Vada Sultenfuss stepped in front of the mirror in her childhood bedroom and slowly opened her eyes. She couldn't help but smile a little at the young woman in a flowing white gown gazing back at her.
"Oh Vada, no one has ever looked more beautiful than you do right now." Shelly breathed, as she came up behind Vada.
"Thanks Shelly," Vada replied as she adjusted the comb of her veil. "Are Judy and Kathy downstairs?" Vada asked about her childhood friend and her college friend she had selected to be her bridesmaids.
"Yes, Harry Junior has been bugging them all morning so your Dad has him helping set up chairs."
"Do you remember when Judy was practically afraid to set foot in this house?" Vada chuckled a little.
"Yup," Shelly smiled and applied a little more blue eye shadow to her stepdaughter's eyelids. "By high school we couldn't seem to keep you two apart. You were always in your room listening to records and talking about boys."
"Speaking of boys, I am so glad Nick and was able to make it," Vada walked over to the window and saw people milling around the front yard.
"You know your Aunt Rose and Uncle Phil wouldn't have let Nick's police academy training interfere with your wedding." Shelly laughed. "Everyone is here."
Vada's face fell a little. "Not everyone," There's one person missing."
Shelly frowned. "I'll give you a few minutes, and go check on the flowers."
After the door closed, Vada looked down at her hands. Her fiancée Tom had given her a beautiful single karat diamond ring and she loved the way the light sparkled though it. In fact the night Tom proposed, Vada had written a poem about the way the candle light reflected off her ring. Her other hand was bare save for the mood ring on her second finger. Ever since the day she nearly lost in Los Angeles that ring never left her finger. A few people had teased her that the seventies were over, but thankfully Tom, Judy, and Kathy respected her wishes to keep her memories of her first love close by. Looking back out the window, Vada smiled. Tom was standing on the lawn talking to Richard Tuttle, the local high school principal. Tom looked so handsome in his tux rather than his daily slacks and button down shirt he wore to work every day.
"You can't marry a teacher. It's against the law." Vada's memory drifted back to her friend's admonishment at her desire to marry her sixth grade English teacher.
"I can't help it," Vada whispered. She met Tom her sophomore year of college at Pennsylvania State. She was majoring in creative writing of course and Tom was going to be an English teacher. Naturally, everyone thought the Tom and Vada were a match made in heaven. She gazed back down to the mood ring.
"Why do you think people want to get married? Why are you going to marry him?"
She couldn't remember her childish response to her friend's question, but her answer now was easy. She loved Tom very much. One of the things that first attracted her to him was what he said on that sad day back on December of 1980.
"You know, it is horrible that John Lennon was killed…I was always such a Ringo fan. You know, I went to Liverpool once to see them."
Tom also was always willing to indulge Vada in her binges of watching the Brady Bunch and pigging out on cookies.
"Vada?" Harry Sultenfuss called from the other side of the door. "Are you ready sweetheart?"
"Just a sec Dad," Vada sighed and tucked the pictures of her mother and her friend up the sleeve of her dress. "You would have really liked him," Vada muttered. "And don't worry Thomas J, I will never be a Sennett, but I will always think of you." Vada hurried out of the room and down the stairs on her father's arm and down the aisle as a single violin started playing her favorite song from The Temptations.