Wedding Prep Quotes

I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas; we'd swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend.

We’d be safer with musket in a safe town than with an assault rifle in a “without rule of law” world. That may not be sexy, but it’s the truth.

We’re all college prep, so most of the hard work had to be done early enough to prove to colleges we’d be worth indebting ourselves forever to them.

Each of us was capable of real ferocity when it came to protecting what was ours. And Tatum Rivers was ours. We’d written it in blood.

Her teeth sank into my bottom lip and I wasn't even sure if the blood I could taste was mine or that of the men we'd just killed, and I didn't care. Because this kiss was more than just a kiss. It was an oath and a vow and a promise I intended to keep until death came and ripped me from this world kicking and screaming and cursing for the rest of time. I was her creature now. I was a man on his knees in the rain and a monster hiding in the dark and I was hers to command at will.

You did not do my homework assignment for me,” he said, grabbing the collage again and looking it over. “I had insomnia,” I said. “I needed a creative activity.” Marlboro Man looked at me, seemingly unsure of whether to kiss me, thank me…or just tickle me some more. I didn’t give him a chance. Instead I picked up the collage and took Marlboro Man on a tour so he’d be prepared for our appointment. “Here’s a pack of cigarettes,” I said. “Because I used to smoke in college.” “Uh-huh,” he answered. “I knew that.” “And here’s a glass of white wine,” I continued. “Because…I love white wine.” “Yes, I’ve noticed,” Marlboro Man answered. “But…won’t Father Johnson have a problem with that being on there?” “Nah…,” I said. “He’s Episcopalian.” “Got it,” he said. I continued with my collage orientation, pointing out the swatch of my favorite shade of turquoise…the pug…the ballet shoe…the Hershey’s Kiss. He watched and listened intently, prepping himself for Father Johnson’s upcoming grilling. Gradually the earliness of the morning and the cozy warmth of my bedroom got the better of us, and before we knew it we’d sunk into the irresistible softness of my bed, our arms and legs caught in a tangled maze. “I think I love you,” his raspy voice whispered, his lips nearly touching my ear. His arms wrapped even more tightly around my body, swallowing me almost completely.

Having been through prep with Flavius, Venia, and Octavia numerous times, it should just be an old routine to survive. But I haven’t anticipated the emotional ordeal that awaits me. At some point during the prep, each of them bursts into tears at least twice, and Octavia pretty much keeps up a running whimper throughout the morning. It turns out they really have become attached to me, and the idea of my returning to the arena has undone them. Combine that with the fact that by losing me they’ll be losing their ticket to all kinds of big social events, particularly my wedding, and the whole thing becomes unbearable. The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I’m the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying. It’s interesting, though, when I think of what Peeta said about the attendant on the train being unhappy about the victors having to fight again. About people in the Capitol not liking it. I still think all of that will be forgotten once the gong sounds, but it’s something of a revelation that those in the Capitol feel anything at all about us. They certainly don’t have a problem watching children murdered every year. But maybe they know too much about the victors, especially the ones who’ve been celebrities for ages, to forget we’re human beings. It’s more like watching your own friends die. More like the Games are for those of us in the districts. By the time Cinna shows up, I am irritable and exhausted from comforting the prep team, especially because their constant tears are reminding me of the ones undoubtedly being shed at home. Standing there in my thin robe with my stinging skin and heart, I know I can’t bear even one more look of regret. So the moment he walks in the door I snap, “I swear if you cry, I’ll kill you here and now.” Cinna just smiles. “Had a damp morning?” “You could wring me out,” I reply.

We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay’s for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie’s daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, “I’m gonna go have a baby. See you all later!” For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we’d spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He’d created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me. I’ll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I’ll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look. After we admired the baby together, I fell asleep, and Jep took his newborn daughter out to meet the family. He told me later he bawled like a baby. Later, when she went to the hospital nursery, Jep kept going over there to stare at her. I think he was in shock and overwhelmed and excited. Lily had a light creamy complexion and little pink rosebud lips, and she was born December 26, 2002. Despite the rough pregnancy, she was perfect. God answered our prayers, and now we were a family of three. We’d been married just a little over a year.

In years to come, people would look back on this time of wearing masks and social distancing, of missing people and enduring lockdowns, of the fear of the virus and the hope for an end to it and no doubt there would be a lot of mixed emotions about what we'd survived. But wasn't that the point? We had survived. And that was all that truly mattered.

I’ll fix it. I recently learned from an expert.” I reassured them and slipped off to call the nearest hardware store for supplies just as my cell rang. “Hey, Adrian. How’s it goin’?” “Busy with work, the usual.” He sounded tired. “How’s it going back home?” “Oh, y’know, the usual family bickering. I had no idea how much work went into one wedding; the prep is intense.” “Wait, what?!” He yelped. “Wedding? You’re getting married? That’s all a bit sudden!” “Oh, come on, Adrian!” I laughed. “Not me. I’m helping with my Mom’s work. Jeez, don’t marry me off so easily.” “You scared the crap outta me,” he grumbled awkwardly.

I didn't like the calm tone reminiscent of his composure at the library, nor was I comfortable with his blank expression. We had a crime scene without forensics, and a body without a medical examiner. If I didn't counter whatever fresh hell Edward was about to unleash, we’d also lose concrete evidence we had yet to procure. --Prepped for the Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

One thing the prep for the movie made me realize: Chris and I had gone through a lot in our short time on earth. We’d known war, we’d known the joys of birth--and the tremendous hurt of death. Hard times, defaults, large checks, big taxes, and fame. We’d run the gamut. And we’d been in love the whole time. The last month of his life was the best of our marriage. The year leading up to it was the best we’d ever had, outside of our first. We’d started on a high level and moved up. How many people can say that? I’m not saying the good times would have gone on forever. I’m sure there would have been difficulties and other trials, dark clouds. But to have had those moments of seemingly perfect love and happiness--I was truly blessed.

Ever since we’d found Wilson, his cousin’s calmness bothered me. I realized now I felt less unease with angry outbursts from grieving relatives, than I had with the slow, ticking time bomb of the quiet and collected. --Prepped for Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

a tea shop in Oxford, Freddie told Tessa about it. ‘If you’re in the Fifth and Sixth, you’re allowed to skate for half an hour before prep. And an hour at weekends.’ ‘Do you remember,’ said Tessa, ‘when we were living in Geneva, and we used to go skating on the lake?’ ‘Mama used to watch,’ said Freddie. ‘She used to sit in the café, drinking hot chocolate.’ They often talked about their mother; had decided to, mutually and silently, three years ago, the spring after they had left Italy, after they had been told that she had died during an acute asthmatic attack. That was how you kept someone alive. ‘We were staying in that funny little pension,’ said Freddie. ‘What was the landlady’s name? Madame . . . Madame . . .’ ‘Madame Depaul.’Tessa smiled. ‘We had toasted cheese for supper every night. Madame Depaul thought that was what English people liked to eat. In the morning, after breakfast, Mama used to put on her fur coat and we’d all go down to the lake.’ Tessa had inherited her mother’s fur coat. When it had first arrived from Italy, Christina’s scent had lingered. Tessa had put on the coat and closed her eyes and breathed in Mitsouko and had cried, her

They used to. Not so much anymore. Once Creed started acting out and being a dick, they realized it was better to separate us in their minds.” Miranda picks up her hotdog, ketchup dripping across the table, and takes a bite. Food tonight is pretty standard American fare: burgers (beef as well as vegetarian, black bean patties I believe), hot dogs (also meat and vegetarian options), salad, chips, cupcakes. Nothing overblown or extravagant like I expected. I sort of assumed we’d be having a stuffy dinner at one of the fancy restaurants in downtown Bornstead. This is better.

Mom, I think you've done enough experimenting. All of these batches have been delicious." I dip the other, unbitten end into a small dish of sweet chili sauce. "You never know what people will want," she says. "Some like it with pork, some like it with chicken, some like it with shrimp." Our post-work evening has been spent testing out different batches of lumpia for the upcoming Maui Food Festival. Ever since I told her we'd be competing to keep our spot on Makena Road, she's been in a food-prepping frenzy. Every night after work for the past week she's spent hours testing out new dishes, tweaking ingredients to get the flavors just right. Yesterday it was adjusting the level of fish sauce in the pansit, then attempting to perfect the ratio of rice noodle to meat and vegetables.

Years later, I heard a minister at a wedding describe marriage as cutting sorrow in half and doubling joy, and what I thought of was not the guy I was seeing then, nor even of some perfect, imaginary husband I might meet later; I thought immediately of Martha.

Serves 2 Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes Total time: 25 minutes 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets (about 4 cups) 2 cloves garlic, minced ½ cup coconut cream 2 tablespoons ghee or clarified butter 1 teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon black pepper ½ cup chicken broth 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley This may be the most versatile recipe ever. It’s a lighter substitute for mashed potatoes, and has dozens of variations to match nearly any style of cuisine. Add more chicken broth if you like it extra creamy, or keep the chicken broth to just a tablespoon or so if you prefer it really thick. Try topping with crumbled Whole30-compliant bacon or crispy prosciutto; add a blend of fresh herbs like rosemary, oregano, and thyme; kick it up a notch with 2 tablespoons of grated, peeled fresh horseradish root or 1 teaspoon chili powder; add a dollop of whole grain mustard (perfect alongside pork); or stir in shredded cabbage and kale sautéed in clarified butter or ghee. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the cauliflower florets and garlic and simmer until the florets are fork-tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the cauliflower and transfer to a food processor. Add the coconut cream, ghee, salt, and pepper and pulse until the cauliflower begins to turn smooth in consistency. Add the chicken broth one tablespoon at a time, pulsing to mix, until the desired consistency is achieved. Add the parsley and continue blending until completely smooth. Serve warm. Make It a Meal: This dish goes well with anything. Seriously, anything. But if you made us pick a few favorites, we’d say Braised Beef Brisket, Chicken Meatballs, Halibut with Citrus-Ginger Glaze, and Walnut-Crusted Pork Tenderloin. ✪Mashing You can use a variety of tools for this dish, depending on how you prefer the texture of your mash. If you prefer a silky smooth mash, the food processor is a must. If you like it really chunky, use a hand tool (like a potato masher or large kitchen fork) instead. If you like your mash somewhere in between, try using an immersion blender.

the ability to reach customers is more cost effective than ever—therefore the intangible and emotional elements have become the key differentiating factor. There are plenty of places to purchase a great spicy tuna roll, but there’s only one Masayoshi Takayama. According to his website, “Masayoshi Takayama’s appreciation for food started at a young age, growing up working for his family’s fish market in a town of Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. From his early years of delivering fresh sashimi to neighbors on his bicycle, to prepping and grilling hun- dreds of fish courses to cater weddings in high school, his relation- ship with food has always been a way of life.” That’s the beginning of a story that makes Takayama’s sushi different and special—that makes it art. And that art is what induces people to pay $600 per person in his New York restaurant for a chance to try it.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I considered unexpected beer a problem, but the place was smoky and not especially welcoming, and Iris was in the mood for tonkatsu but couldn't find any on the menu. She flipped through for a while and then said, "I want that." "Looks good to me," I said. It was some kind of chicken on a stick. When I ordered it, the waiter asked if we wanted shio or tare. This much I could understand. Shio is salt; tare is a rich, sweet sauce made from reduced soy sauce, mirin, and simmered chicken parts. It's a common choice in yakitori places; tare is the safe option, since anything tastes good with sweetened soy sauce. Salt is for when you really want to see what the grill master can do. Here we went with tare. Soon the waiter brought two skewers, each loaded up winy, glistening bites of chicken. We each took a bite and shared an astonished stare: this was the best chicken we'd ever tasted, and we had absolutely no idea what chicken part we were eating. Later we figured out that it was bonjiri (sometimes written bonchiri). In English, it's called chicken tail or, more memorably, the Pope's Nose, a fatty gland usually discarded when prepping a chicken for Western-style cooking. We ordered two more plates of the stuff. Yakitori is a beak-to-tail approach to chicken. OK, not literally beaks, but common choices at a yakitori place include thigh meat, breast meat, wings, heart, liver, and cartilage. The true test of a yakitori cook, I think, is chicken skin. To thread the skin onto skewers at the proper density and then grill it until juicy but neither overcooked (dry and crusty) or undercooked (unspeakable) requires serious skill.

Mel was over at my house, prepping me for date night because she felt the need to sluttify my outfit so I could stand a chance against Clotile’s “free-balling lady lumps.” The girl had shown up at the game last night in a tube top and skintight boy shorts. I told myself Brand would’ve missed those plays anyway. Hey, we’d still managed to eke out a win.

This regular commute from the GRE prep course to the weight room eventually jarred me into clarity: The teacher was not making us stronger. She was giving us form and technique so we’d know precisely how to carry the weight of the test. It revealed the bait and switch at the heart of standardized tests—the exact thing that made them unfair: She was teaching test-taking form for standardized exams that purportedly measured intellectual strength. My classmates and I would get higher scores—two hundred points, as promised—than poorer students, who might be equivalent in intellectual strength but did not have the resources or, in some cases, even the awareness to acquire better form through high-priced prep courses. Because of the way the human mind works—the so-called “attribution effect,” which drives us to take personal credit for any success—those of us who prepped for the test would score higher and then walk into better opportunities thinking it was all about us: that we were better and smarter than the rest and we even had inarguable, quantifiable proof. Look at our scores! Admissions counselors and professors would assume we were better qualified and admit us to their graduate schools (while also boosting their institutional rankings). And because we’re talking about featureless, objective numbers, no one would ever think that racism could have played a role.

I didn't think I'd slept more than a few hours this entire week and my heart hadn't stopped pounding since we'd been forced to watch Kyan collapse in the snow, see his body fail him and were left helpless at his side while his life faded.

... and, not even on purpose, I found myself tuning out. What I thought of was Conchita and me as freshmen, if teaching her to ride a bike behind the infirmary. How long ago that seemed, how far I felt from her now; I couldn't remember talking to her even once during our senior year. And, with graduation, we were about to cut loose from each other completely--the distance between us would be physical and definitive, and perhaps we'd never speak again. It seemed an impossible thought--so often find we all come together at Ault that I had begun to believe life contained reckonings rather than just fade-outs--and yet I also saw then that as more and more years passed, the time Conchita and I had known each other, the time I had known any of my classmates, would feel decreasingly significant; eventually, it would be only a backdrop to our real lives. At some cocktail party years into the future, in an incarnation of myself I could not yet fathom, I woukd, while rummaging for an anecdote, come up with one about a girl I'd known at boarding school whose mother took us out for lunch one day while the family bodyguard sat at the next table. In the telling, I would feel no pinch of longing or regret; I would feel nothing true, nothing at all, in fact, except the wish that my companions find me amusing.

I think we’re fully prepped.  Let’s see if the boss needs help with anything else before we start serving.” Wrapping her arm in mine, we walked out of kitchen into the main party room looking for Danver.  This was the first time we’d been out of the cooking area since we arrived and I think we were both shocked by what we saw.

Fate had woven our destiny and there wasn’t a regret in my heart over how we’d come to be here. The good, the bad, the dark days and the light. They were each threads in a tapestry that was uniquely us. And I’d treasure it always.

We’d proved that there was no force in this world which would keep us apart. So now there was just an eternity of life waiting for us to come and claim it. And I couldn’t wait to answer its call.

What about tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Saturday, isn’t it?” “I’m pretty sure I have some school stuff.” Already, I was thinking too much. I was thinking that Saturday was loaded in a way Friday wasn’t—we had Saturday classes, so Friday was still a school night, but Saturday was pure weekend. If I went out with Dave on a Saturday night, I was pretty sure we’d be going on a date. “How’s Sunday?” he said. “Sunday I’m off.” What I needed to do was just be calm. I needed to come up with the next words to say, to concentrate only on the immediate task in front of me and not give in to the sense that this moment was a monstrous pulsating flower, a purple and green geometrical blossom like you might see in a kaleidoscope. “Sunday is okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you here.” “In the parking lot?” “It’s kind of hard to find my dorm,” I said. “And they’re weird about letting guys inside.” “Gotcha. What about seven o’clock. Is seven good?” I nodded. “These are gonna be the best mashed potatoes of your life. Poems have been written about these mashed potatoes.” By you? I wanted to teasingly ask him. But I couldn’t because my anxiety was exploding, the flower was swirling outward infinitely.

We’d built our own Temple where we worshipped all forms of chaos, and I was going to thrive in it for the rest of forever with my monsters at my side.

Despite everything we'd been through, the good and the bad, the fucked up and the feral, we really were happy. Our little family against the world. And I wouldn’t change a damn moment of what we had or what we had to come for anything.