The reception was held at a venue three blocks from the church, more importantly the location belonged to my mother in law, Erica's mother Margaret Huffington.
Margaret Huffington is the kind of woman that walks alone with the upright composure of a woman who had decided decades ago that the world would come to her rather than the other way around. Her dress was extraordinary — a deep, structured navy, floor-length, with a quality of fabric and tailoring that communicated a level of expensive you can only imagine. The silver hair she wore swept back and a single piece of jewelry at her throat that I was fairly certain was not a reproduction. According to her she didn't want to bring too much attention to herself as it was her daughter's day so her entire outfit was around the Sixty to Seventy thousand dollars range — but make no mistake she is the financier of this wedding.
Outside the church were multiple fleets of Limousines, It turns out Margaret Huffington had hired them from multiple companies to bring extended family members to the Venue. People coming to the wedding didn't have to use their cars as that was Margaret's standard.
The entrance to the reception hall greeted them with something that had clearly been designed to make the church's floral arrangements feel like a warm-up.
The entrance was a garden that had been built indoors overnight. Every variety of flower that could be sourced in New York in that season was present — peonies in blush and white, garden roses in cream and coral and deep burgundy, cascading wisteria trained along temporary archways, hydrangeas in violet and pale blue, orchids in white and ivory positioned at the bases of the arrangements like punctuation. The colors moved from pale at the entrance to richer and deeper as you progressed through the space, so that walking in felt like walking through a sunset happening in their own direction. The fragrance was layered and extraordinary and entirely different from the lilies and roses of the church — warmer, more complex, the scent of a greenhouse and a garden and something almost tropical all at once.
The hall itself was lit almost entirely by candles. The chandeliers above had been dimmed to the barest suggestion of themselves, their function reduced to a faint architectural glow, and in their place the room was illuminated by the candles — hundreds of them, in crystal holders of varying heights at the center of every table, their combined light producing a warmth and an intimacy that made the vast room feel very close. The tables were dressed in ivory linen with floral centerpieces that continued the entrance garden's theme, each one a contained world of color and fragrance. Place cards in gold, menus in gold. The same engraved gold script from the church program, carried through to every printed surface in the room, a continuous visual language that said this day was a single, unified, considered thing.
And then there was the cake.
I saw it when we entered the room for the first time as husband and wife, and I stopped walking for a moment because it was genuinely necessary to stop and look at it. Five tiers — but tier was not the right word for what they had built, because each level was itself a substantial construction, the whole structure rising above the tallest guest in the room by a considerable measure, a white and gold confection of hand-piped detail and sugar flowers and structural ambition that looked less like food and more like the work of an architect who had decided, as an experiment, to see what happened if a building were made of cake. It stood at the center of the room on a dedicated platform and it was, without question, the most impressive thing I had ever seen made of sugar.
The band took the stage at eight o'clock. I will not say their name because contracts were involved and I was advised not to, but I will say that when they played their first note, every woman in the venue first screamed before standing up to either record them on their phones or dance. That was what was expected of such a band. They were a seven-piece group and they played with the ease of musicians who are performing because they love it and happen to also be being paid very well for doing so.
The food arrived in courses that had been designed by a chef whose restaurant had a waiting list measured in months, and the smell of it — the first course alone — had reportedly reached the street outside before the second course had been served, which I was told by the venue coordinator with a pride that suggested this was considered a meaningful benchmark. I believed her. The smell of this dinner will definitely stay in my head for the rest of my life because I Love food.
Somewhere between the third course and the first dance, I found a moment — I cannot tell you exactly when or how, only that it happened in the way that moments sometimes happen at events this large, a pocket of stillness inside the noise — to stand at the edge of the room and look at all of it.
The candles; The flowers; The five-story cake; The band; The five hundred people eating food that smelled like nothing I have ever experienced before. My mother Julie Daniels and Margaret Huffington sitting together at the high table discussing with each other then came in my surprise.
As I stated earlier I am an Inventor, my latest invention known as Optic-Core is a AI driven device that can upgrade any camera lens to take better pictures. Erica (my wife) had taken my invention and produced a thousand more as she told me and started giving them for free at our wedding so that people could see the power of Optic-Core and our wedding pictures would be the first for people all over the world to experience with Optic-Core.
Just like that everyone was plugging it to their phones, when they took the first picture you would hear instant screams like they were shocked, they show the next person they too ran over to get theirs. They snap and scream too, which means they all liked my invention and that means I am in business.
And Erica — across the room, laughing at looking at me, pointing as she smiles showing me people taking picture with my invention and seeing how it made so many people feel, one of the bridesmaid covering every angle of her dress, maybe she has never worn a ten thousand dollar dress before so this is her only chance.
My wife — Erica.
I need you to understand something about that name I just called. I need you to understand what it means for Noah Daniels — engineer, inventor, man of the laboratory, owner of four shirts and a bank account that had twice embarrassed me — to be standing in this room, at this event, watching her.
A year ago, I only knew her name from people on social media.
A year ago, I lived in a Lab and the most expensive thing I owned was a precision optical bench that I had bought secondhand and carried up the stairs by myself because I couldn't afford to hire anyone to help.
A year ago, I was in a laboratory at five in the morning, running countless tests to make my invention work, talking to no one, going nowhere, believing with the stubborn completeness that had defined my entire adult life that the thing I was building was worth everything I was giving up to build it. After so many failures it finally worked.
That invention success was the beginning of how everything changed.
With that memory in head and my heart beating happily, I walk across the room to my wife and in this moment I feel I should explain who we all are and why such an extravagant wedding.
Margaret Huffington is the Administrator to a Billion dollar estate built by herself and her late Husband Adrian Huffington. Erica Huffington is her only daughter and Sole offspring and thus according to Margaret the only wedding she will attend as a mother in law and therefore she has to splurge on it. My mother is Julie Daniels and an Administrator of a Fifty Million dollar estate but I had decided to break free from her to build my dreams my way hence the reason I am broke.
I estimate this wedding to be between the five to six million dollar range but the best part of it is seeing my life's work bringing smiles to people's faces and knowing that my wife is the reason behind that.
As I finally reach her, I hold her hands and gently pull her closer to me, so close our forehead touch, we both smile then I reach out for her lips and kiss her, in that kiss she could feel it, my happiness, my gratitude towards her. Instantly I hear the crowd scream and you can hear the cameras clicking and everyone taking picture they will never forget. After we finish I hear a spoon tapping on glass from someone at the high table and it Margaret as she was about to make an announcement, apparently Both our mother had something to say.
Before they say anything, remember I said I lied to get us here, so let me go back to where it all began, they day and how I met my wife. I will start with my wife because it sounds funny.