The Unhoneymooners
About this book
Olive Torres considers herself the unlucky twin, especially beside Ami, whose wedding has been assembled almost entirely from prizes. Then the seafood buffet sickens every guest except Olive and the groom's brother, Ethan Thomas.
The nonrefundable honeymoon cannot be transferred honestly, but it can be used if Olive and Ethan pretend to be the newlyweds. Ten days in Maui is a generous prize and a terrible prospect for two people whose dislike has years of supporting evidence.
The resort adds complications: shared spaces, a couples itinerary, people they cannot afford to recognize them, and the growing possibility that each has misunderstood the other's part in their feud.
The Unhoneymooners is an enemies-to-lovers comedy with a sharp turn toward questions of trust. Christina Lauren makes the vacation bright and quick, then asks what happens when a new relationship collides with family loyalty and a truth no one wants to believe.
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From the opening
chapter one
In the calm before the storm—in this case, the blessed quiet before the bridal suite is overrun by the wedding party—my twin sister stares critically down at a freshly painted shell-pink fingernail and says, “I bet you’re relieved I’m not a bridezilla.” She glances across the room at me and smiles generously. “I bet you expected me to be impossible.”
It is a statement so perfectly dropped in the moment, I want to take a picture and frame it. I share a knowing look with our cousin Julieta, who is repainting Ami’s toes (“It should be more petal pink than baby pink, don’t you think?”), and gesture to the bodice of Ami’s wedding gown—which hangs from a satin hanger and on which I am presently and painstakingly ensuring that every sequin is lying flat. “Define ‘bridezilla.’ ”
Ami meets my eyes again, this time with a half-hearted glare. She’s in her fancy wedding-bra contraption and skimpy underwear that I’m aware—with some degree of sibling nausea—her dudebro fiancé, Dane, will positively destroy later. Her makeup is tastefully done and her fluffy veil is pinned in her upswept dark hair. It’s jarring. I mean, we’re used to looking identical while knowing we’re wholly different people inside, but this is something entirely unfamiliar: Ami is the portrait of a bride. Her life suddenly bears no resemblance to mine whatsoever.
“I’m not a bridezilla,” she argues. “I’m a perfectionist.”
I find my list and hold it aloft, waving it to catch her attention. It’s a piece of heavy, scalloped-edged pink stationery that has Olive’s To-Do List—Wedding Day Edition written in meticulous calligraphy at the top, and which includes seventy-four (seventy-four) items ranging from Check for symmetry of the sequins on the bridal gown to Remove any wilted petals from the table arrangements.
Each bridesmaid has her own list, perhaps not quite as long as my maid-of-honor one but equally fancy and handwritten. Ami even drew checkboxes so that we can record when each task is completed.
“Some people might call these lists a little overboard,” I say.
“Those are the same ‘some people,’ ” she replies, “who’ll pay an arm and a leg for a wedding that is half as nice.”
“Right. They hire a wedding planner to—” I refer to my list. “ ‘Wipe condensation off the chairs a half hour before the ceremony.’ ”
Ami blows across her fingernails to dry them and lets out a movie-villain laugh. “Fools.”
You know what they say about self-fulfilling prophecies, I’m sure. Winning makes you feel like a winner, and then somehow . . . you keep winning. It has to be true, because Ami wins everything. She tossed a ticket into a raffle bowl at a street fair and walked home with a set of community theater tickets. She slid her business card into a cup at The Happy Gnome and won free happy hour beers for a year. She’s won makeovers, books, movie premiere tickets, a lawnmower, endless T-shirts, and even a car. Of course, she also won the stationery and calligraphy set she used to write the to-do lists.
All this to say, as soon as Dane Thomas proposed, Ami saw it as a challenge to spare our parents the cost of the wedding. As it happens, Mom and Dad could afford to contribute—they are messy in many ways, but financially is not one of them—but for Ami, getting out of paying for anything is the best kind of game. If pre-engagement Ami thought of contests as a competitive sport, engaged Ami viewed them as the Olympics.
No one in our enormous family was surprised, then, when she successfully planned a posh wedding with two hundred guests, a seafood buffet, a chocolate fountain, and multicolored roses spilling out of every jar, vase, and goblet—and has shelled out, at most, a thousand dollars. My sister works her ass off to find the best promotions and contests. She reposts every Twitter and Facebook giveaway she can find, and even has an email address that is aptly named [email protected].
Finally convinced there are no misbehaving sequins, I lift the hanger from where it’s suspended from a metal hook attached to the wall, intending to bring the gown to her.
But as soon as I touch it, my sister and cousin scream in unison, and Ami holds up her hands, her matte pink lips in a horrified O.
“Leave it there, Ollie,” she says. “I’ll come over. With your luck, you’ll trip and fall into the candle and it’ll go up in a ball of sequin-scented flames.”
I don’t argue: she isn’t wrong.
• • •
WHEREAS AMI IS A FOUR-LEAF clover, I have always been unlucky. I don’t say that to be theatrical or because I only seem unlucky in comparison; it is an objective truth. Google Olive Torres, Minnesota, and you’ll find dozens of articles and comment threads dedicated to the time I climbed into one of those claw crane arcade games and got stuck. I was six, and when the stuffed animal I’d captured didn’t drop directly into the chute, I decided to go in and get it.
I spent two hours inside the machine, surrounded by a lot of hard, coarse-furred, chemical-smelling toy bears. I remember looking out through the handprint-smudged plexiglass and seeing an array of frantic faces shouting muffled orders to each other. Apparently, when the owners of the arcade explained to my parents that they didn’t actually own the game and therefore didn’t have the key to get inside, the Edina fire department was called, followed quickly by a local news crew, who diligently documented my extraction.
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Fast-forward twenty-six years and—thank you, YouTube—there’s still video floating around. To date, nearly five hundred thousand people have watched it and discovered that I was stubborn enough to climb in, and unlucky enough to catch my belt loop on the way out, leaving my pants behind with the bears.
This is but one story of many. So yes, Ami and I are identical twins—we are both five foot four with dark hair that misbehaves when there’s even a hint of humidity, deep brown eyes, upturned noses, and matching constellations of freckles—but that’s where the similarities end.
Our mother always tried to embrace our differences so we’d feel like individuals rather than a matching set. I know her intentions were good, but for as long as I can remember, our roles were set: Ami is an optimist who looks for the silver lining; I tend to assume the sky is falling. When we were three, Mom even dressed us as Care Bears for Halloween: Ami was Funshine Bear. I was Grumpy.
And it’s clear the self-fulfilling prophecy works in both directions: From the moment I watched myself picking my nose behind a piece of grimy plexiglass on the six o’clock news, my luck never really improved. I’ve never won a coloring contest or an office pool; not even a lottery ticket or a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. I have, however, broken a leg when someone fell backward down the stairs and knocked me over (they walked away unscathed), consistently drew bathroom duty during every extended family vacation for a five-year stretch, was peed on by a dog while sunbathing in Florida, have been crapped on by innumerable birds over the years, and when I was sixteen I was struck by lightning—yes, really—and lived to tell the tale (but had to go to summer school because I missed two weeks of classes at the end of the year). Ami likes to sunnily remind me that I once guessed the correct number of shots left in a half-empty bottle of tequila.
But after drinking most of them in celebratory glee and subsequently throwing it all back up again, that win didn’t feel particularly fortunate.
• • •
AMI REMOVES THE (FREE) DRESS from the hanger and steps into it just as our mother comes into the room from her (also free) adjoining suite. She gasps so dramatically when she sees Ami in the gown, I’m sure both Ami and I share the thought: Olive somehow managed to stain the wedding dress.
I inspect it to make sure I haven’t.
All clear, Ami exhales, motioning for me to carefully zip her up. “Mami, you scared the crap out of us.”
With a head full of enormous Velcro rollers, a half-finished glass of (you guessed it: free) champagne in hand, and her lips thick with red gloss, Mom is managing an impressive impersonation of Joan Crawford. If Joan Crawford had been born in Guadalajara. “Oh, mijita, you look beautiful.”
Ami glances up at her, smiles, and then seems to remember—with immediate separation anxiety—the list she left all the way across the room. Hitching her billowing dress up, she shuffles to the table. “Mom, you gave the DJ the thumb drive with the music?”
Our mother drains her glass before daintily taking a seat on the plush couch. “Sí, Amelia. I gave your little plastic stick to the white man with cornrows in the terrible suit.”
Mom’s magenta dress is impeccable, her tan legs crossed at the knee as she accepts another flute of champagne from the bridal suite attendant.
“He has a gold tooth,” Mom adds. “But I’m sure he’s very good at his job.”
Ami ignores this and her confident check mark scratches through the room. She doesn’t really care if the DJ isn’t up to our mother’s standards, or even her own. He’s new in town, and she won his services in a raffle at the hospital where she works as a hematology nurse. Free beats talented, every time.
“Ollie,” Ami says, eyes never straying from the list in front of her, “you need to get dressed, too. Your dress is hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”
I immediately disappear into the bathroom with a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
If there’s one question we’re asked more than any other, it’s which one of us is the oldest. I would think it’s fairly obvious, because although Ami is a mere four minutes older than me, she is without a doubt the leader. Growing up, we played what she wanted to play, went where she wanted to go, and while I may have complained, for the most part I happily followed. She can talk me into almost anything.
Which is exactly how I ended up in this dress.
“Ami.” I throw open the bathroom door, horrified by what I’ve just seen in the small bathroom mirror. Maybe it’s the light, I think, hiking up the shiny green monstrosity and making my way to one of the larger mirrors in the suite.
Wow. It’s definitely not the light.
“Olive,” she answers back.
“I look like a giant can of 7UP.”
“Yes, girl!” Jules sings. “Maybe someone will finally crack that thing open.”
Mom clears her throat.
I glower at my sister. I was wary of being a bridesmaid in a Winter Wonderland–themed wedding in January, so my only request as the maid of honor was that my dress wouldn’t have a scrap of red velvet or white fur. I see now that I should have been more specific.
“Did you actually choose this dress?” I point to my abundance of cleavage. “This was intentional?”
Ami tilts her head, studying me. “I mean, intentional in the sense that I won the raffle at Valley Baptist! All the bridesmaids dresses in one go—just think of the money I saved you.”
“We’re Catholic, not Baptist, Ami.” I tug on the fabric. “I look like a hostess at O’Gara’s on St. Paddy’s Day.”
I realize my primary error—not seeing this dress until today—but my sister has always had impeccable taste. On the day of the fittings, I was in my boss’s office, pleading, unsuccessfully, to not be one of the four hundred scientists the company was letting go. I know I was distracted when she sent me a photo of the dress but I don’t remember it looking this satiny or this green.
I turn to see it from another angle and—dear God, it looks even worse from the back. It doesn’t help that a few weeks of stress-baking have made me, let’s say . . . a little fuller in the chest and hips. “Put me in the back of every picture, and I could be your green screen.”
Jules comes up behind me, tiny and toned in her own shiny green ensemble. “You look hot in it. Trust me.”
“Mami,” Ami calls, “doesn’t that neckline show off Ollie’s collarbones?”
“And her chichis.” Mom’s glass has been refilled once more, and she takes another long, slow drink.
The rest of the bridesmaids tumble into the suite, and there is a loud, collective, emotional uproar over how beautiful Ami looks in her dress. This reaction is standard in the Torres family. I realize this may sound like the observation of a bitter sibling, but I promise, it’s not. Ami has always loved attention, and—as evidenced by my screaming on the six o’clock news—I do not. My sister practically glows under the spotlight; I am more than happy to help direct the spotlight her way.
We have twelve female first cousins; all of us in each other’s business 24/7, but with only seven (free) dresses included in Ami’s prize, hard decisions had to be made. A few cousins are still living on Mount Passive-Aggressive over it and went in on their own room together to get ready, but it’s probably for the best; this room is way too small for that many women to safely maneuver themselves into Spanx at the same time, anyway.
A cloud of hair spray hangs in the air around us, and there are enough curling and flat irons and various bottles littering the counter to keep a decent-sized salon going. Every surface grows either tacky with some sort of styling product or hidden beneath the contents of someone’s overturned makeup bag.
There’s a knock at the suite door, and Jules opens it to find our cousin Diego standing on the other side. Twenty-eight, gay, and better groomed than I could ever manage, Diego cried sexism when Ami told him he couldn’t be part of the bridal party and would have to hang with the groomsmen. If his expression as he takes in my dress is any indication, he now considers himself blessed.
“I know,” I say, giving up and stepping away from the mirror. “It’s a little—”
“Tight?” he guesses.
“No—”
“Shiny?”
I glare at him. “No.”
“Slutty?”
“I was going to say green.”
He tilts his head as he steps around me, absorbing it from every angle. “I was going to offer to do your makeup, but it’d be a waste of my time.” He waves a hand. “No one will be looking at your face today.”
“No slut-shaming, Diego,” my mother says, and I notice she didn’t disagree with his assessment, she just told him not to shame me for it.
I give up on worrying about the dress—and how much boob I’m going to have on display for the entire wedding and reception—and turn back to the chaos of the room. While cousins Static Guard each other and ask opinions on shoes, a dozen conversations are happening at once. Natalia dyed her brown hair to blond and is convinced she has ruined her face. Diego agrees. The underwire popped out of Stephanie’s strapless bra, and Tía María is explaining how to just tape up her boobs instead. Cami and Ximena are arguing over whose Spanx are whose, and Mom is polishing off her glass of champagne. But amid all the noise and chemicals, Ami’s attention is back on her list. “Olive, have you checked in with Dad? Is he here yet?”
“He was in the reception hall when I got here.”
“Good.” Another check.
It might seem strange that the job of checking in with our dad fell to me, and not his wife—our mother—who is sitting right here, but that’s how it works in our family. The parentals don’t interact directly, not since Dad cheated and Mom kicked him out but then refused to divorce him. Of course we were on her side, but it’s been ten years and the drama is still just as fresh for both of them today as it was the day she caught him. I can’t think of a single conversation they’ve had that hasn’t been filtered through me, Ami, or one of their combined seven siblings since Dad left. We realized early on that it’s easier for everyone this way, but the lingering sense I have from all of it is that love is exhausting.
Ami reaches for my list, and I scramble to get to it before she does; my lack of check marks would send her reeling into panic. Scanning down, I am thrilled to see the next to-do requires me to leave this foggy den of hair spray.
“I’ll go check with the kitchen to make sure they’re making a separate meal for me.” The free wedding buffet came with a shellfish spread that would send me to the morgue.
“Hopefully Dane also ordered chicken for Ethan.” Ami frowns. “God, I hope. Can you ask?”
All chatter in the room comes to a deafening halt, and eleven pairs of eyes swing my way. A dark cloud shifts across my mood at the mention of Dane’s older brother.
Although Dane is firmly adequate, if not a bit bro-y for my tastes—think yelling at the television during sports, vanity about muscles, and a real effort to match all of his workout gear—he makes Ami happy. That’s good enough for me.
Ethan, on the other hand, is a prickish, judgmental asshole.
Aware that I am the center of attention, I fold my arms, already annoyed. “Why? Is he allergic, too?” For some reason, the idea of having something in common with Ethan Thomas, the surliest man alive, makes me feel irrationally violent.
“No,” Ami says. “He’s just fussy about buffets.”
This jerks a laugh from me. “About buffets. Okay.” From what I’ve seen, Ethan is fussy about literally everything.
For example, at Dane and Ami’s Fourth of July barbecue, he wouldn’t touch any of the food I spent half the day making. At Thanksgiving, he switched chairs with his dad, Doug, just so he wouldn’t have to sit next to me. And last night at the rehearsal dinner, every time I had a bite of cake, or Jules and Diego made me laugh, Ethan rubbed his temples in the most dramatic show of suffering I’d ever seen. Finally I left my cake behind and got up to sing karaoke with Dad and Tío Omar. Maybe I’m still furious that I gave up three bites of really good cake because of Ethan Thomas.
Ami frowns. She’s not the biggest fan of Ethan either, but she’s got to be tired of having this conversation. “Olive. You barely know him.”
“I know him well enough.” I look at her and say two simple words: “Cheese curds.”
My sister sighs, shaking her head. “I swear to God you will never let that go.”
“Because if I eat, laugh, or breathe I’m offending his delicate sensibilities. You know I’ve been around him at least fifty times, and he still makes this face like he’s trying to place who I am?” I motion between us. “We’re twins.”
Natalia speaks up from where she’s teasing the back of her bleached hair. How is it fair that her big boobs manage to fit inside her dress? “Now’s your chance to make friends with him, Olive. Mmm, he’s so pretty.”
I give her the Displeased Torres Brow Arch in reply.
“You’ll have to go find him anyway,” Ami says, and my attention whips back to her.
“Wait. Why?”
At my baffled expression, she points to my list. “Number sev—”
Panic sets in immediately at the suggestion that I need to talk to Ethan, and I hold up my hand for her to stop speaking. Sure enough, when I look at my list, at spot seventy-three—because Ami knew I wouldn’t bother reading the entire list ahead of time—is the worst assignment ever: Get Ethan to show you his best man’s speech. Don’t let him say something terrible.
If I can’t blame this burden on luck, I can absolutely blame it on my sister.
chapter two
As soon as I’m out in the hallway, the noise, chaos, and fumes of the bridal suite seem to be vacuum-sealed away; it is beautifully silent out here. It’s so peaceful, in fact, that I don’t want to leave the moment to go find the door down the hall with the cute little groom caricature hanging above the peephole. The tranquil figurine hides what is no doubt a weed-and-beer-fueled pre-wedding rager happening inside. Even party-loving Diego was willing to risk his hearing and respiratory health to hang with the bridal party instead.
I give myself ten deep breaths to delay the inevitable.
It’s my twin’s wedding, and I really am so happy for her I could burst. But it’s still hard to buoy myself fully, especially in these solo, quiet moments. Chronic bad luck aside, the last two months have genuinely sucked: my roommate moved out, so I had to find a new, tiny apartment. Even then, I overextended what I thought I could afford on my own and—as my patented bad luck would have it—got laid off from the pharmaceutical company where I’d worked for six years. In the past few weeks, I’ve interviewed at no fewer than seven companies and haven’t heard back from a single one of them. And now here I am, about to come face-to-face with my nemesis, Ethan Thomas, while wearing the shiny, flayed pelt of Kermit the Frog.
It’s hard to believe there was a time when I couldn’t wait to meet Ethan. Things between my sister and her boyfriend were starting to get serious, and Ami wanted to introduce me to Dane’s family. In the parking lot at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, Ethan climbed out of his car, with astonishingly long legs and eyes so blue I could see them from two car-lengths away. Up close he had more eyelash than any man has a right to. His blink was slow and cocky. He looked me squarely in the eye, shook my hand, and then smiled a dangerous, uneven smile. Suffice to say, I felt anything but sisterly interest.
But then apparently I made the cardinal sin of being a curvy girl getting a basket of cheese curds. We had stopped just past the entrance to make a game plan for our day, and I slipped away to get a snack—there is nothing more glorious than the food at the Minnesota State Fair. I came back to find the group near the livestock display. Ethan looked at me, then down to my delicious basket of fried cheese curds, frowned, and immediately turned away, mumbling some excuse about needing to go find the homebrew competition. I didn’t think all that much of it at the time, but I didn’t see him for the rest of the afternoon, either.
From that day on, he’s been nothing but disdainful and prickly with me. What am I to think? That he went from smile to disgust in ten minutes for some other reason? Obviously my opinion of Ethan Thomas is: he can bite me. With the exception of today (wholly because of this dress), I like my body. I’m never going to let someone make me feel bad about it or about cheese curds.
Voices carry from the other side of the groom’s suite—some fratty cheer about man sweat or beer or opening a bag of Cheetos with the force of a hard stare; who knows, it’s Dane’s wedding party we’re talking about. I raise my fist and knock, and the door opens so immediately that I startle back, catching my heel on the hem of my dress and nearly falling.
It’s Ethan; of course it is. He reaches out, his hands easily catching me around the waist. As he steadies me, I feel my lip curl, and watch the same mild revulsion work its way through him as he pulls his hands away and tucks them into his pockets. I imagine he’ll rip open a disinfectant wipe the moment he has the chance.
The movement draws my attention to what he’s wearing—a tuxedo, obviously—and how well it fits his long, wiry frame. His brown hair is neatly combed off his forehead; his eyelashes are as preposterously long as they always are. I tell myself that his thick, dark brows are obnoxious overkill—settle down, Mother Nature—but they do look undeniably great on his face.
I really don’t like him.
I’ve always known Ethan was handsome—I’m not blind—but seeing him dressed in black tie is a bit too much clarification for my liking.
He gives me the same perusal. He starts with my hair—maybe he’s judging me for wearing it clipped back so plainly—and then looks at my simple makeup—he probably dates makeup-tutorial Instagram models—before slowly and methodically taking in my dress. I take a deep breath to resist crossing my arms over my midsection.
He lifts his chin. “That was free, I’m assuming.”
And I’m assuming driving my knee right into his crotch would feel fantastic. “Beautiful color, don’t you think?”
“You look like a Skittle.”
“Aw, Ethan. Stop with the seduction.”
A tiny grin twitches the side of his mouth. “So few people can pull off that color, Olivia.”
From his tone, I can tell I am not included in this few. “It’s Olive.”
It amuses my extended family to no end that my parents named me Olive, not the eternally more lyrical Olivia. Since I can remember, all my uncles on Mom’s side call me Aceituna just to rankle her.
But I doubt Ethan knows that; he’s just being a dick.
He rocks back on his heels. “Right, right.”
I am tired of the game. “Okay, this is fun, but I need to see your speech.”
“My toast?”
“Are you correcting my wording?” I wave a hand forward. “Let me see.”
He leans a casual shoulder against the doorframe. “No.”
“This is really for your safety. Ami will murder you with her bare hands if you say something dickish. You know this.”
Ethan tilts his head, sizing me up. He’s six foot four, and Ami and I are . . . not. His point is made, very clearly, with no words: I’d like to see her try.
Dane appears over his shoulder, his face falling as soon as he sees me. Apparently I’m not the beer wench they were both hoping for. “Oh.” He recovers quickly. “Hey, Ollie. Everything okay?”
I smile brightly. “Fine. Ethan was just getting ready to show me his speech.”
“His toast?”
Who knew this family was such a stickler for labels?
“Yeah.”
Dane nods to Ethan and motions back inside the room. “It’s your turn.” He looks at me, explaining, “We’re playing Kings. My big brother is about to get owned.”
“A drinking game before the wedding,” I say, and let out a little chuckle. “Sounds like a prudent choice.”
“Be there in a minute.” Ethan smiles at his brother’s retreating form before turning back to me, and we both drop the grins, putting our game faces back on.
“Did you at least write something?” I ask. “You’re not going to try to wing it, are you? That never goes well. No one is ever as funny off the cuff as they think they are, especially you.”
“Especially me?” Although Ethan is the portrait of charisma around nearly every other human, with me he’s a robot. Right now his face is so controlled, so comfortably blank, that I can’t tell whether I’ve genuinely offended him or he’s baiting me into saying something worse.
“I’m not even sure if you could be funny . . .” I falter, but we both know I’m committed to this horrific rim shot: “. . . on the cuff.”
A dark eyebrow twitches. He has successfully baited me.
“Okay,” I growl, “just make sure your toast doesn’t suck.” I glance down the hall, and then remember the other bit of business I had with him. “And I assume you checked with the kitchen to make sure you don’t have to eat the buffet for dinner? Otherwise I can do it when I’m down there.”
He drops the sarcastic grin and replaces it with something resembling surprise. “That’s pretty considerate. No, I hadn’t asked for an alternative.”
“It was Ami’s idea, not mine,” I clarify. “She’s the one who cares about your aversion to sharing food.”
“I don’t have a problem sharing food,” he explains, “it’s that buffets are literal cesspools of bacteria.”
“I really hope you bring that level of poetry and insight to your speech.”
He steps back, reaching for the door. “Tell Ami my toast is hilarious, and not at all dickish.”
I want to say something sassy, but the only coherent thought that comes to mind is how insulting it is that eyelashes like his were wasted on Satan’s Errand Boy, so I just give a perfunctory nod and turn down the hall.
It’s all I can do to not adjust the skirt while I walk. I could be paranoid, but I think I feel his critical eyes on the tight sheen of my dress the entire way to the elevators.
• • •
THE HOTEL STAFF HAVE REALLY taken Ami’s Christmas-in-January theme and run with it. Thankfully, instead of red velvet Santas and stuffed reindeer, the center aisle is lined with fake snow. Even though it’s easily seventy-five degrees in here, the reminder of the wet, slushy snow outside makes the entire room feel cold and drafty. The altar is decorated with white flowers and holly berries, miniature pine wreaths are hung from the back of each chair, and tiny white lights twinkle from inside the branches. In truth, it’s all very lovely, but even from the back where we’ve lined up, I can see the little placards attached to each chair encouraging guests to Trust Finley Bridal for your special day.