The Jacks brothers were at the Outback with their fiancées.
"Are you going to change your name to Jacks?" Jax asked Alexis. Jerry and Alexis were getting married the next day.
"Personally I will change it for sure," Alexis said. "Professionally, I have a dilemma. I've been known as a lawyer as Davis for twenty years or more. Even so, using my ex-husband's name, when we were married such a short time, so long ago, no kids, seems incredibly dumb, even professionally, when I'm married to someone else. So I think I will hyphenate it for awhile, then hope it gets known and drop Davis then."
"Funny you didn't just use Cassidine professionally, before," Jerry said to his fiancée.
"I must have thought it would last," Alexis said. "How young I was. You'll have the same problem, Oksana," Alexis said to Jax's fiancée. "You've been in business forever with your name."
"I use the first more than the last," Oksana said. "I can do it, I think."
"She just wants to get rid of her unpronounceable Russian last name," Jax grinned, and put his arm around Oksana's shoulder.
"I want to get rid of my ex-husband's name, when I am married to another," said Oksana, looking up at him.
"Just like me," Alexis said.
"Yes," said Oksana. "My sons can carry on their father's name."
"They can carry on Smith," Jax laughed.
Oksana had two sons by her ex-husband, Sergei. They were named Aleksander, who had become known as Zander in Port Charles, and Peter. Zander had called himself Zander Smith before Alexis had tracked down his family and found out his real name.
"Alexis Cassidine Davis-Jacks," Jerry said, looking at Alexis. "It will do."
Alexis took Jerry's hand and said, "It will."
"I'm glad you're doing it at all," Jerry said. "I could imagine you staying a Cassidine your whole life, no matter who you married."
"Our baby," Alexis said, "Is going to be a Jacks. Is it some kind of law the first name of a Jax must also start with J?" Alexis was expecting her first child, and was very happy about it and about the paternal family it would belong to.
"Makes it easier to pick a name," said Jax. "Jeremiah, Jedediah, Jehosephat."
"I don't think so," Alexis smiled.
The wedding was being held in the garden outside of Windermere, the Cassidine home, which was on an island in the lake.
Alexis spent the night there, a thing she had not done in ages.
Her oldest brother was to give her away, since her father and mother were both deceased.
Her family was always formal and proper. The father of the bride was deceased. Therefore, her eldest brother did the honors.
Alexis would have preferred Zander, but sometimes there was no way around tradition. Zander had been working for her as her assistant ever since he had gotten himself out of the life of crime he had originally been headed for. His family coming to Port Charles had stabilized his life. He was almost through with college and was even married, to the nurse who had taken care of him at General Hospital when he had been shot, the nurse who had helped Alexis track down his family.
At first the doctors had been eager to find out about Zander's medical history, due to some irregular heartbeats he had had during surgery. Zander had resisted, and refused to tell them anything. Then Alexis, with some help from the Port Charles Police Department and the FBI, found out about Zander's past. Their looking had tipped off detectives Oksana had working to find Zander. She had come from Florida to Port Charles. Eventually, she had moved there with her younger son Peter, and Zander had seen his father again, too. A family reunion had become possible.
Likewise, her preferred maid of honor was Quinn, Zander's wife. Alexis settled instead for Quinn and Zander as bridesmaid and usher, because naturally Jerry's best man had to be Jax, and so Oksana had fit better as the maid of honor.
But they'd be there. That was what mattered to Alexis. Along with her stuffy brother Stefan, her nephew Nikolas, and Nikolas' wife, Gia.
The ceremony was very formal. Alexis almost laughed. But to her it only mattered that she would be married to the man she had fallen in love with, over time, and exposure to each other's company, which Zander and Quinn had done much to bring about, thinking themselves matchmakers.
But they were good matchmakers, Alexis thought.
Stavros was solemn as he walked her up the little aisle. Alexis was all smiles. Jerry's mother, Jane, smiled back at her fondly, and his father, John, was looking at her almost proudly.
Alexis smiled inwardly when Stavros answered the minister's question to give her away. She felt like she was being released from the darkness into the light.
The reception was lovely. Nikolas' wedding had been there, too, and it had been at that wedding that Jerry and Alexis had first danced together, and where Alexis had introduced Jax to Oksana.
"You look lovely, Alexis," Stefan said to his younger sister.
"Thank you Stefan," she said. She turned to see V. Ardanowski, a police detective who had helped Alexis and Quinn in their search for Zander's family, standing there to congratulate her.
"Thank you, V., I'm so glad you're here," Alexis said. "Do you know my brother?"
"No," V. said. "Can't say I've had the pleasure.
Stefan bowed his head in a formal manner he had learned from childhood. Alexis introduced them, wondering if V. was going to start laughing at the formality of his manners.
V. didn't seem to mind.
Jerry came up to claim Alexis for another dance. Stefan, left with V., asked her, too.
As they danced, V. asked Stefan, "What does a person do all day when they are so rich you don't have to work?"
He smiled politely. "There are still many things to manage," he said.
Dara Jenson danced with Stavros, after Alexis introduced him. She had worked opposite Dara so many years, Alexis was amazed that Dara had not met her family before. Somehow it seemed unnatural.
Detective Marcus Taggart cut in.
"I just thought you needed to be rescued," he said to Dara.
"He's very nice," Dara said. "It's just that he's got - a wall up somehow. Unfailingly polite. But you don't learn anything about him."
"Alexis isn't like her brothers," Taggart said.
"No, she isn't," Dara agreed.
Alexis went to throw her bouquet. Oksana had caught that of Quinn, her own daughter in law. Now she was, in fact, engaged to Jax.
Oksana said she'd stay out of it. She lifted up her left hand. "I already got engaged," she said. There was a lot of laughter.
"You may as well hand it to her, Alexis," Taggart said. "She's getting married next, for sure."
"That's why she's out," Alexis said. She threw the bouquet. She turned to see it land right in V's arms.
"I've caught these before," V. said, laughing. "And it has never worked."
Later, Jerry threw the garter and Stefan caught it. "I've caught these before," he said, his eyes lit up, looking at V.
V. smiled. He had a sense of humor in a pinch, she thought.