She said I was “so organized,” which was Whitney’s word for “willing to do tedious things without being thanked.”
She wanted me to track down vendor quotes, chase a few deposits, keep an eye on some deadlines.
To make it easy, she added me to the shared planning spreadsheet she and the wedding planner were using — a sprawling, multi-tabbed document with a budget, a guest list, a vendor schedule, and a running column of notes.
I said yes, of course.
I always said yes.
And for a few weeks I actually enjoyed it.
There was something soothing about the columns, the tidy sums, the sense of being useful.
I called caterers and confirmed florists and felt, briefly, like part of something.
Then Whitney’s interest in my help evaporated as quickly as it had appeared — she found a full planner, Melissa, and stopped answering my questions — and I assumed my access to the spreadsheet would be revoked along with my usefulness.
It wasn’t.
Whitney simply forgot.
She forgot the way you forget a light left on in a room you’ve stopped using.
And so, for six months, I retained a quiet, unnoticed window into exactly how my sister planned her perfect wedding.
I didn’t snoop.
I want to be clear about that, because it matters to me.
For a long time I didn’t look at all.
The document would email me a notification whenever it was edited, and for months I let those notifications pile up unread, because I had no reason to care about the thread count on Whitney’s napkins.
It was an accident that I ever opened one at all.