter. And then in the photography class, I met a
gorgeous
man who turned out to be my first “affair” with a younger man. I dined out on that for weeks.

Engageds also lose sight of how getting married changes a person. Or rather, doesn’t change them. So many seem to think that choosing monogamy makes you suddenly sexless to everyone but your mate (or including your mate, depending on who you talk to). They think the occasional bar flirtation or admiration of a stranger’s ass is over once they are married. So they flip out—the hot sex with an Ex dreams are quite common. One bride even confided that she had an orgasm in her sleep, lying right next to the Fiancé who had been the roommate of The Best Sex She Ever Had.

If only they realized early on that a healthy appreciation of an attractive man is just that—healthy. Then they wouldn’t have the constant anxiety that causes the dreams, that causes cold feet, that causes postponed weddings dates, that causes a break up, that causes regret that you broke up, that leads to make-up sex.

Okay, the make-up sex may not be such a bad thing—it may be an excellent thing. But maybe not worth the heart-wrenching guilt.

All this anxiety often culminates to bachelor/ette party obsession. Brides go out of their way to celebrate their last days of being a singleton. Even the most sophisticated urbanites have been known to wear a candy necklace to solicit a few last slobbers at a bar. They just buy their candy at Dylan’s Candy Bar instead of Duane Reade. Several of my brides have had full-on panic attacks over the potential hazards of their betrothed’s bachelor party. And so they take one of two roads. 1) Set the ground rules for him—no touching, no sex, no exchange of bodily fluids—you name it, and some girl has made a rule against it. Or 2) They tell their girlfriends to plan the wildest bachelorette party imaginable in order to get back at him for what may or may not have happened at his celebration.

But guess what, ladies? Once you’re engaged,
there is no way to level the playing field.
No matter how many tasks your bridesmaids have on your list, no matter how many strippers you have, men still have easier access to seedier activities. Short of fully cheating on your fiancé, I repeat,
there is no way to level the playing field.
What could work is ensuring that one has had her fair share of relationships prior to getting engaged. (And just in case you’re not sure of what I mean by “relationships,” the guy you might have had sex with three hours after meeting him and then never spoke to again does count. He’s just in a different category as your three-year college boyfriend who you thought was The One.)

So you’ve probably heard that it is exceedingly difficult to meet men in New York City. You must have heard of speed dating, Match.com, eHarmony. I’ve never used any of these services, or had too much trouble finding dates, partially thanks to my commitment to self-improvement (tons of cute creative types taking photography classes), but mostly due to my profession.

It’s not too surprising that wedding guests have romance on their minds—or at least a hook up. Even the biggest self-proclaimed bachelors will get sentimental at their brother/best friend/cousin/roommate’s wedding. And the person who helped make it all happen is as likely a date candidate as the Single Bridesmaid. (Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t make it a policy to hit on guests of my clients, but I also see it as part of my duty as an event producer to engage in friendly conversation when approached. And if there is a good-looking, single, thirty-something male in the vicinity, I just may go a little out of my way to be Approachable and Engaging.

I dated Adam for a few months after we met at the Cohen/Tsang wedding. He was the best man, and for months before the wedding day I would hear all about Adam—how he was the quintessential playboy and would probably bring two dates because he wouldn’t be able to decide between a leggy blonde or a petite brunette. I heard about how he and the groom got caught by campus security during a frat house prank, but Adam was able to talk his way out of getting in any real trouble. “Fun Adam” was the life of the party, the guy every other guy wanted to be, a gregarious politician on the rise.

So on the day of wedding I was shocked to see Adam, sitting in a corner, head in his hands, looking flustered and on the edge of panic.

“Hi, I’m Cassandra, the wedding planner? Are you alright, can I get you anything?”

He didn’t lift his head as he mumbled something that ended in “toast.”

“Excuse me?”

He looked up. “I’m Adam the best man. Best friend for twelve years, introduced the groom to the bride, helped him buy the ring, adore the woman he’s marrying like a sister, and I can’t think of a fucking thing to say to them.”

“Ah, well. It’s when we have so many things we want to say, that it’s the hardest to choose the right words.”

“I’ve been writing this damn toast for seven months! Ever since their engagement party.” He pulls out a crumpled piece of loose-leaf paper. Wide-ruled, like the kind you use in grammar school, which for some reason strikes me as more charming than his mop of curly hair that falls over his brown eyes (
exactly
my type). The page is filled with surprisingly neat, small letters (I always expect men to have bad handwriting for some reason). He has written paragraph after paragraph, and then crossed it all out.

“Well this is good, when you start here, ‘When Brian met Karen he kept saying she’s the one. Even though they’d only known each other for three days…’ And then this part, about the trip to Tahiti.”

Adam perks up, and starts scribbling on another piece of paper. I sat with him for almost half an hour working on that toast. And when it brought happy tears to everyone’s eyes and ended with a good laugh, of course he wanted to thank me by taking me out to dinner sometime.

It was fun for a while, knowing you’d have someone to go out to dinner or see a movie with. But between my irregular schedule of working on weekends and his business travel it got to be more work than it was worth. And when we hit that three-month awkward stage that every couple goes through, well, it just fell apart. You know what I’m talking about—that period when your friends start trying to label him—“is he your Boyfriend?” And their questions make you wonder—is he my Boyfriend? Or is he still Guy I’m Seeing?
Should
he be my Boyfriend? Do I
want
him to be my Boyfriend? Does he want me to be his Girlfriend? What does he call me to his friends? And well, with Adam, we just never got serious enough to even have The Talk. A couple of months ago I heard he was getting married to one of the bridesmaids from the wedding where we met. And I found myself more bothered that I hadn’t been called to plan the event than anything else.

Now I’m all for making a Wedding Day as perfect for the Bride and Groom as possible—they don’t pay me a comfortable fee for nothing. But time and again, Engageds not only think that their own perfection is part of this, but they expect every guest to be perfect for them as well. And I’m not just talking about the usual stuff, like Brides mandating no facial hair on any of the groomsmen (I do think that’s an unreasonable request, by the way). It’s the
grooms
that surprise me time and again.

One groom even picked the bridesmaids’ dresses and the hairstyles they were each to wear. I guess I should have realized he was a bit unusual when the bride brought him to her second dress fitting (I mean, where is the surprise and romance in
that?
). He was so opinionated about what
all
the women would be wearing, I wondered if had been watching too many makeover shows on Bravo.

Or the groom who had insisted that every wedding guest be dressed in white. Now, a Hamptons-style white party is a lovely idea for a wedding. But when the mother of the bride shows up in pale pink, it’s a bit much for the groom to lock himself in his dressing area in an angry fit, delaying the ceremony for twenty minutes.

And there was always the time the groom kicked his own brother out of the wedding party for—you guessed it—facial hair.

So the life lesson I’ve learned? Do what you can to be prepared. But at the end of the day, remember your priorities.