Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? by Melissa Senate Page A

matron of honor. Eloise, as the Modern Bride, if you have a gay male friend, you may substitute him. Note: Veil and other accessories to be chosen as well.
    Rings: Please have your groom available for this shoot.
    Caterer: Please have groom available.
    Registry: Please have older family member available.
    Honeymoon: Modern Bride and Classic Bride only.
    Invitations: Personal guest list of no more than fifty people (advertisers will be invited, of course) by February 1.
    Thump head on desk. Harder, this time. Repeat.
    I couldn’t bear to read further.
    When I lifted my head, an addendum had been added to my in-box.
     
    Wow Weddings Memorandum
From: Astrid O’Connor
To: To the Modern Bride and the Classic Bride
Re: Sibling Photo Shoot
    Please note that as Devlin is going on vacation the last week of January, your sibling-photo shoots have been moved up to Monday. If your siblings cannot attend, please hire the appropriate stand-ins, reimbursable at WowWeddings ’s standard, not industry standard.—AO
    Translation: If you hire someone really good-looking, you’ll have to pay the difference between the averagely good-looking models we use and the gorgeous models other magazines shell out big bucks for.
     
    Mini Flirt Night Round Table Discussion 1, 000, 000: Which Fake Father and Brother Look Most Like Eloise?
    During our lunch hour on Friday, Jane and Amanda and I headed to Perfect People, the model agency Wow used. We sat in the reception area, poring over huge leather binders filled with eight-by-ten glossies of men, men and more men. There were gorgeous men. Average men. Ugly men. Tall, short, medium. With hair. Without. With potbellies. Without. (There was even a book labeled Ugly Men Without Hair and Potbellies. According to the Perfect People associate who handed us the books, ugly men without hair and potbellies were in demand for “reality-based” commercials and “before” shots for print ads.)
    I asked for the Men With Urban Appeal book. Jane, Amanda and I were each handed a stack of four. There were six books of men over thirty-five with urban appeal, and six under thirty-five. We also received the celebrity look-alike book. Wow Weddings had been suedthree times by celebrities who claimed the magazine had hired models of their likeness to sell products they wouldn’t endorse. Wow Weddings won each time and continued the practice.
    Jane was flipping through the look-alike book. “Oohla-la—check out Ewan McGregorly!” She slid out the photo and held it up. A label along the border indicated that his name was indeed Ewan McGregorly. The back of the photo listed his vital stats and real name: Harold Flubman. Jane laughed. “Ewan looks like he could be your brother, Eloise.” She kissed the photo. “Oooh, he’s so hot!”
    “Ewan or the model?” Amanda asked.
    Jane blew another kiss at Ewan. “Both.”
    “Well, he isn’t supposed to be hot,” I pointed out. “He’s supposed to be my brother.”
    “Your brother is hot,” Jane said.
    “Jerks aren’t hot,” I countered. “They’re just jerks.”
    Jane closed the book and sat down on the sofa next to me. “What happened between you and your brother, anyway?”
    I bit my lip, stared at the ceiling, kicked my toe against the beige carpet.
    “Does it have something to do with your grandmother and her stroke last year?” Amanda asked.
    I bit my lip and fidgeted.
    “Eloise, I don’t know what happened between you and Emmett,” Jane said. “You never told me. I just know that when your grandmother was recovering from the stroke in the hospital, he never came to see her. I also know that you haven’t spoken to him since. And that’s way too long.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
    “Honey, you’re at a modeling agency to hire a stand-inbrother for a photo shoot of your wedding plans,” Jane said. “But you have a brother.”
    “Where is he, then?” I asked. “I also have a father, but I haven’t seen him in