Elle Evans, WEDDING ISSUES: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
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[0:26]or join the community at ZiviReaders.
[0:31]El Evans is the author of wedding issues, a novel.
[0:35]This is a ZiviBooks publishing project, and we could not be more thrilled to have El be a part of our ZiviBooks team.
[0:42]I hope you really love this book wedding issues, we sure do.
[0:45]A Boston native, El Evans spent five years in Nashville soaking up sweet Southern hospitality and even sweeter iced tea.
[0:53]She now lives in Philadelphia with her husband and rescue dog Calypso,
[0:56]the first of many pets named for Greek mythology characters.
[0:59]El enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and attempting ambitious cocktail recipes.
[1:03]She writes under a not so secret pseudonym to maintain separation from her day job as a doctor.
[1:09]Welcome, El. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your book wedding issues, a novel.
[1:16]I am so excited to be here. Thank you.
[1:19]And it was so fun to talk to you an author of a book that we're actually publishing, which makes it even more exciting.
[1:25]We've got an advanced look.
[1:27]Okay, so, El, please tell listeners what wedding issues is about.
[1:31]Sure. I love this question.
[1:32]What an issue is about a fast talking charismatic law student who finds herself as made of honor for two weddings that are competing for a bridal magazine cover.
[1:42]Her best friend's wedding and her cousin's wedding.
[1:44]So she's kind of dealing with competing priorities, a scheming aunt and an off limits crush and try to juggle all that and graduate law school.
[1:53]So one ride. I had a ton of fun writing it and I hope people have even half as much fun reading it.
[1:59]So this is your debut novel. Where did this come from?
[2:03]You also have other work and, you know, both sides of your brains seem to be working.
[2:09]You know, right? So talk more about becoming a novelist at all.
[2:14]And when you started writing this book and I don't know everything.
[2:18]Where did you grow up? Let's go all the way back.
[2:21]You're getting kind of the beginning.
[2:23]I grew up in the Massachusetts really.
[2:25]I was a big, big reader always.
[2:27]Family lore says I wrote my first quote book at the age of four on a bunch of post-its.
[2:33]It was called the cat who ate dog food and a dog who ate cat food.
[2:37]And that was pretty much the whole plot right there in the title was widely praised by all critics who were related to me.
[2:44]And then I wrote, you know, these little novels and elementary school that my parents would publish at Kate goes and distribute to, you know, the grandparents who again are very, very receptive audience to that kind of thing.
[2:56]And then just was sort of writing a, you know, casually, you know, sort of my whole childhood.
[3:01]In college I started writing plays more actually. So I had a couple of short plays done in festivals around Massachusetts.
[3:07]And then a couple years ago in med school, I started, you know, like, all right, you know, I've been reading long enough.
[3:12]I think I want to try and take this seriously and then learn a little bit more about character development and story structure.
[3:18]And, you know, I never really took any writing classes growing up. So it's very much just sort of modeling all the things that I read in books, a very sort of self-taught.
[3:26]So I had a lot to learn from kind of the structural aspect.
[3:30]And then for wedding issues, I wrote that in time of my life.
[3:34]So how did you do to learn the structure and what were some of like the most salient points that you're like, oh, okay, I didn't know this and now I'm going to put that into play.
[3:44]I think as a reader and I was a huge, I think someone very wise once said that, you know, all writers are first readers. I don't know if that's true. It sounds true.
[3:52]I read a lot, a lot of books growing up. So I think the sentence structure sort of putting words on the page that came very naturally just from having read a lot growing up.
[4:02]I think thinking about things like, oh, my protagonist should probably change in some way, like have a character development over the course of a story or, you know, there shouldn't be long periods of the book, most of the time where, you know, they're just reacting to everything and they're not doing anything.
[4:17]Just things like that that feels sort of intuitive now that I've read some books and, you know, listen to a bunch of interviews and heard other authors who much better train than I am kind of think through those process, all those sort of intentional things that if you write a good book as a reader, a casual reader, you don't really notice.
[4:34]You're just like, this feels like a good story and I want to root for this person and I like the matter at the end and maybe I did at the beginning.
[4:40]Those were all sort of things that I had to be like, Oh, I sort of took this for granted as a casual reader and now if I want to be a writer myself, I have to take them a little more seriously.
[4:49]Interesting. Okay. Sorry. Right. Back to wedding issues.
[4:52]I spent five years in Nashville for grad school and as my mid 20s and that was a period of my time, especially in the South where everyone's getting engaged and married and one of my close friends.
[5:04]So I was made of honor and prize made and wedding planning was just a huge part of my life in that time and I got engaged and married in that time too. So really was in the thick of it.
[5:14]And something I didn't really appreciate until my friends started to get married is, you know, obviously there's the huge romantic exciting part of it, but there's also a big sort of friendship component to away a lot of people experience wedding planning and something that brought me and my friends, especially friends who lived in different cities closer together, even if we're just skype being about rights made dresses.
[5:34]It was an excuse to, you know, get together and sort of chat. And so I wanted to write a book sort of with that backdrop of wedding planning and sort of focusing more on those friendship and family dynamics more than of course the very obvious romantic part of weddings and then setting it in Nashville, which is just a really fun city that I was had the chance to live in.
[5:53]I love your how you'd really take us in the setting of Nashville.
[5:57]I mean, I've only been once and I'm going against, you know, with you, I'll be there for the event. You're doing it. I'm so excited. But even just like, okay, now here we are in Centennial Park and like now here, you know, it's just like rooting us in the city and feeling like now I know it a lot better than like I have some inside information or something like I really.
[6:16]I mean, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, that was a fun element.
[6:24]It was, it was very fun to write the book and you know, everything in the book, even the first restaurant that they they have their first thing is it's a fictional name, but it's very much based on a real place.
[6:33]And so I'm excited to go back and just sort of do the little mini book tour in my head of like, oh, this is what I was picturing for the bathroom.
[6:40]I was thinking of for this restaurant. So yeah, it's a really, really fun city. I'll just throw that out there. You don't have to be in a bachelor at party or bachelor party to enjoy it. There's there's really a lot to do.
[6:53]There's a whole element of New York sort of New York longing in Nashville though right. So like even looking at the editor, what is her name again, the editor at the magazine how her office looks like it's sort of posed very.
[7:09]So I think that was sort of a proxy for what I experienced living there.
[7:32]Not near specifically, but more sort of the Northeast, the Yankees style of life versus the South.
[7:40]I lived, I grew up must choose. It's like I said, I did college outside Boston. So this was my first time living in a different region of the country is when I was in Tennessee.
[7:48]And it's, it's very different. And I liked it a lot. But you know, when I first walked and moved down there, I remember the first week.
[7:58]I was thinking a little boutique and this lady came up to me and just sort of struck up a conversation.
[8:03]Not the typical, you know, disinterested Northeastern sales associate who just like, can I help you and then like doesn't really want to help you like this person.
[8:10]You know, wanted to chat about everything and I was a little creeped out and I was like, it's kind of weird. I'm not really used to strangers just talking to me so much.
[8:17]And again, I was a little creeped out just for my Massachusetts upbringing as that happened repeatedly. And then two years later, I'm going up to Massachusetts for Christmas. So I'm like, everyone here's kind of me.
[8:29]I mean, the check out line. That was like, oh my gosh, Nashville's rubbed off on me. So there are, you know, a lot of culture differences, you know, more subtle ones than, you know, sort of like the big political things between the Northeast and the South.
[8:42]And, you know, part of what I was experiencing when I was living there was I came in very much with my Northeastern identity. And then as I spent more time in Nashville, I was like, there are parts of this culture that really appealed to me.
[8:53]And so, you know, to be honest, I might end up moving back to Nashville one day. So stay tuned.
[9:00]Yeah, I mean, I spent some time in Charleston where my husband used to live, not that Charleston in Nashville is the same, but I was there for a book event and I needed a different pair of shoes for some reason, something happened to my shoe. I don't even know.
[9:11]And I was running late and the lady was like, Oh, just go to your event and come back and pay us later.
[9:16]And she's like, yeah, just go where the shoes. Like, we know, we know where you are. We can find you over there. And I looked at my husband. He's like, this is Charleston. This is just this is totally typical.
[9:26]Yeah, so I was blown away by that. Yeah, couldn't believe it.
[9:30]Well, there are themes also in the book, not just of weddings and all of that. And, but really it's this competition, but also entrepreneurship. Right. Because one of the bridal contenders, which you can talk about the differences of the two,
[9:46]as launching a business at the same time or wants to launch this ready hand made rides, made stresses and all that.
[9:53]And so they're trying to position her as one of the contenders as not just it, not just her wedding.
[9:59]Okay.
[10:00]It's a beautiful Southern woman with a huge Instagram following,
[10:02]but also because you can see the progression of her career
[10:05]and like launching a business and that weddings used to be
[10:09]the end of your career for a woman, right?
[10:11]And now this is the beginning for her
[10:13]and sort of what that means for society.
[10:15]So talk about that a little bit.
[10:17]Yeah, no, I did that very intentionally
[10:20]because there's the two brides in the book
[10:22]and I don't think this is a spoiler.
[10:23]I'm very briefly, there's Layton,
[10:24]who's Olivia the main character's best friend
[10:27]who's sort of your quintessential Southern girl
[10:30]is hoping to pursue a career in fashion
[10:33]and has a large Instagram following.
[10:35]It's been working on growing that
[10:36]but is also trying to launch some made for tailoring
[10:40]brides made dressing and dresses.
[10:42]So hopes that this exposure will sort of help propel her.
[10:45]Cali, the other bride, Olivia's cousin,
[10:47]is very disinterested in weddings in general
[10:50]and is sort of doing it for family reasons.
[10:53]The Layton character could definitely
[10:56]be hired more towards sort of stereotypes
[10:57]of Southern girls in particular.
[10:59]There still is a culture and many universities
[11:02]in the south of that sort of ring by spring phenomenon
[11:05]of going to undergrad or certain in grad school
[11:08]with the hope of finding your partner.
[11:10]And I remember I moved down to the south
[11:12]when I was 23, completely single
[11:15]and I moved down and I called my mom after like two months
[11:17]and I was like, I'm gonna die alone.
[11:18]I'm a little, I'm a little, you know, I'm washed up.
[11:22]I'm a spinster, you know,
[11:23]because that was what it was like.
[11:25]There was such a focus on getting engaged
[11:27]and starting your family and doing all of those things.
[11:29]I think the south is a little bit more traditional
[11:32]in that aspect, but I do think there's recently
[11:35]been more of a shift towards, you know,
[11:37]even if there's a cultural expectation
[11:39]to get married earlier, it's not necessarily like the be all
[11:42]end all the pinnacle of everything you're achieving
[11:44]as a woman, you know, sure you may want to start a family
[11:48]earlier, et cetera, but you doesn't mean you're
[11:50]sitting aside your career to do that.
[11:52]So I think that's that's a little bit of a change
[11:54]that I was hoping to show was sort of late
[11:56]and balancing both of those.
[11:57]Interesting.
[11:58]And Callie, you have as an LGBTQ new,
[12:02]the pitches she will bring a new point of view
[12:05]and new life into this very state magazine southern town
[12:09]and Callie is sort of a reluctant poster child
[12:12]for this magazine, right?
[12:13]But her Aunt Charlotte really wants her to be this person,
[12:18]which of course speaks to all the generational things
[12:21]going on in the book as well.
[12:22]I mean, even Layton's mom and sort of not thinking
[12:26]that her Instagram career is actually a career
[12:28]and sort of wanting to please the elders
[12:31]and just sort of that rift.
[12:33]Did you see that?
[12:34]Did you find that sort of generational attention
[12:37]when you were there?
[12:39]I think there is some of that generational tension.
[12:42]Nashville itself is a very progressive city compared
[12:46]to the rest of Tennessee in general.
[12:48]I think you see more of that the more you get out
[12:50]into more rural parts of the state.
[12:52]This is a little bit different.
[12:53]Of course, then are very different
[12:55]than sort of the LGBTQ angle for Callie,
[12:58]but I had a good friend when I lived in Nashville,
[13:00]who was in a biracial relationship,
[13:03]which is very common.
[13:05]It's 2023 and sometimes when they traveled,
[13:09]they would drive to a couple states away.
[13:11]So they had to drive out through the rural parts
[13:12]of the state and they actually caught a lot of attitude
[13:16]at some of the smaller hotels for asking for one room
[13:19]for two of them, which is sounds shocking.
[13:22]And maybe it shouldn't be that's my naivete
[13:24]that I was shocked by this the first time she told me that,
[13:27]but it's, Nashville itself is very progressive,
[13:30]but they're certainly our elements of the state
[13:32]that are a little bit less so interesting.
[13:35]Wanting to help and be in this creative field
[13:38]of Olivia lived versus her very methodical,
[13:43]law track career.
[13:46]Talk about those sort of dueling parts of her mind
[13:50]and brain and how it parallels you
[13:53]versus the writer side versus the doctor side and all that.
[13:57]Yeah.
[13:58]So the reason that I use elements is a pen name.
[14:01]It's I joke like the worst kept secret.
[14:03]It's not a big secret.
[14:06]The reason I use one is because my day job is
[14:08]as a resident doctor and sometimes patients
[14:11]like to Google us for credentials or publications
[14:14]sort of wanted to keep those elements
[14:16]of my life separate.
[14:17]So for me, I'm in sort of the apprenticeship stage
[14:21]of medical training.
[14:22]So I have my medical degree.
[14:23]I'm a doctor, but I spent four years working
[14:26]under more and more experienced fully qualified
[14:29]andesthesiologists, et cetera.
[14:31]So it's a pretty demanding time and energy part of my career.
[14:35]And it takes a lot out of me.
[14:36]So writing has always been a way for me
[14:38]to sort of not lose that other part of me.
[14:41]because medicine has a tendency of being very
[14:43]own-compassing.
[14:45]There's always more to learn and there's that pressure
[14:48]that you have people's lives in your hands.
[14:50]And I don't say that lightly.
[14:52]My specialty anesthesia, you know,
[14:55]when everything goes well,
[14:56]you just tell you to pick out a nice dream.
[14:58]I'll be there with you.
[14:59]I'll see them on their side.
[15:00]But when things go wrong in anesthesia,
[15:03]they go wrong very, very quickly.
[15:04]And you have seconds to minutes to act.
[15:06]And so there's a lot of pressure always,
[15:09]not only when you're at work,
[15:10]but when you're outside of work,
[15:11]should be studying and making sure
[15:13]that you're the best doctor you could possibly be
[15:15]so that when you're in that situation,
[15:18]you know, you can take the best care of your patient,
[15:20]which is not a responsibility to any of us take lightly.
[15:23]But at the same time, it can lead to burnout
[15:24]where there's that feeling of,
[15:26]should I always be studying?
[15:27]Should I always work on my skills?
[15:29]You know, that my career is,
[15:30]I have people's lives in my hand.
[15:32]But you also, you have to take care of yourself too.
[15:34]You can't take care of patients and I'll take care of yourself.
[15:36]For me, writing is a way to really, you know,
[15:40]hold on to a part of myself that I really love
[15:42]and to really be able to exercise those creative muscles
[15:45]that, to be honest, I don't use every day
[15:48]when I'm thinking about drug dosages or things like that.
[15:52]Oh my gosh.
[15:53]Well, Matthew Perry's ketamine overdose situation.
[15:57]Do you, like, I always think it's used for anesthesia
[16:00]and he was an anesthesiologist to be like,
[16:02]what did you make of that?
[16:04]Yeah, no, we were all talking about it
[16:07]when the news came out.
[16:08]I think there's likely contributing factors.
[16:11]It was probably, you know, and I haven't read,
[16:13]I'll say I haven't read the official pathologist
[16:15]or report or anything like that.
[16:16]Ketamine is a drug that we use commonly in the ORC.
[16:19]It can be used as a sedative.
[16:20]It can be used lower doses of pain medicine.
[16:23]It's possible that he was receiving ketamine infusions
[16:26]at home and mixed it with some other substances
[16:28]that can sort of depress respiratory function.
[16:32]Ketamine itself doesn't do that as much,
[16:33]but it can sort of sedate you.
[16:35]And, you know, if you're in a hot tub
[16:36]and you're, you know, overly sedated,
[16:38]then, you know, bad things can happen.
[16:40]Wow, sorry.
[16:41]That was a random tip.
[16:42]No.
[16:43]So with the book, what are you hoping readers get out
[16:47]of the story?
[16:48]That's a great question.
[16:49]I, well, I'm hoping to get some laughs out of it.
[16:51]You know, I hope they put this down
[16:52]and, you know, like this book may, you know,
[16:55]took me on a ride, made me kind of visit this other world
[16:58]and I had a really good time doing it.
[17:00]And then also, hopefully, think a little bit about,
[17:02]you know, what they want out of life.
[17:04]That's something that Liv is really sort of thinking about
[17:06]throughout the book and she's just sort of on this path
[17:08]of big law and career and just not really,
[17:11]but hasn't really thought intentionally
[17:13]about why she wants those things
[17:15]and if she really does.
[17:16]And there's definitely a sunk cost fallacy.
[17:18]We all get in these paths in life.
[17:20]And the next step seems apparent.
[17:22]And then you, you don't stop the question
[17:24]once you're three steps in if you really want step number four.
[17:27]And so I hope that, at least for some people
[17:29]that book might, might spark that question as well.
[17:32]and that it doesn't have to necessarily be one thing.
[17:35]Like, look at you, you know, there might not be one answer.
[17:38]Maybe it's not.
[17:39]I mean, you have a lot of ABC, you know,
[17:40]different multiple choices.
[17:42]Like, sometimes the answer really can be all of the above.
[17:45]No, for sure.
[17:46]And just thought that.
[17:47]That was so poetic.
[17:49]Thank you.
[17:50]Are you working on a new book?
[17:52]I am.
[17:52]I'm working on a couple of different books right now.
[17:55]One of them, I think, one thing about me,
[17:57]sometimes I've listened to some of your podcasts
[17:59]as so many of your podcasts
[18:00]and the authors talk about all the research
[18:03]that they do for the books.
[18:04]And I am in awe, because I am so speaking.
[18:08]And I really like it to write about things
[18:10]that I know a lot about already.
[18:12]So I don't have to research quite as much.
[18:14]You know, I wish that I would be the kind of person who's like,
[18:16]I want to learn about under CC diving.
[18:18]So I'm going to write about it.
[18:20]And, but for me, I would have this anxiety
[18:23]and under C-diver would read my book
[18:24]and be like, she's never been C-diving this,
[18:26]this, you know, et cetera.
[18:28]So I think that I'm long intro.
[18:30]I'm working on a couple of books sort of more
[18:32]said in the hospital setting.
[18:34]There's a lot of interesting sort of social
[18:37]and political dynamics in the hospital
[18:38]that I think are, you know, in any workspace
[18:40]fairly unique to that workspace.
[18:42]But I think people are usually curious about that.
[18:45]It's as evidenced by the success of things
[18:47]like Grace Anatomy.
[18:48]So yeah, so more to come there soon, hopefully.
[18:51]That's exciting.
[18:52]Very cool.
[18:53]And what are the types of books you'd like to read?
[18:55]You said you were a huge reader growing up.
[18:57]Were there any that you really can point to
[19:00]as shaping you as a kid
[19:02]or that you've particularly loved now
[19:04]or just what kind of genre do you like
[19:05]or are all of the above?
[19:07]Yeah.
[19:08]I think what I can point to the most for shaping me
[19:11]even though I don't write like him is the Robin Cook.
[19:14]He is sort of the archetypal wrote the,
[19:17]come and created the subgenre of the medical thriller.
[19:20]He wrote co-one, I think is his best work,
[19:22]our best known work.
[19:24]And he's written like 39 or 40 books.
[19:27]He's a successful doctor and author.
[19:28]So when I was like eight and I found his first book,
[19:31]I was like, I want to be Robin Cook.
[19:33]I do.
[19:34]So again, we don't write the same type of books
[19:37]but he was sort of my model for,
[19:39]oh, you can do both of these things.
[19:41]You don't have to pick just one.
[19:43]So him in that way.
[19:44]And then when I was growing up,
[19:45]I read a lot of science fiction more than,
[19:48]way more than I do now.
[19:48]I wrote a lot of Michael Creighton.
[19:50]I really liked Jurassic Park.
[19:52]It was probably his best known.
[19:53]And then nowadays I mostly read sort of in my genre
[19:57]just to get better and to learn from other authors.
[20:00]Really. So, of course, you know, Emily Henry is great. So I read, I read just sort of anything I can get my hands on, to be honest.
[20:06]Amazing. I should just have you read all these books. You could just read them for me, although it's coming up.
[20:11]I love reading.
[20:13]How do you do? I know who I'm talking to.
[20:16]That's true. So what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[20:20]Oh, I think the single, which I'm sure they've already heard, but the single most important piece of advice is to just get words on the page.
[20:28]That's what changed things for me a couple years ago when I started taking writing seriously before that I would write these like, I would get somewhere between five to 15,000 words into a book and I wouldn't have plotted anything out and then I would just sort of run out of steam.
[20:41]But especially if you have a demanding, a demanding career, if you have, you know, family responsibilities or we all have a lot going on in life is just I set goals for myself for number goals.
[20:51]And I really embraced the approach of I write flaming garbage heap first drafts that I would be embarrassed for anyone to read.
[21:00]So that takes the pressure off of them having to be good and so makes a lot easier to get words done. So just write every day.
[21:07]Don't worry. They don't have to be good. And then for me, it works a lot better to just write poor first drafts that I would never let anyone see.
[21:15]And then revise a lot more before I let anyone even start to get me feedback.
[21:19]And when do you do this, like with a full time resident career, I mean, the lore is that that is like the most intense thing ever is being a resident you don't even know.
[21:30]It's very intense. Well, my ideal writing is in this room, which is like our little study and I crank the AC up so I'm artificially cold and then bundle up and secure right for like six hours.
[21:40]But if I waited for those conditions, I would never write because I could do that like once a month. So part of embracing the very bad first draft is that I write a lot on the notes app on my phone, just whenever I can.
[21:53]If I'm waiting for a patient to use the bathroom and pre up.
[21:56]If I'm waiting for the surgeon to finish their case or you know any time I have downtime, I just pick up my notes app and I'll write a couple sentences.
[22:03]And as you can imagine writing sentences at a time, it's a little harder to keep the flow of a seed intact you know there's more inconsistencies and there's more to clean up later.
[22:12]But by doing that, it helps me right. And then again, part of my job in residency is sometimes just to physically be in the hospital in case someone needs surgery in case someone has an airway problem.
[22:24]And I'm actually, you know, doing medicine all the time. So when I'm at the I was on call yesterday, or over the weekend for 24 hours and I was probably only like in the OR for 12 of them.
[22:36]So for the other hours, I was just sort of sitting in my little column room writing on my computer so you kind of.
[22:41]Quite a bad sleep. I do sleep sometimes. Yeah.
[22:45]That is so crazy to me, the image of you like in your scrubs like pulling out a phone and typing.
[22:53]That's right. That's right. Magic happens. It's very glamorous.
[22:56]I'm trying to get them done in the hallway.
[22:59]That is really cool, though. There could be a whole book about maybe that's what you should put in your book that's being said in the hospital.
[23:06]The hospital writers.
[23:08]Oh my gosh. So where do you think your characters would be today? Oh, that's a fun question.
[23:14]I think, well, I don't want to give too much away. Okay. Don't get what you have to without any spoilers.
[23:20]Okay. Without any spoilers.
[23:22]I think Olivia, the main character has has thought critically about what she wants in life and has made the choice that's best for her is is happy on that path in a way that she, she may not have been before when she was really thinking too hard about that.
[23:37]I think late in partnership took off. I'll just put it that way. And that she's sort of taken those first steps.
[23:44]And I think, Callie is probably somewhere in Africa.
[23:49]And she's with Greta and they're taking some amazing photos of Zebra, which is where I'd like to be right now.
[23:55]Okay.
[23:57]Did you have any just as a last question? Tell me about any wedding issues that you had with your own wedding.
[24:03]Oh my gosh.
[24:05]I, I played my wedding. So I lived in, I was living in Tennessee and I got married and made some from the Northeast and spent a lot of time and kind of on poor were my grandparents lived.
[24:13]So I plan my wedding from several states away, which of course, if you have a choice is I would not recommend more difficult.
[24:21]But I have my mom and grandma who were like my boots on the ground and we had a wedding planner. So I had this whole crew. My mom is crazy organized.
[24:28]And I had a wedding planner. It was great. We're going to nail this. It's going to be awesome. And just goes to show like the best laid plan. So I think two of the funniest things that happened where my, and again, my, my husband is probably your typical not so involved room.
[24:44]A stereotype would would apply to him. He knew that the date, you know, the general color scheme, but he didn't know a lot.
[24:50]But, you know, I told them to get the groomsmen in 80 suits and they have blue ties, which he distributed. And then one of the groomsmen showed up with like a like this color purple shirt to wear underneath, which I guess, you know, I think we had all thought was implied to bring a white shirt to wear underneath.
[25:08]And then we had in this like mad scramble in the bridesmaids group.
[25:11]What do you, what size are your dates like who has a white shirt. So one of the bridesmaids boyfriends gave up his white shirt. So I think men could not be in like purple for the wedding photos.
[25:21]And then the other thing was we did our first dance.
[25:24]We like choreographed something. Neither of us are big dancers. We got through it. I messed up one thing. It's fine. We're feeling good walking out the dance floor.
[25:32]And someone walks by with our salads, which look nothing like the salads we picked.
[25:36]And then we're well, what's that? That looks weird. And then the next way to walk by with this like neon orange could like just horrible like jello looking thing.
[25:45]And we were like, what is that? You know, because the one thing my husband cared about was the food. So we take on our food really seriously. I'm like, what the heck.
[25:53]So we go to our chair and they've given me one of these orange things. And long story short, they had the hotel had messed up what we picked for our vegetarian order.
[26:02]So we picked this like really delicious mushroom risotto and they served like this horrible orange tofu thing.
[26:08]Including to me because that's what I hate. And so that was a little on the fly. We were trying to figure that out. And the worst part was the tofu was very bad.
[26:16]And I had personally talked like five people out of the salmon.
[26:20]Because I was like, you're so, it was so good. Like I'm getting it. You should get it. So I felt so bad.
[26:26]That was just like, I think, you know, you do all these things and somehow orange tofu still crashes your wedding. And you know, it is what it is. It's fine.
[26:33]Orange tofu and purple shirts. You never know what you're going to get.
[26:37]Exactly. So, you know, if those are the biggest things that go wrong, you know, it was, it was a great day. We were very, very happy in there.
[26:43]They're funny stories now. But in the moment, I remember it walking, watching that trade go by and just like, what is that?
[26:50]Oh my gosh.
[26:51]Well, those are, yeah, we had like a deluge of rain. And they're like, every wedding has.
[26:56]Yeah, there's always something, you know, something. But anyway, I'm so exciting. Even though that's not your real name, but I'm just going to go with it.
[27:04]Congratulations on wedding issues. Thank you for trusting Zibi books to launch your book. We're so excited to have you as part of the author team. So really looking forward to everything we have in store with you.
[27:15]Me too. Thank you so much, Zibi.
[27:17]Thank you.
[27:18]All right. I'll talk to you later. Bye.
[27:21]Thanks for listening. Two moms don't have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at Zibi Owens and at Zibi readers.