It Had to Be You Georgia Clark (bookstand for reading txt) 📖

might’ve lightly ambushed her at the airport. Turns out she’d just forgotten to post with all the post-wedding craziness. But I offered to drive her home, and she ended up writing the nicest thing.” Savannah read aloud. “ ‘Absolute dream to work with @Savannah_Ships’—that’s me—‘and #LivGoldenhorn. Cannot recommend these two talented wedding planners from @InLoveInNewYork highly enough.’ She only posted an hour ago, and we already have six email inquiries.”

Liv scrolled through @InLoveInNewYork’s Instagram account. “There’s a picture of me on here.” In a meeting with Kamile in the front office. Liv was pointing to the seating chart and Kamile was smiling. It was a pretty good shot, candid and natural. Savannah had obviously used some kind of filter—was that still the lingo?—because her skin looked, well, young.

“There are a lot of pictures of you,” Savannah said. “And me. We’re the brand.”

God, there were dozens of photos on the account. How surreal to see the last few months of her life reflected back in such a colorful and charming way. “Wait, did you say six inquiries?”

Savannah nodded, beaming.

“For partial or full service?”

“Both!”

This seemed to mean—it sounded like it meant—business. Customers. Money.

The elephant sitting on Liv’s chest hauled to its feet and ambled away. She let out a long, grateful breath. Finally.

Her phone rang. “Yes, this is Liv Goldenhorn… On… Instagram? I mean, yes, on Instagram… Oh, thank you so much.”

Savannah whispered to her, “I put both our cells on the new website—” Her own phone rang. Another inquiry.

Liv Goldenhorn still didn’t know why Eliot had played matchmaker in bringing her and Savannah Shipley into each other’s lives. But right now, with the early-summer sun streaming through the front window and an eager-sounding customer on the other end of the line, she didn’t care.

The truth would present itself in due course.

PART TWO

IN LOVE IN MANHATTAN

29

As the weather heated up, so did wedding season.

The wedding-planning business was a long game. Full-service planners would generally start working with a couple at least ten months out, overseeing every detail from save-the-date cards to after-party nosh. But while In Love in New York was starting to plan for clients who were getting married the following year, they didn’t have many marrying over the coming summer: those folks had taken one look at the infamous pigeons-and-bees review from last November and flown the coop. It was Savannah’s idea to promote a special for day-of coordination: a modest fee to show up on the big day and run a wedding they didn’t actually plan. This was where Savannah got her first peek into the wide spectrum of weddings in New York. There was the one with the WASPy couple who incorporated the hora, not because they were Jewish, but because the boisterous chair dance just seemed like fun. The one where someone’s uncle who, in lieu of giving a toast, read his recently published essay on the future of driverless cars. The rich-kid weddings where everyone was on coke. The sober weddings were everyone drank Coke. The first dance to that song from Dirty Dancing, complete with a passable lift at the end. They even ran a solo wedding, a new trend originating in Japan, where single women married themselves.

But despite the fact Savannah owned half the business, Liv still treated Savannah like hired help. Clients assumed Savannah was Liv’s assistant. Liv complained that Savannah made the coffee too weak, that she used too many exclamation points in her emails, that she was too intimate with clients. “They’re not your friends,” Liv warned. “Don’t overpromise. Or get too close.”

Savannah ignored this advice. She’d been raised with an open-door/no-ask-is-too-big policy. Which is how she found herself spending an entire weekend hand-addressing three hundred save-the-dates for a tearful bride who’d run out of time. “She’s paying us,” Savannah protested weakly, starting envelope number 126. Her wrist was already burning.

“Not to do this,” Liv said, almost smugly.

Liv was good with boundaries and expectations, even if, to Savannah’s taste, it made her come across a little cool. But it did suit the client base. In the South, you waved at every car and smiled at every stranger. In New York, pedestrians and drivers were in a constant battle for the road, and smiling at someone resulted in an odd look or pickup line. Brides in the Big Apple didn’t have time for endless hours of cozy chitchat.

Liv explained her sales system: inquiry (usually via email), intake interview (ideally coffee, in the front office), mutual approval, custom quote, negotiation, close the deal. Her contracts and quotes were good, but Liv recorded intake interviews on yellow sticky notes, then typed them into Word documents saved to her desktop. Mind-blowingly archaic.

“We could set up a CMS—a content management system—to keep track of everything,” Savannah suggested. “And some plug-ins in our in-box to help keep everything in a pipeline.”

Liv scoffed. The doorbell rang. “My system works. Remember,” she added, “don’t overpromise.”

Vanessa Fitzpatrick and Lenny Maple met the old-fashioned way. Online. For their first date, they planned to see Jurassic Park in Central Park, both being fans of outdoor entertainment and Jeff Goldblum. A boisterous summer storm had other ideas. As fat drops splattered and scattered the moviegoers, Vanessa and Lenny ran hand in hand to the park’s boathouse restaurant overlooking the Lake, to wait out the deluge with a glass of pinot. Four hours later, they were still there. They hadn’t stopped talking since.

Their wedding was to be held at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, a dark wood, old-world social club for the alumni of the Ivy League. The venue was to appease Vanessa’s father. General Tucker Fitzpatrick was a West Point grad with a master’s from Harvard, retired military, and a fan of tradition. “In general,” as Vanessa put it. Lenny squeezed her thigh supportively. He was skinny and kind-eyed, with shoulder-length hair tucked behind large ears. The couple exchanged a glance stuffed with a thousand unspoken words. While perfectly poised, Vanessa’s painted fingernails twisting the ends