Mrs. Richmond’s wedding gown was itchy, for one thing.

The kind of itchy that eclipses everything else.

And there was no way to get out of it.

And that was nobody’s fault but my own.

The problem was: I was marrying her son, Pearce—my college boyfriend and fellow math major—at long last. Pearce Richmond: a certified Perfect Man. He was ungettable, and I got him. He was unstoppable, and I stopped him. He was untamable, and I rode him into the sunset.

So to speak.

And then, in a burst of postengagement irrational exuberance, I’d agreed to wear his mother’s wedding dress at the ceremony. I’m sure the lace that was now strangling my neck had been the forefront of polyester technology when it was formulated thirty years ago . . . but now, after sitting so long in storage, it had disintegrated into a prickly-pear-cactus texture that would be giving me a full-body rash, guaranteed.

A rash. On my wedding day.

I could feel the microfibers boring into my skin.

And, yes—I did just say “neck.” This atrocity of a wedding gown had a dog-collar-like choker of lace, which attached to a bib of more lace, which attached to a sweetheart neckline that held the whole thing up. And by “whole thing,” I mean the loosest, puffiest, most sad-prom, princess-fantasy, pumpkin-skirted getup in history.

It was like a parody of a wedding gown.