It might have taken six months to plan a wedding, but as they had procrastinated, the wedding plans had to be conducted far more quickly. Sebastian didn't help matters, as he said that he and Eleanora would be more than satisfied with just quickly signing the traditional two contracts. He stopped saying this after Jean told him that, if he wasn't going to have a traditional wedding, he also wasn't going to get a traditional honeymoon.
Ciel was surprised at all the effort that had to be done in order to have a wedding. Even the men worked nonstop—Ciel had always thought that planning a wedding was a woman's job, but all the men in the family did as much work as the women did.
"Of course we have to work," Sebastian said, surprised when the young Master asked him. "If we didn't help with the wedding, we wouldn't be invited."
If Ciel had been in another place at another time, he might have argued this logic, but as he was still in Hell, he didn't dare to. He didn't even dare complain, which, had they been at home, he would have done vast amounts of.
For one thing, everyone was responsible for their own meals. Dinner was eaten as a family, but for breakfast and lunch and snacks, that was on each individual person. Eleanora had had some trouble with this; it was difficult for her to just go down into the kitchen and make herself something without permission, but for Ciel, it was absolute torture. He didn't know how to cook, and he was also expected to wash his own dishes after himself, which he most certainly was not going to do. Mostly he survived on tinned biscuits, and crammed himself full of food at dinner. Once or twice he asked Sebastian to make him something; both times his butler was pulled away for more wedding preparations.
Ciel had no idea that there was so much that needed to be planned. The men once spent three hours deciding on the type of glove that Sebastian should wear, and then, after lunch, rethought their decision and spent another three hours on gloves before they decided that their first choice was really the best one. They spent a whole day on fooling around with Sebastian's hair, trying to decide how to part it.
"What if we brushed it back?" Jean said, pulling Sebastian's hair away from his forehead.
"Ugh, no; I've always hated that look," Sebastian said.
"What if we keep some of his bangs behind his ears?" an uncle suggested. They tried that; it looked too asymmetrical, and when they tried it with both ears, it called too much attention to the hearing appendages.
"What if we gave him a little ponytail?" someone else said. They tried it, and Jean quickly shot it down.
"It looks too weak," he said in disgust, staring at the tiny thing. "If a man wears a ponytail, it should be long and flowing—strong, like a man." He shook his head, sending his own ponytail flying around, to demonstrate.
"Why would a man even want a ponytail?" Sebastian sighed. He was getting rather sick of all the criticisms of his hair.
"Isn't it obvious? So that when he's alone and bored he can play with it, give it braids and pigtails and all that."
"My Lord, could you kindly go and ask Eleanora what hair she likes on me? Because, you know, she actually remembers what I look like?" He glared at his father; he never got over being tricked like that.
Ciel accordingly went and asked and returned in about five minutes.
"She says that you should wear a sack on your head and a rope around your neck."
Laughter all around, and after the preliminary congratulations that Sebastian found himself a real keeper (the sassy, independent ones were always the best, after all) they stopped and actually considered the suggestion.
"…You know, it might actually work," Jean suddenly said. "I mean, we would have to poke holes in the bag so that he could see and all, and then, maybe…"
"Ooh! Rose has some floral print bags! They would look so festive!"
Now everyone was getting excited.
"Go and see if they have black flowers on them," Jean said. "You'd look so cute!"
"I am not wearing a sack over my head on my wedding day," Sebastian growled.
"Why the heaven not? It would solve so many problems! And if it was long enough, you could have your own mini-veil! Man, we should have asked your wife a long time ago!"
This idea was very quickly shot down by Rose, and that was the end of it.
Occasionally they would go into town to try on suits and sample wine and wedding cake (the last part was Ciel's favorite), but sometimes the men would find Ciel irritating for some reason and would tell him to go help the women.
The women also talked a lot and did a lot of things which Ciel found ridiculous. They once spent three days trying to teach Eleanora how to walk properly—as if she needed lessons. She had been walking her whole life, but apparently there was a certain way to walk down the aisle. Ciel wondered what she would do with this information after the wedding was over.
"All this planning stuff makes me never want to get married," he once grumbled to his maid.
Eleanora paused in what she was doing to consider this.
"Oh, I don't think that marriage itself is all that bad, as long as you get married to the right person," she said. "It's just the wedding that's hell…Pun not intended, if there's a pun in there."
"Then I'm never having a wedding," he said decidedly.
"My Lord, if you never have a wedding, you're never going to get married," Sebastian said once he heard this. "No woman can get married without a wedding."
"I don't see why not."
"…It's like having a cake without the icing. It'll still taste good, but it won't quite be the same."
And suddenly Ciel understood.
The weeks passed, and several days before the actual wedding date, the men unceremoniously kicked Ciel out again.
"But why?" he said.
"We have things to discuss," Jean said seriously. "Big, manly things."
"I am a man!"
"Not until you're twenty," Jean said and shut the door.
Ciel stood around for a bit, just to see if they would change their minds, and when they didn't, he went over to the wing where the women were.
They were all crowded around Eleanora, excitedly doing her makeup and her hair. They were arguing about what hairstyle she should have and how she should make her eyes really stand out from her face (even though she would be wearing a veil throughout the whole ceremony, but…logic).
"My Lord!" Rose said, upon realizing he was there. "You're just in time. You're about to witness the single-most important event in wedding planning—choosing the wedding dress!"
Ciel didn't say anything, as even he knew that the wedding dress was important, although he wondered why Rose said that it was the single-most important event, as according to every single person, every thing was the single-most important event, from the guest list to the napkins to the man-perfume the groomsmen would wear.
In all honesty, Ciel actually didn't particularly want to witness the wedding dress tryouts, as man clothes bored him to tears, let alone female outfits. But nevertheless, he obediently followed the women into the other room, wondering what top-secret man-business the males were discussing. It was probably something really important and dirty if he wasn't allowed to be there.
"Now if she starts crying, apologize immediately," Jean said seriously. "Even if you're in the most awkward situation imaginable, you apologize. If she gets angry with you, you're wrong. Remember, this is the woman's area of expertise, and by wrongly assuming that you're in the right, you're going to get heaven later. She will never let you forget it, and she will always say that you humiliated her."
"Is all this really necessary?" Sebastian sighed.
"Trust me, this will save your life more times than you can count," Jean said. "Now, after you're done picking out your first couch, she's going to want to move on to the chairs…"
Ciel had naturally assumed that wedding dresses were in one piece. After all, wasn't that how most dresses worked? Apparently not in Hell, as the huge ballroom was filled with half-naked mannequins, each one wearing either a shirt top or a skirt bottom, never both at the same time. That was odd in and of itself, but what really made it strange was that everything was black. Not a scrap of white in the room.
Eleanora looked around, confused.
"I'm sorry," she finally said, "but how is this going to work?"
"Oh, it's very simple, dear," Rose said. "You pick out a top that you like, and then a skirt that you like, and we'll see the effect! And if you like the top but not the skirt, we change the skirt but not the top, and so on and so forth. It's so much more efficient than just being a whole dress. Besides, after the general shape has been decided on, you can add decorations and accessories and all that as you see fit!"
It took forever. Ciel even fell asleep halfway through it; that was how boring it was. They woke him up to get his opinions on the final result, and even though the dress was black and lacked decoration and Eleanora looked like a stressed-out corpse, he had to admit that it was fantastic.
The top was a sleeveless, low-cut thing in the shape of a heart which flattered her bust and her figure—things Ciel didn't even know she had. The dress was long and princess-like, with a flowing train behind it. Eleanora seemed to glide as she moved around in it; the fabric didn't even rustle as she walked in that special way.
"Well? What do you think?"
Ciel nodded.
"It's very nice," he said and shared a look with Eleanora. He didn't say anything more, but he knew that she could tell that he meant it.
Everyone cheered and applauded and shook hands. Everyone told Eleanora at least ten times that she was an absolute succubus. She smiled and nodded and shook hands and laughed with the rest of them, but at night, Ciel found her alone in her room, crying.
"Uh…Lady?" he said, alarmed. He had never seen Eleanora cry before. In fact, he had never actually thought that she could cry.
"It's nothing, my Lord," she whispered, wiping away her tears. "It's just that…I guess that I always thought that…If I ever had to get married…I would do it in a white wedding dress."