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Reece recovered from his ear infection within a week, as his regular pediatrician confirmed once everyone returned home from the Hamptons.

Alexis was studying hard for the bar exam, but she set aside June 1 for her and Javier's meeting with his Army chaplain friend, Father Peter Gilliam, Catholic priest and retired Chaplain Corps Major.

Once Javier had explained to his old friend that Alexis was in the process of intensive study for the New York State Bar Exam, and they had just mailed their wedding invitations the day before, having set the time and date for Saturday, August 15, at Lyndhurst Castle at 6 PM, Father Peter had assured Javier that they could do the pre-marriage counseling session in one day. "Of course, it'll be about six hours," he had said, "about 9 AM to 3 PM, with an hour off for lunch. We're not doing an actual Catholic wedding with the full Mass and everything, right?"

"Right," Javier had told him. "Do people use the term 'mixed marriage' anymore? Because I'm Catholic, or at least I was raised Catholic, and I don't really have a home parish at the moment, and Alexis and her family are Episcopalian. At least, her three younger siblings are being raised in the Episcopalian Church. We've attended services there sometimes too."

"The Episcopalian and Roman Catholic religions actually have a lot of similarities," Father Pete had replied. "You're not technically having a Catholic wedding, so this isn't a strict necessity, but since you asked me to be your officiant, I felt compelled to offer to do some pre-marriage counseling with you and Alexis."

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't pre-Cana basically the couple making sure they're on the same page about all the important things? You know, religion, kids, finances, being willing to move for your spouse's job if it's necessary, that kind of stuff?" Javier asked.

"To put it in one sentence, basically yes," Father Pete replied. "It's kind of a last chance before the highway to make sure you're really ready for marriage and what it's going to mean in the long run."

"Then we definitely want to do that," Javier said, "because this marriage is going to last the rest of our lives."

"All righty, then, I'll see you on the first," Father Pete had said.

Which is how Alexis and Javier came to be on their way to St. Brendan's Catholic Church in Brooklyn bright and early on the morning of June 1, to meet Father Pete at the rectory for their unofficial pre-Cana class.

Javier rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by a man about his and Kevin's age, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a ready smile, wearing his black shirt and white clerical collar with a pair of light blue jeans. "Javi!" he exclaimed happily, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his smile widened.

"Pedro!" Javier replied, smiling back at his old friend. They shook hands, and then hugged. After delivering a hearty slap on the back to Javi, Father Pete regarded Alexis. "And you have got to be Alexis. Javi and I don't get to see each other very often, but every time we have in the last three years, you're just about all he talks about. It's nice to finally meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too, Father Gilliam," Alexis replied, shaking the hand the priest extended to her.

"No need to stand on formality," he assured her. "Father Peter, Father Pete, you can call me just plain Pete if you'd like."

"I'll stick with 'Father Pete' if that's all right," Alexis said.

"That's just fine," Father Pete replied. "Come in." They followed him to the living room of the house. "Make yourselves at home. The housekeeper is off on the weekends, but I just put up a fresh pot of coffee."

When they were all settled with coffee, in typical Alexis fashion, she was ready to dive right in. "I take it Javier has told you I'm not Catholic?" she began.

"Yes," Father Pete replied. "And that's not as big a deal as a lot of people make it out to be. Or at least, it won't be until you're deciding how to raise the children, if you're planning on having children."

"We are," Alexis and Javier said in unison.

"Not for a few years, though," Javier said.

"Right," Alexis agreed. "I'm taking the bar exam on July 24 and 25, and I want to get established in my career before taking time off to have kids. But we have a lot of kids in our lives already. I have a 3-year-old sister, and twin brothers who were just born in February, and Javier's best friend Kevin has a 6-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son who are also his godchildren, and very close to my siblings, or at least Sarah Grace is close to my sister Lily. And then our friends Lanie and Alan have a son who's going on a year-and-a-half old. So we'll get plenty of practice with kids before we actually have our own."

"Sarah Grace and Lily are going to be our flower girls," Javier said. "Couldn't talk Nick into being the ringbearer, and Reece and Jake and Will are all too young."

Father Pete smiled. "In my experience, most little boys aren't interested in being in weddings," he said. "They're just there for the cake, at least until they're between 11 and 13 years old, especially if there's a junior bridesmaid or younger sister or cousin or friend of the family on either the bride's side or the groom's side that gives them a reason to comb their hair out of their eyes and not complain about wearing a tie. Now, August 15 is the big day, correct?"

"Yes," Alexis said, "6 PM at Lyndhurst Castle, so I'm thinking we'll probably get there a little after noon."

"We're not taking our actual wedding pictures until after we're married," Javier said. It was a thing with him, which Alexis had accepted. Pictures of him with Ryan and with Father Pete, fine. Pictures of Alexis with Beckett and Castle and Martha and Lily and Sarah Grace, okay. But Javier refused to pose for any wedding pictures with Alexis until after the wedding, when they were actually, legally husband and wife.

Father Pete pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I had the time and date, just not the place," he said as he entered it into his calendar app. "Got it." He laid the phone on the coffee table and said, "All right, then. Next up: family of origin."

"Javier's been a part of my family for years," Alexis said. "That's how we met, actually. But things changed after..." She trailed off, swallowed hard, then said, "My mom...at least, I think of her as my mom, and I call her 'Mom'...She was a cop, a homicide detective, and then Captain of the 12th Precinct. She and my dad met because of a murder case that was based on one of his early books. My dad is Richard Castle, the writer. He consulted on cases with her and Javier and Kevin Ryan and wrote a whole series of books based on her. Lanie was one of the medical examiners they worked with. They worked together for most of eight years. They had a lot of close calls, and the closest one of all was four years ago, when they were ambushed at home and shot. They were critically wounded, but they survived. Mom retired from the NYPD, and now she's on the City Council of New York City, representing District 1 in Manhattan. Dad still writes, and now they have my younger siblings. Javier and I didn't get together until after my parents were recovering from being shot that last time."

"My family of origin are all deceased," Javier said. "So Alexis is right. We really do have the same family of origin now. We all kind of made our own family—Castle's mom and her boyfriend, Beckett's dad, Ryan and Jenny and Sarah Grace and Nick, Lanie and her husband Alan and Will, even our former Captain and her husband."

"Every married couple needs a solid support system. They're a firm foundation on which to build your branch of the family tree," Father Pete said. "Okay, that was the easy stuff. Now we get into the real nitty gritty," he said. "Intensive discussion on the major components of every marriage. First up: communication."

Alexis burst out laughing at this, and even Javier couldn't stop his smile. "I'm sorry," Alexis apologized. "I really do take this seriously. It's just...well, you have to know my parents."

"Yeah, Beckett and Castle taught us a lot about what not to do regarding communication," Javier added. "Although they did finally get their act together, everyone around them saw it before they got to the point where they did anything about it."

Alexis reached for Javier's hand. "I think we do a pretty good job of communicating," Alexis said. "We rarely have misunderstandings, and when we fight, we fight fairly. At least, we try to fight fairly."

"One of the keys to a good marriage is keeping the fights clean and the sex dirty," Father Pete said with a straight face.

Alexis's jaw dropped at hearing a priest talk that way. Javier burst out laughing. "Pete was engaged a long time ago," he told Alexis when he had recovered himself.

"Oh, so when you became a priest, you..." She trailed off.

"I gave informed consent," Pete said. He gave a flash of a smile before growing serious. "We didn't keep the fights clean, or fair, and I felt called to the priesthood. She accused me of abandoning her and the relationship, but I honestly and truly did feel a calling to the Church, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life fighting with her. Plus I served in the Army as a chaplain, and I counseled a lot of soldiers, both male and female, officers and enlisted, on their marriages and relationships in my time in the service. God created sex, after all, and while according to the hardcore Biblical people its main purpose is for procreation, I've never looked at it that way as either a man or a priest. Sex is a gift, the most intimate act of physical expression of love between two people. Yes, procreation is one of the results of sex, but it's not the only result, nor should it be. Sex is an important part of any healthy marriage. Not the most important part, or the only important part, but it should never be regarded as a chore or a duty."

"I don't know a lot of Catholic priests, Father Pete, but you're very enlightened on the subject of sex," Alexis observed.

"Thank you, Alexis. I try," Father Pete replied. "The best marriages are those that are an adventure of the heart, mind, and body, and a lifetime of shared discovery. Keep 'dating' all of your lives. Keep holding hands, rubbing his feet or her shoulders at the end of a long, exhausting day. Make time for each other, no matter how hectic life gets. Make grown-ups only time for each other after you start having children. Make it a lifelong habit to hold and touch and kiss each other. Communicate your desires and fears to each other, and not just the sexual ones. All of them. And respect each other's limits."

Javier's arm was around Alexis's shoulders by now. "We can definitely do that," he said.

"Absolutely," Alexis agreed.

"Good," Father Pete said. "Now, getting back to communication as a whole, the other side of that coin is arguments. Studies have shown that one of the biggest predictors of divorce is avoidance of conflict. Sometimes it's an elephant in the room, sometimes it's more like a mosquito that got in through the window screen, annoying and buzzing around your heads. Ignoring either one is the wrong thing to do, no matter how big or small the issue, or what the issue is.

"Marriages that succeed and marriages that fail have about the same level of disagreements. The difference is in the way that conflict is handled.

"Also, realize that some arguments or conflicts change over time. You won't be arguing about how to raise the children, or how to discipline them, for instance, because you don't have children yet. It is vital that you handle your arguments, conflicts, and disagreements fairly and constructively. Are there any dealbreakers for either of you? Something that you couldn't possibly forgive, or work through, that would end your relationship once and for all?"

Alexis and Javier looked at each other. "Infidelity," Alexis said.

"Infidelity," Javier agreed. He let the hand on her shoulder drop to her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. "But that's not something that'll happen for me. You're it for me, Alexis."

"And you're it for me," Alexis replied.

Father Pete smiled, seeing the gravity and earnestness in their eyes, and knowing they meant this and that they would not change their minds about it.

They went on to discuss children (agreeing to have two in the future, at least three or four years after getting married); finances (a joint checking account, maintaining their separate savings accounts and revisiting merging them after the wedding, and they would each keep a checkbook and balance it while splitting responsibility for paying the bills 50/50); religion (they would continue to observe both of their respective religious faiths and revisit whether or not to raise their future children in one of their religions or the other, or whether to expose them to both Catholicism and Episcopalian traditions and let them choose for themselves when they were grown); and other general marriage matters. They ordered in for lunch, and a couple of hours later, Father Pete pronounced them ready to be married.

"It's been a pleasure to meet you, Alexis," Father Pete said. "I wish you the best of luck on the bar exam, and I'll see you at your rehearsal dinner."

"Thank you, Father Pete," Alexis replied, shaking his hand again. "It was nice to meet you too. I'll see you in August."

"Pedro, thanks, for everything," Javier said.

"Anytime, Javi," Father Pete replied before they hugged again. "I'll talk to you again soon."

"Yeah, we're going to that Yankees game at the beginning of August, although you might have to help me explain things to my future father-in-law. He's not much of a sportsman, unless it's video games or Laser Tag," Javi said.

"I'll look forward to it," Father Pete said. He walked Alexis and Javier out and stood on the sidewalk, waving as they drove away, before returning to the rectory.

On the drive home, Alexis said, "Now we really start getting crazy with the preparations. I still have to get a dress, and so do...well, everybody, actually. Mom, Gram, Lily, Sarah Grace, Lanie and Jenny are going to tag along. You and Dad and Kevin and Jim have to get fitted for your tuxes. We have to get our wedding rings and write our vows, the flowers, the music, at least we've got Madison handling the food at both the rehearsal dinner and the reception, and the cake, we have to pick a cake, and the dinner menu..."

"Everything will get done, Lex, I promise," Javier assured her. When they stopped at a light, he reached for her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed the back of it. "I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

"And don't you forget it," Alexis said mock sternly with a big smile.

Javier chuckled. "You won't let me," he replied, smiling back. "And if you ever do, Castle, Beckett, Martha, Jim, and Lily will be right there to remind me."


About three weeks after Javier and Alexis met with Father Pete, Alexis met Kate, Lily, Martha, Sarah Grace, Jenny, and Lanie to go shopping for her wedding dress, Kate's matron-of-honor dress, Martha's grandmother of the bride dress, the flower girl dresses for Sarah Grace and Lily, and dresses for Lanie and Jenny to wear to the wedding.

The wedding was small by most conventional standards: 100 guests total, most of the 12th Precinct RSVPing yes because of Esposito, Beckett and Castle, and a few of Alexis's friends from high school, most notably Paige, who was working as an architect in Philadelphia and whom she hadn't seen since their five-year Marlowe Prep class reunion.

Alexis was the last to arrive at the bridal shop that morning, and she carried a shopping bag with her. "I know I'm a little late, and I'm sorry, but on my way here, I saw these in a store window and I had to get them for Reece and Jake," she said. She handed the bag to Kate, who reached inside and pulled out a white onesie with long sleeves and a black bow tie and lapels and red pocket square design on the front. "This way the boys can match Javier and Dad and Kevin and Jim," Alexis said. "Aren't they cute?"

"They're adorable!" Jenny exclaimed.

"This is perfect, Alexis," Kate said. "I've been looking for something for the boys to wear to the wedding, but I wasn't about to make them wear tiny little suits, and that's all I could seem to find online."

Lanie opened her mouth to say something but her expression suddenly shifted to one of panic and, clapping a hand over her mouth, she dashed toward the ladies' room.

Everyone looked concerned, even Lily and Sarah Grace. When Lanie returned a few minutes later, looking sheepish, she said, "I really thought it was late enough that I had it under control for the day."

Kate and Jenny exchanged a look. "Lanie?" Kate asked, but she and Jenny both already knew what Lanie was going to say.

Lanie looked at Alexis apologetically. "I swear, we weren't going to say anything until after your wedding, but this freaking morning sickness..." She trailed off.

"Morning sickness?" Sarah Grace asked. "What's that?"

"That, Sarah Grace, means that you're getting another cousin, sometime next January," Lanie said.

Jenny squealed, and she and Kate rushed to hug Lanie. Alexis then hugged Lanie, as everyone offered their congratulations, and Lanie admitted this baby was a little ahead of schedule, but that she and Alan were very happy and Alan was rooting for a girl, while Lanie was already convinced it was another boy. "I'm gonna wind up with a houseful of boys," she said. "I just know it. I'll have to get my girly-girl fix from Lily and Sarah Grace."

"Well, look at it this way, Lanie. You'll be able to handle those boys, no matter how rowdy they get," Kate said. "And how many in this 'houseful'?"

"Alan and I agreed on three. If they're all boys, he can have the girl," Lanie said.

"I hope you have a girl, Aunt Lanie," Sarah Grace said.

"Thank you, Sarah Grace, but I really think it's a boy. We'll know for sure in a couple months," Lanie said. "Now, are we gonna look at some dresses or what?"

Sarah Grace and Lily, captivated by all of the pretty dresses, were on their best behavior. Alexis was open to suggestions from the girls and Kate, not wanting anyone to wear anything they didn't really want to wear, or the stereotypical "ugly bridesmaid" dresses.

Both Sarah Grace and Lily flipped over lilac-colored dresses of satin and tulle with spaghetti straps that stopped just below their knees and had a white ribbon sash around the waist with tiny lilacs embroidered on the sash. (Well, more accurately, Lily fell in love with it, and Sarah Grace agreed to go along with it, especially after Alexis said that both girls could wear crowns of flowers in their hair when they walked down the aisle scattering rose petals for her and her father to walk on.)

Lanie found a nice summer dress in peach that would accommodate her growing waistline, and Jenny found a cocktail dress in periwinkle blue.

Martha's final choice was a peacock blue formal gown with a matching wrap.

After Alexis made the decision to go with lilac dresses, she hurriedly made a note in her phone about flowers, thinking she would carry white and purple roses, the purple roses being the exact shade of lilac as the flower girl dresses, with baby's breath, peach spray roses, and lavender sweet peas. While Alexis was doing that, Kate found the ideal matron-of-honor dress in the same shade of lilac as Lily and Sarah Grace's dresses, made of satin, in an A-line with a built-in bra, cap strap sleeves, and knee length.

Despite trying on half a dozen dresses in virtually every style, everyone found a dress except Alexis. "These things take time," Kate assured her.

"Well, at least we can order the flowers now," Alexis said. "We'll have to really get serious next weekend, though."

After the shopping excursion, Alexis accompanied Kate, Lily and Martha back to the loft, where Rick and Jim were playing on the living room floor with Reece and Jake.

"How was the dress expedition?" Rick asked.

"Everyone has a dress except me," Alexis replied.

"We'll find you the perfect dress, darling," Martha promised.

"Maybe I could come along for the next shopping trip," Rick suggested. He plucked Jake from the floor, and Jake squealed loudly and happily when he saw his mother, reaching out for her. Kate accepted the baby from Rick, smacking a kiss on his cheek before kissing Rick hello. Reece was babbling at Jim, who smiled at the baby as he lifted him off the floor before getting to his feet with Reece in his arms.

"That didn't work out so well for my prom dress, Dad," Alexis reminded him.

"But the rule is that the groom can't see the bride in the dress before the wedding. There isn't any rule about the father of the bride not seeing her in the dress before the wedding," Rick persisted.

"That's true," Alexis said.

"Maybe if we look online we'll find something, or at least get a few ideas," Kate said. "Why don't you stay for dinner?"

"I will," Alexis agreed.

Jim and Martha stayed as well. After the kids were down for the night, Alexis, who had been looking at wedding dresses online with her grandmother, sighed as she set aside her tablet. "I think I need a break from looking for a dress," she said. "I've been at this for most of the day, I tried on six dresses, and I didn't like any of them."

"You'll know the right dress when you see it," Martha encouraged her.

"You will," Kate assured her. "We'll get back at it next weekend."

When they were saying good night before Alexis left, Rick said, "My offer still stands, pumpkin. I'll go look at wedding dresses with you."

Alexis hugged her father. "Do you think you can do that without crying?" she asked.

"I'm not made of stone," Rick said. "Of course I'm gonna cry. And I promise I'll tell you that look hideous in at least one dress, the way your grandmother did when we went to look at prom dresses years ago."

Alexis laughed and hugged her father more tightly before releasing him to look into his eyes and smile. "Don't you dare," she said. "I had enough of hideous dresses today."

Rick's face lit up. "Does that mean I can go?" he asked, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Yes, you can go," Alexis agreed. "And I'll text you when I get home."

While waiting for Alexis's arrived-home-safely text, Kate and Rick checked on Lily, Reece and Jake, and then got ready for bed. "So you're going wedding dress shopping," Kate said as she and Rick got into bed.

"Yes, I am," he replied with a smile. Then he sighed. "It all goes by so fast, Kate."

"It does," she agreed. "That's why you have to savor every moment. And I think we do a pretty good job of that."

"We do," he agreed before pulling her against his chest for a lingering goodnight kiss.