Post #23: The Celebrity Way

“So what are you doing in August?” Stacy asked me in early July (2017).

“Nothing much,” I replied, “until Dad and I head to Telluride at the end of the month. Why are you asking?”

I had hoped that Stacy’s answer was considering some new plans to come to the United States with almost one-year old Cooper. But that was not the case.

“We’re thinking about getting married then,” Stacy informed me. “In Fiji, so maybe you and dad would like to come.”

That was pretty short notice. And Jesse and I had just returned from Fiji less than a month ago, where we had spent a delightful week with Stacy, Jason and adorable grandson Cooper at a resort hotel where Jesse had been on the faculty of a hand surgery course. Admittedly, I was less than enthusiastic about returning to faraway Fiji so soon, and additionally incur the airfare expense for two of us, unsupported by any meeting for Jesse.

But why now, and what were the details?

“Jason finally got the paperwork approved to get married in Fiji,” Stacy told me. They had been working on this for a while. As a non-Fijian, Jason had to obtain official documentation from his country of citizenship, Australia, to submit to Fiji authorities attesting to his single status. Unfortunately, Jason had not yet received the authorization in advance of our June trip so Stacy could not coordinate a wedding with our prior visit. But I was aware that Stacy and Jason had been formulating ideas about getting married for the past several months. Several months back they had looked at wedding bands at a Tiffany’s store at the Sydney airport, and selected their preferences. When Stacy came with Cooper to California in February, I went with her to Tiffany’s in Santa Monica where she finalized the wedding band purchase.

Celebrating the wedding ring purchase at Tiffany's, Santa Monica, California

Not exactly embracing Stacy's nuptial news, I pondered out loud, “Well, that’s fairly soon after our last visit,”

“I’m thinking about Sunday, August 13,” Stacy continued, “and I already started making some inquiries with The Pearl Resort in Pacific Harbor.”

I was already familiar with The Pearl, one of the larger beach resorts within reasonable driving distance from Stacy’s home in Suva. But admittedly, I was not all that impressed by their property which appeared to need some sprucing up. Diplomatically, I kept that observation to myself.

“We can use their small bistro by the beach,” Stacy continued, “and we just have to guarantee 20 guests.”

“Who else would be coming?” I asked.

“Maybe some of Jason’s family from Australia. And we’ll ask our close friends in Suva,” said Stacy. “And you can tell any of our family that they are welcome to come.”

“Really? Seriously?” I reacted. “I’ll tell them but it’s pretty short notice for such a long trip. And I even need to discuss with dad about all this.”

“So while you’re thinking about it," continued Stacy, "keep this in mind too. You can come for two celebrations, as we plan to have a big party for Cooper’s first birthday on August 15. In Fiji a first birthday is a very big deal.”

I recognized the first birthday significance for life in a third world country where historically many children may not have survived through their first year. And I appreciated that Stacy wanted to embrace the Fijian cultural importance of an infant’s first birthday.

So attending two celebrations for the airfare price of one was starting to make some economical sense for this rather impromptu visit. And of course I discussed the situation with Jesse. His reaction was certainly more clear-cut than mine, which had been initially focusing on financial and logistical obstacles.

“If our daughter is getting married,” Jesse told me, “we should be there.” That settled that. I quickly started planning our Fiji return for the two joyous celebrations. And as I explained the arrangement to family and friends, I observed jocularly, “Stacy and Jason are living their lives the celebrity way, baby first, marriage to follow.”

As Stacy and I continued to communicate about the plans, I asked, “So what will you wear at your wedding?”

“There’s not much to buy around here but I saw a dress on the J. Crew website that I like,” Stacy told me. “I’ll send you the link, and maybe you can order it for me.”

While the J. Crew dress looked adequate to me, I thought there might be better choices. I still ordered Stacy's dress selection but also offered to do some more wedding dress searching. And I had some sense of what Stacy had in mind. But I am old school when it comes to clothes shopping and prefer to see and touch the options in person. So I headed to a store that always has a large variety of reasonably priced, special occasion dresses, Lord & Taylor’s. I reviewed all the white and cream colored dresses, and brought a selection of possibilities into the dressing room. Since my body type bore some similarity to Stacy’s, I tried them on for better perspective. Then I took photos of dresses with wedding potential, on hangers and on my body, and emailed them to Stacy for her consideration.

Beryl is remotely wedding dress shopping for Stacy at Lord & Taylor's

So when Stacy indicated her preference for the form-fitting, knee-length, cream-colored dress, I felt obligated to offer full disclosure, hoping that would not dissuade her from her initial preference.

“Just so you know, the design label of that dress is Ivanka Trump,” I admitted to my politically liberal daughter.” But apparently for a wedding, fashion “trumped” politics, and Stacy still wanted me to purchase the Ivanka design.

Upon bringing the selected dress home, I reviewed the shoe possibilities in my extensive personal collection, as Stacy and I both wear size 8. I found a pair of cream-colored, satin, open-toed pumps with moderate heels that coordinated well, and sent a photo to Stacy.

“The shoes look OK,” Stacy replied, “but since we will be on the beach, it would be good to have some flat sandals. Maybe like the ones you were wearing in the dress photos."

I am a generous mother but I was not particularly inclined to lend a currently favorite and relatively expensive pair of my summer shoe wear collection.

“Well, I’ll see what I can find for you,” I told Stacy. Returning to Lord & Taylor’s to check out their shoe department, I found a pair of dressy, gold & cream-colored sandals that looked ideal for the selected dress. And rightly so, as the label was also Ivanka Trump. This time I just sent Stacy a photo of the sandals and didn’t mention their design origin. Stacy liked them, so I didn’t want politics to nix what was turning out to be a very fashionable wedding outfit for an intimate beach wedding.

I recognized how relatively inexpensive the myriad of dresses are in Lord & Taylor’s dress department, especially in comparison to the lacy couture gowns that I eyed in Nordstrom’s bridal department. Their price tags in the thousands of dollars were mind-boggling, as much as our business class tickets to Fiji. So I suppose I would have paid for a fancy bridal gown if that’s what Stacy wanted. But now I was glad we didn’t have to spend big bucks on a one-shot gown.

Way back when, I had assumed that we would host our daughter’s marriage with a large dinner-dance wedding celebration for family and friends complete with fancy bridal gown. Those notions dimmed as Stacy moved through her young adulthood with no marriage plans insight. Although admittedly that was my dream, not Stacy’s. Also quite a while back, I had directly asked Stacy what she might envision for a possible wedding setting.

“Six people on a beach,” was her brief and immediate response. Well, years later, Stacy’s wedding ideal was developing a lot closer to her longtime preference than to mine, as indeed it should be.

My mother had worn a beautiful, floor-length, undoubtedly expensive, bridal gown at her 1947 wedding. However, it was not a one-shot gown because it was worn three more times, by two of my father’s sisters and a cousin

Beryl's mother Rita in her beautiful gown at her 1947 wedding to Mort

When I became engaged and planned a 1971 wedding, I went gown shopping with my mother at Bonwit Teller’s bridal department. I chose an ornate fairy-tale gown which surprised my mother, a fashionista, because she was used to seeing me dress hippie style in bell bottom jeans or mini-skirts most of the time. The dress cost $300 which was probably six times more than any dress I had ever worn. I was not interested in a wedding cap with gauzy veil but was captivated by a coordinating lacy mantilla veil. That cost $75. My mother did not balk. I don’t know what she said to my father.

Beryl and Jesse at their 1971 wedding

And as a 1970’s bride, I even had to shorten the time in my wedding gown, because the custom was to change at the end of the night into a going away outfit. I wore this cute tuxedo-style hot pants outfit, which had many re-wearings post wedding and eventually got recycled 12 years later into a Count Dracula Halloween costume for our then five year-old son.

Beryl's hot-pants wedding going-away outfit recycled into Count Dracula costume for her son Ben

As it turned out, my wedding gown was not a one-shot wonder either. Being practical-minded, both my sister Carol and Jesse’s sister Vivian wore my personally selected bridal gown. However, years later I heard from Carol that she regretted wearing my gown just so our parents wouldn’t have to spring for another expensive one-shot dress, that my choice was not her taste, and that she wished she had worn a gown of her own choosing. So much for practicality.

So I had already ordered and received the J. Crew shift dress that had caught Stacy’s interest. And I bought the preferred Lord & Taylor’s dress, to which of course I was partial.

“I’ll bring them both,” I told Stacy, trying to be diplomatic about the dress preference. “You’ll try them both on, and then decide which you want to wear. Oh, and I have another idea,” I hesitantly suggested, “Maybe you would like to wear my mantilla veil at your wedding ceremony. It’s certainly easy enough to pack and you can decide when you see it.”

“Sure, bring it, and I’ll see how it looks,” Stacy answered, more agreeably than I had anticipated. I loved my idea for its generational connection, and really hoped it would work out.

So Stacy would have a dress to wear. But what about the rest of the family? Stacy found a cute locally-made, Fiji-style shirt for infant Cooper and arranged to have a specially-created matching shirt for the groom. Jesse looked in his closet and located an Indian-style white cotton shirt, actually given to him when he lectured in India, and deemed it appropriate for a Fiji beach wedding.

While dress shopping for Stacy at Lord & Taylor’s, I had noticed a dress that I particularly liked for myself and bought that too, thinking it might be a contender for mother-of-the-bride dress. However it was somewhat similar in style to the dress I had purchased for Stacy so not completely sure about it. However soon after, I was shopping at a boutique in Telluride and noticed that a long silk, flowered summer dress that I had admired a few months back had been put on sale from an original off-putting $700 price tag to a bargain $100. I certainly had to buy that too. I decided to bring both dresses to Fiji and ask if Stacy had a preference for my attire.

Since both the dress and shoes I had purchased for Stacy had some gold trim, I was inspired me to bring some gold jewelry that would accessorize well with the outfit. Stacy usually wears silver jewelry but her engagement ring and wedding band are gold. I chose to bring a tricolor gold choker that Jesse had ambitiously bought for me years ago in Venezuela and chunky gold hoop earrings that had belonged to my mother.

Not surprisingly, the only relatives coming internationally to Fiji on short notice were me and Jesse and Jason’s mother Lyn from Australia. I arranged to fly a couple days ahead of Jesse in case I might be of any assistance in advance of the wedding, and certainly to bring the wedding attire. As usual, I was portaging plenty more items, including birthday gifts for Cooper, some from relatives, and a random assortment of Stacy’s Amazon orders sent to our house for Fiji transport: child life jacket, baby bottles, kid leash (in anticipation of cruise trip in the fall), shark and dinosaur pj's, Haviana flip flops, halogen light bulb, 2 packs of printer ink, and baby sign language kit.

I was glad to spend the first day at their house to present all the purchases and gifts. I was particularly pleased that my bridal selections for Stacy were all fully and appreciatively approved. That made me so happy to be making a significant contribution to Stacy’s long-distance wedding in successfully choosing her bridal attire, including veil and jewelry. And Stacy chose mine, preferring the flowered silk dress, to which I added a wide brimmed sunhat, knowing that it would optimally tame my unavoidably frizzing hair in the Fiji humidity.

And of course Nana was excited to spend up-close and personal time with adorable grandson Cooper, the bonus to returning so soon to Fiji after our trip two months prior.

Nana playing with grandson Cooper at his Fiji home

Staying initially at their house gave me the opportunity to play and interact a lot with Cooper, especially since Jason’s mother would arrive the next day, replacing me as their house guest. So I moved down the road for a night to the familiar and comfortable Grand Pacific Hotel.

By the following day we moved our whole wedding posse to The Pearl Resort, where Jesse joined us directly from the airport. This time Stacy had booked us rooms in the new section which was very attractive. The weather was cloudy and blustery but warm and at least not raining. Well this was winter in Fiji. While Stacy was busy, Nana and Papa gladly played with Cooper at the beach, mainly digging in the sand.

We had a small family pre-nuptial dinner at The Pearl that Saturday night, after which the jet-lagged parents of the bride retired early. The wedding was planned for Sunday afternoon at The Pearl’s bistro located on a scenic beachfront point of the property. Most of Stacy and Jason’s local friends, fulfilling their 20 guest minimum, were coming for the day from Suva.

By early morning the hotel staff were already creating a festive, flower-adorned entrance along the walkway to the bistro.

A set-up for a lovely outdoor ceremony with beach and ocean backdrop was similarly decorated with colorful flowers and wedding canopy. The bistro’s interior was beautifully arranged with attractively coordinated turquoise furnishings and festive table settings with more tropical flowers.

Admittedly, the entire wedding far exceeded my expectations for this quickly planned event at a resort of convenience. With her hair done at the hotel salon, Stacy looked glowing in her bridal attire, capped with the mantilla veil for the ceremony.

Cooper looked adorable wearing the matching Fiji shirt with his dad.

And Jesse and I had a perfect vibe for an intimate beach wedding.

In an emotional entree, Jesse walked Stacy down the short aisle to the waiting groom. A local Fijian official competently and pleasantly officiated the non-denominational proceedings, while Jesse managed to hold Cooper on his lap (usually Nana’s job but I was too dressed up to be mussed by an infant).

There were all the other usual parts to a wedding: lots of lovely photos, flowing champagne, many toasts, well-heeled guests, and ample food and drink. The always child-friendly Fijian staff helpfully and willingly entertained Cooper as needed throughout until he obligingly slumbered in his stroller.

With cooperating weather, it was a most delightful afternoon.

Stacy hadn’t asked for any wedding financial support, but as parents of the bride, we happily offered to cover the bill. And compared to the cost of many American weddings, we got off easy, even with our expensive airfare. Of course, we would need to keep spending, for many future Fiji visits to our very long-distance family.

But we weren’t finished this trip’s Fiji celebrating, only Part 1, the wedding. Coming up, Part 2, Cooper’s first birthday celebration.