Updated Feb 23, 2026 • ~15 min read
POV: Valencia
Wedding planning with a billionaire fiancé turns out to be simultaneously easier and more complicated than anything Valencia ever imagined.
Easier because the budget is limitless, the vendors return calls within the hour, and nobody flinches at the numbers. No spreadsheet anxiety. No “can we afford the good caterer or just the okay one” debates at midnight. Professional planners materialize with binders and swatches and a calm authority that makes Valencia feel like all she has to do is point at things she loves.
Complicated because absolutely everyone has opinions.
The planner has opinions about timing. Business associates have opinions about the guest list. Society columns already have opinions about what kind of wedding a St. Clair should host. And Genevieve — Genevieve has opinions about all of it, delivered with that particular brand of careful suggestion that manages to sound like correction.
Valencia and Dominic talk about it early, one night after Jules is in bed, sitting at the kitchen island with tea going cold between them and a stack of venue brochures they haven’t touched.
“This is our wedding,” Dominic says. He isn’t asking.
“Ours,” Valencia agrees. “Not society’s. Not your mother’s.”
“Ours. Meaningful over extravagant. Intimate over impressive.”
Valencia covers his hand with hers. “Say that again when your mother sends the third set of notes on the invitation font.”
He laughs, low and a little exhausted. “God help us.”
They decide on a hundred and fifty guests — a number that feels both intentional and manageable. Valencia’s family flying in from the Philippines. Dominic’s small, complicated family: his mother, a few cousins he actually likes. Close friends — Ethan and Maria, Dr. Huang from Jules’s speech therapy practice, Mrs. Chen who has been part of their household long enough to feel like extended family. Business associates who have been genuinely present, not just strategically proximate. A handful of society figures who have treated them with actual warmth rather than polite performance.
People who matter. Only people who matter.
Jules’s involvement begins the moment Valencia says the word “wedding” within his earshot, which is approximately forty-eight hours after the engagement. He materializes in the kitchen one Saturday morning wearing his dinosaur pajamas and an expression of absolute seriousness.
“I’m going to be the ring bearer,” he announces. Not a question. A declaration of fact.
“You are,” Dominic confirms.
Jules processes this. “I get to carry the rings?”
“On a pillow.”
“And walk down the aisle?”
“Right down the middle.”
“And wear a SUIT?” The seriousness dissolves entirely, replaced by the kind of joy that only small children can generate at full volume. “I get to wear a SUIT! Like Dad! I’ll be so fancy!”
From that point forward, Jules has opinions on everything. His approach to wedding planning is enthusiastic, digressive, and completely without filter.
Cake: “Chocolate. Wait — vanilla. No, BOTH. Mom, can we do layers? Can the layers be different? Can there be dinosaurs on it?” (Valencia gently redirects the dinosaur conversation but files away the layered cake idea immediately, because it is in fact a good idea.)
Flowers: “Purple! Because you love purple, Mom! Purple everywhere! And maybe some — do they make dinosaur-shaped flowers?” (They do not. They explain this. Jules accepts it stoically.)
Music: “Can we dance? At the party part, can everyone dance? I love dancing. Will there be a DJ? Dad, can there be a DJ?”
His enthusiasm transforms wedding planning from something that could easily become stressful into something that feels, most days, genuinely fun. When Valencia finds herself drowning in the details — seating charts, menu selections, the ongoing negotiation over whether the ceremony should run forty-five or sixty minutes — she thinks about Jules’s face when he talks about the suit, and everything recalibrates.
The venue takes longer to decide than almost anything else.
Valencia knows she wants somewhere meaningful. Not a hotel ballroom, however beautiful. Not the kind of blank-slate event space that could be anyone’s wedding. She wants a place that already has something in it — history, or nature, or some quality that makes it feel chosen rather than merely booked.
Dominic brings up the botanical gardens one evening, almost offhandedly, the way he sometimes surfaces information he has been quietly holding onto for a while.
“Our first real date,” he says. “The gallery opening near the gardens. We walked through afterward. You stood under that arch of climbing roses and said they were beautiful.”
Valencia barely remembers — that evening feels like it belongs to a different version of their lives, one that predates all the complicated parts. But Dominic remembered. He kept the detail somewhere careful, saved it, brought it back now.
Of course he did.
They visit the botanical gardens on a Tuesday morning, just the two of them, before the city has properly woken up. Spring is happening in every direction — wisteria draping over iron archways, roses beginning to open in the formal garden, the smell of wet earth and flowers so thick it feels like something you could hold. They walk through slowly, Valencia with her hand tucked into the crook of Dominic’s arm, and she knows before they reach the rose garden. She knows before she sees the conservatory glowing through the trees, its glass walls catching the morning light.
“Here,” she says, stopping in the middle of the path. “This is it.”
Dominic looks at her the way he sometimes does — like she has confirmed something he already believed. “Yes.”
Purple orchids for everywhere Valencia can see. The ceremony itself in the rose garden, chairs arranged on the grass between the blooms. The reception in the conservatory, where the glass roof would fill the room with a particular quality of light — gold in the afternoon, silver and intimate as the evening came on. Intimate. Beautiful. Unmistakably theirs.
Genevieve arrives for a wedding planning meeting six weeks into the process, invited carefully by Dominic, accepted reluctantly by Valencia, who has gotten very good at reading the difference between Genevieve’s genuine warmth and her performed warmth.
She looks around the penthouse with that particular expression of hers — assessing, cataloguing — and settles herself in the chair that Valencia privately thinks of as the Genevieve chair because Genevieve always gravitates toward it, as though claiming territory.
“The botanical gardens,” Genevieve says, reviewing the venue materials. There is a pause. “They’re appropriate. Not traditional, perhaps. But appropriate.”
“We’re not traditional people,” Dominic says.
“Clearly.” Genevieve sets down the papers and looks at Valencia with the directness that Valencia has learned to respect even when it still makes her want to sit up straighter. “The dress. You’ll need something significant. Designer, obviously. I can make recommendations.”
“I have a stylist—”
“I’m sure you do.” And here something shifts in Genevieve’s expression — some calculation completed, some decision made. “But St. Clair brides have standards that require context. I know these houses. I know what photographs well and what reads as thoughtless. Let me help. Please.”
It’s the “please” that does it. Genevieve asking instead of directing. The word landing with unexpected weight because it is so clearly not her default.
“Okay,” Valencia says. “I’d appreciate recommendations. Thank you.”
Something in Genevieve’s face softens — not much, but enough. “Good. And Jules will need proper ring bearer attire. I know an excellent children’s tailor on the Upper East Side. She’s very patient with boys who have strong opinions about pockets.”
“He does have strong opinions about pockets,” Valencia agrees.
“Then I’ll make the appointment.” Genevieve pauses. “I’ll send you the details.”
It is progress. Not a sea change, not a sudden warmth that erases eighteen months of complicated history. But progress — real, earned, grudging on both sides and genuine on both sides.
The six months of planning pass the way good periods of life tend to pass: quickly and full, the days accumulating into something you only notice when you look back.
Life keeps happening alongside the planning. Dominic’s work stays balanced — home by six most evenings, present at dinner, weekends protected. The structural changes that felt precarious when they first made them have settled into permanence, the way new habits do when people actually mean them. Family dinners every night, the kitchen smelling of whatever they’re making, Jules narrating the day in that particular free-associative style of his that starts with something that happened at school and ends, somehow, at dinosaurs.
Jules starts first grade in September, three months before the wedding. Both Valencia and Dominic take him on the first day — Jules in his new backpack, holding a hand on each side, walking into the school building between them with the solemnity of someone beginning a significant mission. They both collect him at the end of the day and listen to the full debrief: his teacher’s name, the names of three potential friends, what was for lunch, whether the classroom had a reading corner (it did, and it had beanbag chairs, which Jules considers a very good sign).
Parent-teacher conferences, school art projects, reading logs — they show up for all of it. Together. It feels less like something they have arranged and more like something they have always known how to do.
Their weekend park visits continue. The same bench, the same playground, the same paths. The spot where Jules fell and said “Mama” for the first time. The spot where Dominic proposed, down on one knee with the purple orchids. Their place, accumulating meaning the way places do when the same people keep returning to them.
Date nights happen, too — Mrs. Chen staying with Jules while Dominic takes Valencia to dinner, or a Broadway show, or just a long walk along the waterfront that turns into two hours without either of them noticing. Keeping something alive between them that is separate from parenting, separate from planning, just the two of them returning to each other in the middle of everything else.
Three months before the wedding, the dress.
The shopping party is Valencia, Maria, her mother Ana — who has flown in early for a week, filling the guest room with the smell of the lotion she has used Valencia’s entire life — and, somewhat to everyone’s surprise including Genevieve’s own, Genevieve herself. It was Dominic’s quiet suggestion and Genevieve’s quiet acceptance, and Valencia decided it was worth trying.
The bridal salon is overwhelming in the way that these places always are: white and hushed and full of possibility, the dresses arranged like a museum of other women’s best days. Valencia tries on fifteen gowns. She can feel everyone being encouraging and patient while she stands in dress after dress that is beautiful and not quite right, something slightly off in each one — too structured, too romantic, too much, not quite enough.
Then the consultant brings out the sixteenth.
Elegant A-line. Lace that feels considered rather than decorative, tracing the neckline and gathering at the hem. Sophisticated and romantic at once, the way Valencia has always tried to be when she gets it right. She steps into it, and the consultant does up the buttons, and Valencia looks in the mirror and something in her chest just — releases.
She steps out to where the others are waiting.
Maria makes a sound she has apparently been saving for this exact moment. “That’s it. That is THE dress. Valencia, that is the dress.”
Ana, who has been quietly composed through most of the morning because Ana has always been quietly composed, begins to cry. “Anak,” she says softly. “You look beautiful. You look like yourself.”
Genevieve is quiet.
The quiet lasts long enough that Valencia glances at her, uncertain, trying to read the expression on that carefully controlled face.
Then Genevieve says: “That’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” A pause. “You look like a St. Clair bride.”
It is approval. Genuine, considered, without qualification. From Genevieve, that is a great deal.
“Thank you,” Valencia says. And then, because it needs to be said: “For being here. For trying. For — accepting this.”
Genevieve’s composure shifts in a way Valencia has never seen it shift. Not breaking, exactly, but becoming something less constructed. “You make my son happy,” she says quietly. “You love my grandson. You have been good for them, both of them, and I was wrong to judge you the way I did at the beginning. I’m sorry.”
The apology falls into the room and stays there.
Valencia’s throat goes tight. “Thank you. That means more than you know.”
“You’re family now. Almost officially.” Genevieve straightens, reassembling herself. “I should have acted like it sooner.”
They hug — awkward, both of them slightly unsure of the logistics, the embrace lasting exactly as long as it needs to and no longer. But genuine. Both of them meaning it.
Ana reaches out and squeezes Valencia’s hand. Maria is openly crying and not bothering to pretend otherwise.
Two months before the wedding, Jules climbs into Valencia’s lap after dinner — he is almost too big for this but still insists, and Valencia will not be the one to tell him otherwise — and asks, with the particular gravity he uses for important questions: “After you marry Dad, will you be my mom legally? Like on paper and everything?”
Valencia and Dominic exchange a look over Jules’s head. They have talked about this. The adoption. Making it official. Both of them circling the conversation for months, not out of uncertainty but out of wanting to do it right, wanting Jules to be part of it from the beginning.
“Would you want that?” Valencia asks, keeping her voice level, giving him space to answer honestly. “For me to adopt you legally?”
Jules twists to look at her. “YES. Then you’re my mom FOREVER and no one can ever say you’re not. Because sometimes kids at school ask about my mom and I say you’re my mom and I want there to be a paper that says it too.”
Valencia holds him tighter. “Then yes. After the wedding, we’ll start the adoption process. I’ll officially become your mom. On paper and everything.”
Jules cheers — the full-body, volume-at-maximum cheer that is his default setting for the best news — and throws his arms around her. “BEST MOM EVER!”
Over his head, Dominic catches Valencia’s eye. He mouths: “Thank you.” She shakes her head — no thanks required, this is exactly where she is supposed to be — and holds their son.
One month out, the details come together the way they always do at the end of long planning: all at once, in a rush, each confirmation arriving and clicking into place. Flowers ordered, caterer confirmed, the string quartet selected for the ceremony and the band booked for the reception. Photographer and videographer both briefed. Invitations sent weeks ago; responses almost fully returned.
Everything is ready.
Valencia stands at the kitchen counter one evening with the wedding binder open in front of her — three months of decisions, reduced now to a single checklist with almost nothing left unchecked — and feels the full weight of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow pressing pleasantly against her chest.
“You okay?” Dominic appears beside her, his hand finding the small of her back.
“More than okay. I’m excited and nervous and happy and a little overwhelmed, all at once.” She turns to look at him. “Is that normal?”
“I think that’s exactly what it’s supposed to feel like.”
“No second thoughts?”
He looks at her steadily. “Not even close. Not a shadow of one. Can’t wait to marry you.”
“Good.” He presses a kiss to her temple. “Because you’re stuck with me now.”
“Forever stuck,” Valencia agrees, turning into him properly. “Best kind of stuck.”
The night before the wedding, they observe the tradition: Valencia staying with Maria in Brooklyn, Dominic and Jules at the penthouse, the enforced separation that is supposed to build anticipation and mostly just builds restlessness.
Maria’s guest room is comfortable and pretty and not Valencia’s bed, and Valencia lies awake in the dark listening to Brooklyn outside — a distant siren, music from somewhere, the irregular percussion of the city at night — and cannot make her mind go quiet.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow she marries Dominic St. Clair. Tomorrow she officially becomes Mrs. Dominic St. Clair, and they begin making legal all the things that have already been true for a long time in every way that matters.
Her phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Dominic: Can’t sleep. Missing you. Tomorrow can’t come fast enough.
She smiles at the ceiling before she types back: Miss you too. See you at the altar.
I’ll be the one crying.
Me too. Happy tears.
The happiest. I love you.
I love you too. Future husband.
Future wife. Forever.
She sets the phone down. She is still smiling. The city is still making its sounds outside the window, and somewhere across the East River Dominic St. Clair is awake in their bed missing her, and Jules is asleep in his dinosaur pajamas, and tomorrow all of it becomes official.
Valencia closes her eyes.
She dreams about purple orchids. About a white dress and a rose garden and Dominic’s face when he sees her walking toward him. About Jules in his tiny tuxedo, so carefully carrying the rings, looking up at his father from the end of the aisle with pure uncomplicated joy.
She dreams about “I do,” and what comes after.
She dreams, for the first time in a long time, without any worry at all.
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