Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?
by Melissa Senate

Eloise Manfred just sold her soul to the wedding devil. In exchange for a free $100,000 dream wedding, she'll be featured in a trendy magazine as "Today's Modern Bride." So what if the advertisers dictate what she wears, eats, and registers for? From the gown (it has yellow feathers) to the reception hall (vampire chic) to the rings (what metal is that?) to the prime rib (tofu!), Eloise knows that what really matters is the groom (cold feet?). All she has to do is keep a wedding-planning diary (heavily edited) and have her friends and family ooh and ahh over her leather veil in photo shoots. Friends, Eloise has: bridesmaids Jane, Natasha, Amanda and oddball co-worker Philippa, the magazine's "traditional (ha!) Bride." Family, she doesn't have. Eloise's mother passed away, her father took off years ago, her too-cool- for-words brother is either climbing Mount Everest or scamming a rich older woman in Beverly Hills and her fiancé's family is certifiable. So between choosing rubber bridesmaid dresses and worrying about the photo shoots, Eloise finally asks the question: Hey--whose wedding is it anyway?

Melissa Senate's Bio

A summer baby born in a Catskills bungalow colony ("Dirty Dancing," anyone?) and raised in New York City and New Jersey, thirty-something Melissa Senate lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the setting for See Jane Date, her debut novel. After ten years as a romance novel editor (senior editor at Silhouette Books), and a couple of years as a senior editor of children's and young adult fiction (editing books by R.L. Stine and Francine Pascal), Melissa decided to drop out of corporate life and to concentrate on writing fiction and studying for a master's degree in English. Visit Melissa's website at melissasenate.com, check out interviews, her serialized novella, and the latest about Red Dress Ink at reddressink.com and feel free to email her at melissasenate@aol.com.