The news of an engagement and a pending wedding should be a joyous thing for most families. It was a few weeks after the engagement, of my brother and his bride-to-be, Satan, on a Saturday morning, in late October, I had a doctors appointment. My husband was over at my mom's house, along with my brother and of course Satan (she can't let him go anywhere alone) helping my mom move some furniture around so she could get her wood floors refinished. My husband calls me as soon as he leaves and tells me that my brother had asked him to be the best man at his wedding. I have to admit, I thought it was a bit strange. While him and my brother had a bond, I didn't think it was strong enough to be best man worthy. My husband said yes, regardless. He also informed me that there was absolutely no plan to have me in their wedding party. That also was a bit strange to me. Traditionally in an Italian-American family, siblings are automatically part of the bridal party. While it was a bit insulting, I was absolutely fine with not being in Satan's bridal party. Something told me she was going to be a bridezilla. (Bridezilla was an understatement for what she actually ended up being). My husband thought it was really f*cked up on their part not to include me and he was very offended that I wasn't asked and he was.
A few days later my brother called me to ask me if my son could be the ring bearer. By this point in time he was only 8-9 months old. Being a concerned parent, I asked my brother what he would do if my son couldn't walk by time his wedding rolled around and he told me that he'd have "someone" either carry him or push him in a wagon. I agreed to let my son be in the wedding party. So now everyone in my household was part of MY brother's wedding party, except me.
At first they were planning to have the wedding the following fall but for whatever reason they pushed it to way closer date….February of the following year which was less than four months away. Their exact date, February 14th. (*rolls eyes*). Four months is not a lot of time to prepare for a wedding but I've noticed a trend with Satan. Everything she does is rushed. That's because narcissists and psychopaths have a constant need for excitement in their lives. It's also because they don't want to give you too much time to think. They want to lock you down before you open your eyes and you can easily escape.
I was at the mall one day shopping and I went into one of my favorite stores. Well it's not my favorite because the prices are a little out of my comfort zone but I always like to stop in. The store is called Bebe. It's a young women's fashion store, that sells clubwear, casual wear and some professional wear. I always like the dresses in there and it's always when you don't need one that you see one you like. I browsed around and saw a few I liked and so I went into the dressing room and tried them on. There was one in particular that I liked. It was a strapless, purplish/burgundy color satin material with black lace trim on the top and bottom. I figured it was perfect for my brother's Valentine's Day wedding.
Authors note*I forgot to mention something kind of big, in this story and it just dawned on me, the day my brother informed me that he was going to propose to Satan he also shared some other rather big news with me. This wedding wasn't her first marriage. In fact, it wasn't her second either! The marriage to my brother was going to be her third wedding!!! Now I am not saying that everyone who has multiple marriages is messed up but coupling this along with all of the other troubling stuff I learned about Satan, it was a sure sign that something wasn't right. My brother asked me not to share the information with my mom, not because he didn't want to share it, but because SHE didn't. That too, made me feel uneasy. He didn't really know the reasons why her two previous marriages didn't work out but the fact that she wanted to keep this secret bothered me. Was she hiding something? Was there some problems in her previous marriages she didn't want us knowing about? What was her reason for hiding this info? Why was a woman who hasn't reached the age of forty yet, already divorced twice with multiple failed, long term relationships in the last 5-7 years?
It was the night I purchased my dress when my brother called me up and asked me if I wanted to do a reading at the wedding. I had already known he was going to ask me. My mom said something to him about me not being in the wedding party, (even though I asked her NOT TO!!) and this was their half assed , solution to not including me. Seeing that I'm not a big fan of public speaking I politely tried to decline the offer. While we were on the phone I decided to inform my brother that I purchased a dress for his wedding. I knew I was on speaker phone and I can hear someone whispering in the background. I'm telling him how I kind of accidentally found the dress while browsing around when he cuts me off and asks me what color it is. I try to explain the color as best I can. In the store lighting it looked more purplish but when I got home it appeared more burgundy looking. I couldn't give him a definitive answer but none the less I told him it was more in the purple family than red. He then asked me what store I got it from. I had him on speaker phone as well and my husband and I looked at one another, completely puzzled because it was a weird question, coming from my brother. I told him the store name and heard him repeating my answers. I then changed the subject and in the middle of me talking he cuts me off and asks me to describe the color of my dress AGAIN! At this point, I know my brother has absolutely ZERO interest in my dress. HE isn't the one asking the questions, Satan is. Again my husband and I looked at one another, completely confused and so I had to jokingly ask my brother, "what are you worried we are going to wear the same dress, or something?".
It was about three weeks after my conversation with my brother where he was asking weird questions about my dress. Just to give you an idea of how NOT into my fashion my brother is, there was this one time we were headed to a family function. My brother and I both still lived at home with our parents at the time. I was standing in the kitchen talking to him in the dress I was wearing for the party. He left the house to go pick his ex-fiancé up to go to the party. Later on I showed up at the party and I see everyone pointing at me and laughing. I turn around to see that my brother's girlfriend had the SAME EXACT DRESS on as me!!! This wasn't some plain dress, it had a bold pattern and was pretty unique. The fact that he didn't even realize it's familiarity when he picked up his girlfriend, goes to show how much he pays attention to what I'm wearing.
Anyway, I had thought originally his wife was concerned that my dress was going to clash with her bridesmaids dresses which were red. The way I described the color made it sound like it was a reddish color and so a few weeks later when my brother showed up at my house, completely unannounced (once again) I decided to pull the dress out and show him. He's color blind anyway but I'd figure he'd at least be able to calm Bridezilla and tell her that my dress was not the same color as her bridesmaids. Once again, my brother was tranced into his phone texting back and forth with her. I was talking to him and once again, he wasn't responding. He was hypnotized by his phone and so at one point I actually even said to him, "I don't know why I'm talking to you because you're not even paying attention." and he didn't even hear me say that! We were outside on my front porch. I went inside and pulled the dress out from my closet. He looked at the dress for all of about 2 seconds, said, "oh…nice." and went back to texting Satan. That was the day that changed everything…..