Hello again! :D

Exams are over, my Arts Award has been handed in and marked, and I finally have some free time! I figured that if I couldn't find time to edit & post on the longest day of the year, there was really not a chance any other time :P
So here is the long-awaited Part 5 of my ALS series, which centres around Rose and Dimitri's wedding.

I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: Vampire Academy is the intellectual property of Richelle Mead, not me. Insert rest of disclaimer-y stuff here.

It was a good thing that I'd had so much practice zoning out during boring speeches and lessons, because otherwise I would possibly have died of boredom by now.

The day had began like any other, with Dimitri and I waking up together, him having to lure me out of bed with the promise of food, and going to the kitchen for breakfast.

That was when it changed. Lissa had come and ambushed us just as we were leaving for the gym. She'd realised that it was exactly a month until our wedding, and we hadn't booked anything except the church. In all fairness, that had been the problem. Apparently our plan for a July wedding had been shared by just about everyone else in Siberia. Honestly, I hadn't thought the population was big enough for churches to be booked out.

So, it was either book into the church on the 21st of June, or wait until October. Lissa's situation made that a little difficult, as she'd be 7 months pregnant then, and unable to fly out to Russia. Moroi had delicate pregnancies due to their low haemoglobin levels, and the risk increased with time as the baby's oxygen demand increased. Because of this, there was no way any of us were letting her on a plane after her third trimester.

But the slight pressure to get everything organised on time and our busy schedules meant that Lissa had gone into maid-of-honour-overdrive. Since today she had been relatively meeting-free, she had spent the day compiling a wedding ideas scrapbook. When I'd told her that I didn't have one already, and was planning on just deciding on things as I went along, he'd almost had a heart attack and had flown into action to find a ring binder right then. I'd been on duty outside her study, but had heard the printer firing out paper for most of the day, so had known she had been busy. But the thickness of the folder was alarming, seeing as it had been empty just this morning. It had also been a plain dark blue, but was now adorned with floral paper and crinkled ribbon. There were even a few sequins on there. It looked like a fairy had exploded onto it.

One look at that folder and Lissa's excited body language, and I knew I couldn't face this alone. I had stalled with dubious gossip for half an hour, until Dimitri finished his shift. I'd then dragged him over (and threatened that solitary overexposure to chiffon might reduce my libido) to help 'plan'.

Which was why we were now sitting side by side on the sofa, trying equally hard not to run for the hills as Lissa took us through the pros and cons of various kinds of confetti.

"This one you can personalise, so you could have your initials or little cute pictures of something- like little stakes! Or if you go for this one, it's glittery so will catch the sunlight. But glitter's kind of bad for the environment, so maybe a biodegradable one would be better. They come in pastel colours, which are pretty..." On it went, and in the end I just spaced out completely. It was like being back in one of Stan's lessons back at the Academy. He talked, I ignored...

"Rose!"

"Sorry?"

She glared. "Were you even listening just then?"

I shot a panicked glance at Dimitri, how gave me a look as though to say I was on my own. Ass. I was marrying him after all. "Of course."

"Then what did I just say?"

Yep, definitely like being back at the Academy. Time to see if my bullshitting skills were still as sharp as ever. "I didn't really hear much after the biodegradable thing, because I had an idea. We could... collect up all the little paper circles from all the hole punches in Court and use them in confetti. That's recycled and biodegradable, and think of all the, um, symbolism." She wasn't buying it. I had to try harder. "You know, like we were given a second chance to be together, and those paper circles are being given a second chance to be useful and meeting up with the other circle from the same piece of paper to go and be free together..." What was I even saying? Dimitri looked incredulous at the rubbish I was spouting, and Lissa was just getting angrier and angrier.

"Rose! You never take anything seriously!"

"What?" I protested. "I did take that seriously! Didn't you hear the part about the symbolism-"

"I've spent ages researching confetti retailers, and you come out with hole punchings?! Why do I even bother?"

It was probably the pregnancy hormones making her worked up, so I decided to humour her. "Look, Liss, if it means that much to you, then you can choose the confetti."

It didn't help. She stood up, slamming the scrapbook shut. "That's not the point! I'm the maid of honour, not the bride. You just seem to have no interest in this, and all you can do is make half-assed excuses and stupid jokes." Ouch. Burn. "And Dimitri, you haven't even said anything at all! This is a waste of time. I'm going to leave so you two can get on with whatever it is you'd much rather be doing!"

My instant response would have been 'each other', but I bit it back as she stormed out of the room.

"Who pissed in her Cheerios this morning?" I said rhetorically, rolling my eyes.

Dimitri held back a smile. He wouldn't be as blunt as me, but Lissa's antics has been more than a little irritating lately. "She's being a bit..."

"Volatile? Explosive? No kidding." I sighed. "Let's see what other delights she has in store for us."

I picked up the scrapbook and opened it between us, flicking through page after page of printed pictures cut out and stuck neatly onto the paper.

"Hey, they aren't bad," Dimitri said, holding a page open.

"Yeah, they're okay, actually. At least we have something to discuss with Lissa so we don't look completely incompetent. Though honestly, she should calm down a bit. It's our wedding after all."

Just then, I turned the page to find a different kind of paper. There was a brown manila envelope, and I opened it up to find a few sheets of yellowed paper, covered in crayon drawings and scribbles.

There was a blonde and a brown haired stick-girl, each standing very close to a basic stickman wearing some kind of suit. The girls had white triangles for bodies and squares covering half their faces. The sky was a thin blue band across the top of the paper. One side of the drawing was considerably neater than the other, with loopy writing reading 'Lissa's wedding'. The other side had something that looked like 'Rase's Uedaing'. There was a sketch of a single church in the background, with multicoloured confetti falling like rain around the couples and 'm'-shaped birds in the sky. There was also something which looked suspiciously like a bomb edited to look like a balloon.

"She still has this," I whispered with my hand over my mouth. "I remember it. We were planning our dream weddings, and we were going to have a joint one, just with a couple of friends. Lissa said Andre wouldn't be invited, so he wanted to nuke us." I smiled at the memory. "Lissa loved wedding planning even then. And I guess the big Court wedding she got didn't exactly meet this dream..."

Dimitri put a hand on my shoulder, running his fingers over my back. "Go talk to her. I'll look through the rest of the folder."

"Are you sure?"

He smiled, kissing me quickly. "Who knows, I might find some more of your drawings."

I got up to leave, turning back to add, "just to warn you, the grooms may be named as some of my 4th-grade crushes."

He smiled back. "I don't think I need to worry."

I winked. "That's what you think." With that, I headed next door into Lissa's apartment.

She was sitting on the sofa, pretending to read a magazine. I could tell that she was pretending as nobody could actually be that engrossed in reading an advertisement about low-fat butter. I sat down beside her and pulled the paper from her hands.

"Hey, I was reading that!" she protested.

I rolled my eyes. "No, you weren't. 'Just 20% of the fat of ordinary spreads'. There, that took me all of three seconds, and you didn't turn the page after I came into the room." I threw the magazine onto the coffee table. "You were trying to avoid me."

She looked a little embarrassed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to strop off like I did, but you were just so... complacent. And that's not a word I associate with you or Dimitri normally."

I sighed, leaning back against the couch. "I know, Liss. We weren't exactly having much of an input. But to be honest, you weren't really letting us. You made the scrapbook, and that's really sweet. But you sort of took over a little there. You were going through all these plans for a big white wedding, and we just want something small and intimate."

She looked down. "I know that really. It's just- I didn't really get to plan my own wedding. Don't get me wrong," she added quickly, "it was perfect and I wouldn't have changed anything. But I didn't get to plan, and that's half the fun. When I imagined planning my wedding, I always saw the two of us doing it together, you cracking jokes the whole time and me getting annoyed."

"Are you saying I was a bad Maid of Honour?" I joked.

"Jokes like that. And no, not at all. You organised a great bachelorette and the second reception just for our friends. I just wanted to make sure that your wedding was perfect. I admit that I might have tried to hijack your wedding a little bit to make up for not having much of a choice in mine. But I also just wanted to make sure that your special day was perfect. You do everything or me, and sometimes I feel like I have so little to give you in return."

She sounded so sorry for herself that I had to forgive her. I loved Lissa to pieces, but sometimes she could be a little selfish. Okay, sometimes, she was a lot selfish. But I wasn't free of flaws, and most of the time Lissa's heart was in the right place. I reached over and took her hands in mine.

"That's what friendship is, Liss. Giving and not wanting anything in return. Besides, you always believed in me and made me a part of your family. I don't know what I'd have done without you. Who knows, maybe I'd have ended up being an attic hermit like Christian!" I shuddered at the thought, and she laughed. "You're my MoH, and you have a job to do. Just maybe leave a little bit of the process for me? I'm actually getting quite into this wedding stuff."

Lissa's face lit up. "So we can go back to planning?"

"Yes, we can go back to planning. Just chill out a little, or you'll send Dimitri running for the hills. Or tundra, I guess."

Lissa was still giggling when we came back into my living room. Dimitri smiled when he saw my all-clear signal, and went back to looking at the folder in his lap.

This time, Lissa reined herself in a little bit. "Forget the confetti. What do you want to go over first?"

I shrugged, but Dimitri apparently had an idea. "Maybe we should do the guest list planned before anything else."

Lissa looked surprised that he had thought of the obvious thing that she had overlooked.

"Don't forget, Liss, Dimitri had more weddings than the rest of us put together." Lissa looked confused and Dimitri glared. "Not a single divorce though, as far as I'm aware. Just hundreds of suspicious deaths. It's a wonder you weren't looked into for life insurance scams." Dimitri's look made me pity Karolina the next time her saw her. I just grinned even more. "Guest list, right?"

Lissa pulled out a legal pad and a pen. "So how do you want to do this?" she asked. "Are you splitting your guests bride/groom?"

I shared a glance with Dimitri. "Honestly, it would be too hard to decide who belonged to who."

Lissa had a solution for that. "Well, that's easy. You imagine that the two of you have split up and are marrying different people, but on the same day. Your friends can only go to one of the weddings. Whichever one they would chose is whichever party they will be in. Like, for instance, I would go to Rose's wedding. No offence, Dimitri."

"None taken."

I was still getting my head around what she was saying. "What kind of a stupid question is that? Why even ask it? Why would we break up? Who are we marrying now? Why on the same day? Your logic is flawed!" Lissa and Dimitri laughed, which I thought was kind of weird. "It's not funny! Dimitri, why do you find the thought of us breaking up amusing? Lissa?" I was genuinely confused by Lissa's analogy and their reactions to it.

Dimitri just put an arm around me and pulled me close. Lissa was the one to speak. "It's your reaction that's funny. You got so worked up over the thought of you and Dimitri splitting up, which is obviously never going to happen."

I huffed, crossing my arms as Dimitri kissed my forehead. "Definitely never happening. It's nice to see how much you care, though."

I still felt like there was some joke I was missing out on, but decided it was best to just let it go. "Whatever. I have a better plan. We only have one jet with 20 seats, right?"

"Possibly an extra two seats if need be," Dimitri added.

"Right, so we pick those 20/22 people, plus the eight or so that will be flying out early. Since they have to come to both the ceremony and the reception, that will shorten the list of people we invite. Then we pick the same number of Russians to come to the ceremony, and more to come to the reception if need be. Sound alright?" I asked. Lissa and Dimitri were in agreement and Lissa wrote 'Americans' at the top of the page.

"Alright, each of you say a name and I'll write them down. We can shortlist if we have to later."

"Lissa." I started, and she smiled before writing her name down.

"Christian." Dimitri added.

"Mia."

"Eddie."

"Adrian."

"Sydney."

"My mom and Abe."

"That's two names."

Lissa started to write the last one before realising half way through the words that they weren't actually a name, and crossed them out with an irritated scribble. I didn't want the anger of ruining her perfect list to be aimed at me, so naturally, dropped Dimitri in it.

"Technically, one is a common noun, the other is a proper noun. Therefore, only one counts as a 'name' in the context Lissa used it." Both Lissa and Dimitri stared at me incredulously. "What? I need material to base my logic on." I gave myself a mental pat on the back. Most of the time, it was a little embarrassing that Dimitri's English was probably better than mine. Right now, though, I'd one-upped him.

"Rose, how do you even remember that? I know for a fact you slept through or messed around in most of your English lessons."

I shrugged. "Must have accidentally been listening that time. My mistake. Putting my genius-like mind aside for now, can we carry on before I forget who we've said?"

And so we did. Before long, we a list with people organised under sub-headings.

St. Vlads
Alberta
James
Meredith (she'd forgiven me for knocking her out)
Shane (If there was a party with free drink, he'd be there)
Jill

Court
Sonya
Mikhail
Serena
Hans
Hanna (Who had recovered well after being injured in the warehouse raid)
Pavel
Adam

It was actually sad writing the list. Though I tried to keep positive, it was hard not to think of all the people who should have been on there. Celeste, Grant, Emil, Yuri, Mason...
But that was something I was going to have to get used to. In our profession, friends died. It was as simple as that. It would never be easy, but we just had to go on as best we could. As long as Dimitri was safe, I could handle it.

Reviewing the lists, I felt like someone was still missing. We'd added the Guardians we'd become closest to since coming to Court, but that wasn't it. Someone back at school...

"What's that look for, Rose?" Lissa asked. "You're going to fry your brain."

"You have been spending way too much time with Christian, because that was mean." She smirked, making the likeness even greater. "It's nothing. I just had the strangest urge to invite Stan. No idea where that came from."

Lissa and Dimitri were both looking at me like maybe I might have a mental problem. "I thought you hated Stan?" Dimitri asked.

"I do! Well, I mean, he saved my life and everything, but that aside he's still a twat. I guess I just want to show off about how I'm not the epic failure he always said I would become. He was such a dick. Nope, so not getting an invite. Asking Hans was weird enough." I guess it was just because Stan was one of the few that hadn't upped and died on me.

"When are you planning on getting your dress designed?" Lissa asked me. "It needs to be soon so it can be made in time."

I laughed outright at that. "Lissa, I'm not going to get my dress designed. One of the advantages of not being Queen is still being able to buy off-the-rack." She didn't looked convinced. "Plus, it'd be a shame to ruin couture if Dimitri takes 'ripping it off' literally."

The man in question choked on his coffee beside me as I cackled. Lissa covered her mouth with her hand demurely, trying to hold back laughter of her own. Once Dimitri recovered, he glared at me.

"Oh, get over it Comrade. It's not like Lissa thinks we're going to be playing Scrabble on our wedding night."

"After the noises that come from your bedroom? There's no doubt in my mind." Lissa teased.

Dimitri's blush deepened and he mumbled something. I hugged his arm and kissed his burning cheek.

"Aw, you are just the sweetest," I cooed.

Lissa was smiling too. "Well, someone in this wedding has to be blushing, and it isn't going to be the bride."

Dimitri looked between us. "I dread the speeches. Abe and Janine will try to kill me after listening to all the innuendo."

Lissa giggled as I held Dimitri tighter. "Don't worry baby, I'll protect you. I'll hide a stake in my bouquet to hold them off."

By the end of the night, we had chosen a colour scheme and a cake as well as finding a day that we could get out of Court to go dress shopping. I had my priorities straight- I wanted my order for a triple tier chocolate cake in early enough that there could be no excuses for it not being perfect. A layer of white, milk and dark chocolate sponge with marzipan and vanilla icing. There probably should have been a non-chocolate layer, but hey, it was my wedding. Our wedding. Whatever. If people didn't like it, they didn't have to eat it. Since Olena would be cooking the rest of the food, we could splash out on the cost of the cake. Dimitri had either been happy with my choice or unwilling to argue.

Colour-wise, we'd gone for indigo, since we could also get away with blue or purple that way. Lissa and Christian's wedding had been gold and green, with touches of light blue. Ours wouldn't be nearly as opulent as theirs, but it didn't need to be. We had each other, and that was all we'd ever need. Well, and an awesome cake.

We were lying in bed, basking in the afterglow of things that would have made Dimitri blush if he thought too hard about the fact that these interior walls were pretty thin. I wasn't sure if I'd actually get lucky tonight after Lissa's comment, but apparently Dimitri forgot to care when we were alone. For that, I was very thankful.
Dimitri was playing with the fingers of my hand that rested on his chest. He was spinning my engagement ring around, and I was watching as the small diamond caught the rays of light spilling through the gap in the curtains as the sun rose.

"I can't wait to marry you," he whispered.

I tried, and probably failed, to raise an eyebrow. "Good think I didn't stick to my '2 in front' rule then."

"Was it my amazingly moving proposal speech that changed your mind?"

I laughed quietly at that, since it sounded like something I would say. "Possibly. But mainly because you're so old. You having grey hair in photos and not being able to 'perform' properly on the wedding night would spoil it."

"Rose, I think I have a good few years left before we have to worry about either of those things."

I smirked. "But when I'm 20 you'll be turning 26, and that's close to 30 and that's old-hey!"

My sentence was cut off as Dimitri suddenly rolled me over, leaning over me and using one hand to keep my arms locked above my head.

When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. "If you keep calling me old, I'll have to show you how wrong you are."

Now there was a thought. "Well, you are getting on a bit. What age is it that counts as an OAP? Maybe I could get money if I apply as a carer for the elderly-"

Dimitri growled as his lips covered mine, effectively cutting off anything else I was going to say.

Much to my annoyance, he pulled back after a minute. "I'm not old," he said.

I looked deep into his gorgeous brown eyes. "So prove it."

ust in case anyone forgot, Hanna, James and Adam are OCs mentioned in previous titles in this series.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter, I can't be sure when the next chapter will be up as I haven't written it and am still busy with Uni visits etc, but will endeavour to update as soon as I can :)

~ Dimitri's. Smexi. Shewolf x

Review and Dimitri will 'prove a point' to you ;)