“No,” she says. “But I have an appointment next week to meet my divorce lawyer for the first time. I was thinking that maybe if you weren’t busy….”

“Of course,” I say, “I’ll be there. But, am I coming as your lawyer or your friend?”

“Friend,” Vanessa says with a smile and I smile back at her.

“Now that we don’t work at the same law firm anymore, I could represent you, if you want,” I offer.

“You’re a commercial litigator,” Vanessa points out, “so if I want to start a copyright action, you’ll be the first person I call. For this, though, you can just come as my friend.”

“Done. So?” I ask, twirling around like a little girl trying on her mother’s dress. “Do you like this one?”

“Too princessy,” Vanessa says, as I walk out of the fitting room for Monique to take a peek.

“Beautiful,” Monique says again as she looks up from her sketch pad. “How do you feel in it?” She says the same thing for each of the six other muslins I try on for fit.

After the scoop neck with a straight skirt, Monique has me change and come back to the love seat. First, she tells Vanessa and I about how she makes each individual wedding dress. To demonstrate her point, she takes out some of the dresses she is working on to give us a sense of her workmanship. Each one is more beautiful than the next—miles of lace, tons of tulle and acres of silk—I’m almost afraid to touch the pristine white fabric. One dress in particular catches my eye. It’s got a deep V down the front, ending in a gorgeous crystal brooch, with a flared trumpet skirt. The detail is absolutely impeccable. As Vanessa and I ooh and aah over it, my eye catches a tiny ink stain at the base of the dress. I look at Vanessa to see if she notices it, too, but she’s already on to a cowl neck with an A-line skirt.

I’m completely paralyzed—what should I do? Should I dare tell the Monique deVouvray that there is actually something wrong with one of her gowns? One of her masterpieces? Someone’s dream dress? What if this woman’s wedding is this weekend and there’s no time to fix the dress? I don’t want to be responsible for ruining someone’s dream!

Worse yet, Monique could have a you-break-it, you-buy-it policy. And let’s face it, if my mother thought I looked fleshy in a simple gown, I’m quite certain she won’t approve of all of the flesh that would be on display in this number.

Okay, this is fine. Be cool, be confident, and act like you didn’t even notice this little mistake. Just move on to the next dress. I covertly check my hands for blue ink.

“Brooke, I see you’ve noticed my blue good luck ribbon!” Monique calls out.

“I didn’t touch anything!” I say. I was never quite good at playing it cool.

“Flip over the fabric,” she says, walking over to me. “It is a tradition that when you are making a wedding dress for someone by hand you sew in a blue ribbon for good luck. I do that for each of my dresses. So, now let us see the sketches I have drawn up. Just to give you idea of what I will do for you.”

Monique has created six fabulous sketches for me—each one incorporates different details that I mentioned as being my favorites and the styles that flatter me most.

The second I see it, I know. I just know. The sketch jumps off the page and practically speaks to me. Although it’s a rough black-and-white drawing, I can practically see my face in the scribble where a head should be.

The bodice has an off-the-shoulder sweetheart neckline fitted tight to the body with bones inside the thick silk. It has capped sleeves that flow naturally from the neckline and give the dress an air of romance. The bottom of the dress is an elegant A-line, not too princessy—just the right amount. The final perfect detail is a beautiful silk ribbon that ties around the waist. It is elegant and understated and everything I could possibly hope for in a wedding dress.

“That’s it,” Vanessa says, pointing at the sketch.

“I know,” I say, turning toward her and smiling.

“Ta da!” my mother says as she comes out of the dressing room in one of Monique’s gowns. I am immediately concerned about this for two reasons: the first is that Monique did not tell my mother to try on any of the sample dresses. Rather, she merely brought her to a rack and told her to start looking. The second is that it’s not a mother-of-the-bride dress at all. It is one of Monique’s wedding dresses.

“Did Monique give her more champagne?” I whisper to Vanessa. Vanessa laughs out loud and then quickly covers her mouth with her hand.

Now, if I were Monique, I would have screamed, “Take that dress off right this instant, you drunken deranged idiot!” But, Monique is far too classy for such things. Instead, she says, “Ah, yes, Ms. Miller, what a gorgeous figure. You look good in everything I create. Let me help you out of that and we can discuss your mother-of-the-bride dress.”

My cell phone rings as Monique and my mother are walking back to the fitting room. I look at my caller ID and see that it’s my fiancé, Jack.

“Jackie,” I say. Just seeing his number come up on my caller ID makes me smile uncontrollably.

“Brookie,” he says. “How’s it going?”

“Fabulous,” I say, fantasizing about how perfect we are going to look together on our wedding day. Even if Jack showed up in a paper bag, he’d look great—all shaggy brown hair and gorgeous baby blue eyes—but I’m sure that he’ll wear an actual tuxedo. A brown paper bag wouldn’t really match my couture.

“That good?” he asks. “So, I guess your mother is behaving herself?”

“Well, no,” I say, glancing over at my mother who is now dancing by herself to the soft jazz Monique has playing, spinning in tiny circles like a little girl at her own birthday party. “But, it doesn’t matter. Jack, I found it.”

“Found what?” he asks.

“The one,” I say, barely believing it as the words come out of my mouth.

“I thought I was the one?” he asks. “Don’t tell me that you found another guy to marry?” He pauses dramatically. “Well, even if you did, you found him at a bridal boutique, so I’m sure I can take him.”

“No, I mean—” I say. “Okay, yes, you are the one, you know that. I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?” he says and I can practically see his devilish little smile through the phone lines.

“I mean, I found it! I found the perfect wedding dress.”

Column Five

Sightings…

WHAT “monster” Hollywood star was seen walking into Monique deVouvray’s Upper East Side townhouse yesterday? She’s vowed, after her two failed marriages, never to walk down the aisle again, but could this visit to the most exclusive wedding dress designer in the world mean that she’s finally tying the knot with her longtime boyfriend and “model” father of her child?

2

Since Jack and I have been engaged, we’ve been living in delicious sin in a two-bedroom apartment in Gramercy Park. Okay, okay, we’ve actually been living in sin since before we got engaged, but you get the general point I’m trying to make. The point is that things are fabulous, even if we did jump the gun on the whole moving-in thing just a bit. But if anyone asks you, just tell them that we were engaged before we moved in together. Especially my grandmother. She is eighty-two years old and a very traditional Jewish woman from Poland who most certainly would not understand living with someone to whom you are not married. In her day, a nice Jewish girl would never live with someone without the benefit of clergy. Unless you were hiding out from the Nazis, in which case it would then be perfectly all right to cohabit for a period of time. And maybe even make out a little bit. I’m not sure about that one. But to be officially, legally living in sin? Well, that’s a big no-no.

Which is why she has no idea that Jack and I actually live together. I almost got busted at our last holiday dinner—after a few too many glasses of Manischewitz kosher wine (yes, I know, tastes like grape juice, but still amazingly effective in getting you tipsy), she cornered me and wanted to know all about my fiancé. She started with the easy questions, like where did he grow up? (A suburb outside of Philly.) How many siblings does he have? (Three sisters.) What does his father do for a living? (Federal judge for the Third Circuit.) Then, she asked a seemingly innocuous question that completely threw me for a loop: “Where in the city does Jack live?” When I carefully told her that he lived in Gramercy, she was delighted. She said: “How lovely! Do the two of you live close to each other?” So I did what any girl in my position would do. I cheerily responded, “Yes!” Which really isn’t lying, if you think about it. We do live close to each other. Very very very close. All I actually did was to leave out the part about how close we live to each other. I just couldn’t bring myself to actually tell her about the we-sleep-in-the-same-bed part.

Oh, please! As if you’d be running to tell your eighty-two-year-old grandmother that you were living in sin.

But a life of sin has been working out for Jack and me just fine.

“So, there’s talk of this big new case coming in to the firm,” Jack says to me on Saturday morning. We’re seated at our breakfast bar with mugs of hot coffee and the newspapers sprawled out.

I know. A lazy Saturday morning with your fiancé, a hot cup of coffee and The New York Times. Heaven.

“That’s great, honey!” I say, taking a bite of my toasted sesame bagel. “Which partner is bringing it in?”