The wedding had originally been planned at The Alder Room, an elegant riverside restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows and a reputation for hosting beautiful ceremonies.
But three days before her big day, disaster struck like lightning. A burst pipe combined with heavy spring rains flooded the entire building.
The restaurant had to shut down immediately for emergency repairs, and every other decent venue in town was already booked solid.
It was peak wedding season, after all.
The few places that did have last-minute availability were demanding an outrageous “emergency booking” fee that even Gene and Lila, who usually threw money at Kara’s problems, refused to pay.
That’s when Kara and her mother turned their desperate eyes toward me. More specifically, they looked at my perfectly manicured backyard through the kitchen window.
Their eyes lit up like they had just discovered buried treasure.
“Oh my God, Dani!” Kara squealed. “It’s absolutely perfect! It’s like it was meant to be!”
Every instinct in my body screamed ‘no.’ I could feel trouble coming like storm clouds on the horizon. But they begged and pleaded with tears in their eyes.
Lila grabbed my hands and said, “You’d be saving us, honey. You’d be our hero.”
Meanwhile, Colin wrapped his arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Come on, babe. You’re such a lifesaver.”
Against every fiber of my better judgment, I finally nodded and agreed. But I had one absolutely non-negotiable condition that I made crystal clear to everyone in that room.
“No changes to my yard,” I said firmly, looking each of them directly in the eyes. “Not one single thing gets moved or altered. You can use the space, but everything stays exactly as it is.”
Every single one of them nodded eagerly and promised they understood completely.
Two days later, I came home from running errands at the grocery store and completely froze in my driveway.
My sanctuary was gone.
The white picket fence that I had painted board by board had been ripped clean out of the ground. My carefully tended flower beds were torn open like wounds, with roots and soil scattered everywhere.
The roses that I had planted in loving memory of my mother were butchered beyond recognition. Their stems had been hacked off and crammed into some makeshift arch like they were nothing more than cheap decorations from a craft store.
Heavy rental tables and folding chairs had been dragged across my once-perfect lawn, leaving deep trenches and muddy tire marks in the soft grass.
My beautiful wooden trellis, the one I had built with my own hands from reclaimed wood, was broken into pieces and tossed aside like garbage.
Kara stood right in the middle of all this chaos, holding a clipboard in one hand and sipping an iced coffee through a straw. She looked completely pleased with herself, like she had just finished redecorating her own bedroom.
“Don’t you just love it?” she chirped excitedly when she saw me standing there in shock. “It looks so much more open and spacious now! And using your roses for the wedding arch makes everything pop with color.”
At that point, I couldn’t even breathe properly.
My chest felt tight, like someone was squeezing my lungs.
“You destroyed everything,” I managed to whisper. “You promised me you wouldn’t change anything. You gave me your word.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically, like I was being completely ridiculous about the whole situation.
“Oh, please, Dani. It’s just flowers and some old wood,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Besides, it’s MY wedding day. This is supposed to be the most important day of my entire life.”
I turned desperately toward Colin, praying that my fiancé would finally stand up for me and defend what we had built together. Instead, he looked at me and actually smirked.
“Dani, you really need to calm down and stop being so dramatic,” he said with a laugh. “She can do whatever she wants to make her wedding perfect. Nobody else cares about your little hobby garden.”
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