The first email was to the venue coordinator, a woman named Meredith who had patiently answered dozens of our questions about the ballroom and ceremony garden. I wrote that the wedding scheduled for November twelfth would no longer take place and that I was requesting the cancellation procedure in writing. My cursor hovered over the send button because I could almost see Meredith's pleasant face as she showed us the grounds, promising that the trees would still have color if the season was kind. I clicked send before I could talk myself into spending another hour rereading the same contract.
Next came the caterer, whose tasting had ended with Kinsley insisting we serve the rosemary chicken. The florist had drawn up a plan involving white ranunculus and eucalyptus, and the photographer had photographed my best friend's wedding two years earlier. Each vendor had a name and a person behind it, somebody who had made a commitment based on our promise to marry. I sent them careful, courteous messages asking for cancellation terms and acknowledging that we would probably lose the deposits.
I didn't write a long explanation about betrayal or trust. The people who had agreed to prepare our wedding did not need to hear a stranger's heartbreak in order to process a refund. I supplied the booking numbers, the date, and my contact information, then saved copies of every message. By three in the morning, the cancellations had been requested and the wedding planning folder looked like a collection of plans for somebody else's future.
The total amount I had paid was close to twelve thousand dollars. I opened the spreadsheet and looked at each line, calculating what might still be refundable under the deadlines in our agreements. Nine thousand dollars could disappear because of the decisions being made that night, perhaps more if the vendors enforced their terms strictly. It was an enormous sum to me, more than I had ever lost on a single personal decision, and part of me desperately wanted to close the computer and pretend the damage could be undone.
I thought about working overtime through two winters to build my savings. I thought about saying no to expensive trips when friends were going out, putting money into a separate account after every paycheck, and choosing our rented house because it let us save without feeling deprived. I thought about how easily I could have used that money for a down payment or a few months of freedom if work ever became unstable. For the first time that night, I cried, not loudly or for long, but with the dull anger of somebody watching years of discipline drain through a decision he hadn't wanted to make.