Updated Apr 16, 2026 • ~9 min read
Chapter 26: Wedding Planning
Matthias
Matthias knew his mother would have opinions about the wedding—he’s been braced for it since the moment he and Luna got engaged—but he somehow underestimated the sheer force of Helene Wolfe’s determination to turn their intimate backyard ceremony into a society event complete with three hundred guests and an orchestra and apparently a receiving line that would take hours.
“Absolutely not,” Matthias says for the third time in this conversation, watching his mother’s expression tighten with displeasure that her son is refusing to see reason. “Mother, we’ve been clear. Small wedding. Our people. Our way.”
“Matthias, you’re a Wolfe,” Helene says with the kind of patient condescension usually reserved for explaining basic concepts to children. “People expect a certain level of ceremony. Your business associates, our family’s social circle, the foundations and charities we support—they all expect to be invited to your wedding.”
“Then they’ll be disappointed,” Matthias says firmly. “Because the only people getting invited are the ones Luna and I actually want there. People we love. People who’ve supported us. Not business networking disguised as celebration.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Helene says, switching tactics to gentle reproach. “A small wedding reflects poorly on the family. People will think we don’t approve of Luna.”
“You didn’t approve of Luna,” Matthias reminds her pointedly. “You tried to pay her to leave me. So maybe let’s not pretend this is about family reputation when it’s actually about you wanting to control my wedding.”
Helene has the grace to look slightly ashamed at the reminder of her bribery attempt, and Matthias presses his advantage.
“Luna wants small and intimate,” Matthias continues. “Luna wants Carmen as her maid of honor and Greta as a bridesmaid and maybe twenty people total watching us get married in our own backyard. And since this is our wedding—mine and Luna’s—that’s what we’re doing. You can attend and be happy for us, or you can be difficult about it and risk not being invited at all. Your choice.”
“You wouldn’t exclude your own mother from your wedding,” Helene says, but there’s uncertainty in her voice.
“Try me,” Matthias says, and he means it—if his mother can’t respect Luna’s wishes for their wedding, if she’s going to make this process miserable with constant criticism and social climbing, then Matthias will get married without her present and sleep fine that night.
Helene is silent for a long moment, clearly recalibrating her strategy, and when she speaks again her tone is marginally more conciliatory.
“What does Luna want?” Helene asks. “Specifically. Perhaps we can find compromises that satisfy everyone.”
It’s not exactly gracious acceptance, but it’s closer to cooperation than Helene has offered before, so Matthias decides to engage with the question honestly.
“She wants our backyard,” Matthias says. “Spring ceremony, maybe forty people maximum, Sofia as flower girl, simple decorations, personalized vows, and a reception that’s more family dinner party than formal event. She wants it to feel intimate and meaningful, not performative.”
“And you agree with all of that?” Helene asks.
“Completely,” Matthias confirms. “Mother, I’ve been to plenty of society weddings. They’re beautiful and expensive and utterly soulless. I don’t want that. I want something real.”
“Fine,” Helene says with the air of someone making a grand sacrifice. “Small wedding. Your backyard. But I insist on being allowed to contribute something. Let me arrange the flowers at least. And the catering. I promise nothing too elaborate, just beautiful and well-executed.”
It’s more compromise than Matthias expected, and since Luna hasn’t expressed strong opinions about flowers or food beyond “nothing too fancy,” he agrees to let his mother have those elements to plan, with the caveat that Luna has full veto power over anything too ostentatious.
The rest of wedding planning is surprisingly smooth—Carmen accepts the maid of honor position with enthusiastic tears and immediately starts planning a bachelorette party that makes Luna blush, Greta agrees to be a bridesmaid and offers to help coordinate logistics since she’s planned three children’s birthday parties and apparently those skills translate to small weddings, and Sofia takes her role as flower girl with deadly seriousness, insisting on practicing her walk daily and debating endlessly about which dress is princessy enough for such an important job.
“Daddy, can I have TWO flower girl dresses?” Sofia asks one evening while they’re having dinner. “One for the ceremony and one for the party after?”
“Absolutely not,” Luna says at the same time Matthias says “Of course,” and they look at each other across the table with exasperated amusement.
“One dress, Sofia,” Luna says firmly. “A beautiful dress that you love. But one.”
“But Mama—” Sofia starts to whine, and Matthias intervenes before they end up negotiating flower girl attire for an hour.
“How about this,” Matthias suggests. “One special dress for the wedding. But when you’re older and we have anniversaries to celebrate, you can have different fancy dresses for those. Deal?”
Sofia considers this compromise with the seriousness of a tiny lawyer evaluating contract terms, then nods. “Deal. But the wedding dress has to be VERY princess.”
“The most princess dress we can find,” Matthias promises, and Luna mouths “thank you” across the table because deflecting a three-year-old’s demands is an art form they’re both still learning.
Two months into planning, they hit their first real disagreement as a couple—not about the wedding itself but about the guest list, specifically whether to invite Luna’s parents who’ve been largely absent from her adult life and certainly weren’t supportive during her pregnancy or Sofia’s first years.
“I don’t want them there,” Luna says bluntly when Matthias suggests including them. “They didn’t care when I needed them. They don’t get to show up now that things are good and my life is stable.”
“Okay,” Matthias agrees immediately, because this is Luna’s choice to make, her family to include or exclude based on her own criteria.
“Really?” Luna asks, clearly expecting more pushback. “You’re not going to argue that family is important or they deserve another chance?”
“It’s your wedding too,” Matthias says. “If you don’t want them there, they’re not coming. Luna, I’ll support whatever you decide about your family. But I won’t push you to forgive people who hurt you just because convention says parents belong at weddings.”
“Thank you,” Luna says, and she looks relieved that Matthias isn’t making this complicated, isn’t forcing uncomfortable family reconciliations for the sake of appearances.
They settle on a final guest list of thirty-eight people—small enough to feel intimate, large enough to include everyone who actually matters. Carmen and her kids, Greta and her family, a few of Matthias’s close friends from college who’ve watched his journey from workaholic bachelor to devoted father, Luna’s coworkers who’ve become genuine friends, the daycare teachers who helped raise Sofia when Luna was doing it alone.
Helene, true to her word, arranges flowers that are beautiful without being ostentatious—spring blooms in soft colors that complement the backyard without overwhelming it—and books a caterer who specializes in family-style dining rather than formal plated service, creating the kind of warm, intimate meal that feels like celebration rather than obligation.
Sofia’s flower girl dress is chosen after approximately twelve shopping trips and endless debate, eventually settling on a pale pink creation with layers of tulle and embroidered flowers that makes Sofia look like a tiny princess and costs more than Matthias wants to admit—but seeing her face light up when she twirls in front of the mirror makes every dollar worth it.
“I look so beautiful, Daddy!” Sofia announces, and Matthias has to blink back tears because she does, she looks perfect, and in three months she’s going to walk down the aisle scattering flower petals while he marries her mother and they officially become a family in every legal sense.
Luna’s wedding dress is simpler than Sofia’s—chosen with Carmen on a girls’ day that Matthias is explicitly excluded from, shown to him only via Sofia’s terrible three-year-old photography that consists mostly of blurry images and thumbs—but from what he can tell it’s elegant and understated and perfectly Luna, which is all that matters.
One month before the wedding, Matthias arranges a final meeting with his attorney to update his will, add Luna as beneficiary on all his accounts, create trusts for Sofia and any future children—the practical legal details of joining his life to Luna’s in ways that go beyond romance to actual partnership and shared future.
“You’re really doing this,” Richard observes, reviewing the documents Matthias wants executed. “Getting married. Building a family. A year ago you were convinced you’d be a bachelor forever.”
“A year ago I didn’t know I had a daughter,” Matthias says. “Everything changed. I changed.”
“For the better,” Richard says, and it sounds like genuine observation rather than flattery. “You seem happier, Matthias. More grounded. Like you’ve found something that matters beyond work.”
“I have,” Matthias confirms. “Luna and Sofia—they’re everything. Work is what I do. They’re who I am.”
The week before the wedding is chaos—last-minute details and vendor confirmations and Sofia having a meltdown about her shoes (apparently the ones they bought don’t go with the dress anymore and they need NEW shoes immediately), and Matthias handles it all with surprising calm because compared to discovering you have a secret daughter and negotiating custody and falling in love all over again, wedding logistics are actually manageable.
The night before the wedding, tradition dictates that Matthias and Luna should sleep separately, but Sofia has other ideas, crawling into their bed at midnight and refusing to go back to her own room because “tomorrow is the wedding and we have to be together!”
“She’s not wrong,” Luna says, settling Sofia between them and giving up on tradition. “Tomorrow we’re officially family. Might as well start practicing now.”
Matthias falls asleep with his fiancée on one side and his daughter on the other, thinking about the ceremony tomorrow—the vows he’s written and rewritten a dozen times, the moment when he’ll slide a ring on Luna’s finger and promise her forever, the celebration with people they actually love instead of business obligations and social climbing.
Tomorrow he marries Luna Vega.
Tomorrow Sofia gets to be a flower girl in her princess dress.
Tomorrow their unconventional family becomes legally official.
And Matthias can’t wait.
For all of it.
Every moment.
Forever.
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