Always the Bridesmaid »

Whitney Lyles is 26 and has served as a bridesmaid five times. This is her fiction debut.

What do you do after you walk down the aisle in four weddings in a few months-none of them your own? What's left after you've donned the must-have-not dresses of the season, forked over your cash, and fake-smiled your way through countless photos? After you've dealt with the smashed guest, the smooshed cake, the dashed hopes, and the missed bouquets? That's what Cate Padgett is starting to wonder, as she embarks on stint after stint on the sidelines, watching friends swap bar-hopping for baby-naming...while her own love life goes nowhere fast. But is Cate unwilling to settle down-or just unwilling to settle? And can anyone really judge her if they haven't walked in her dyed-to-match shoes?

Wild, witty, and full of weddings to cry over, Always the Bridesmaid is an endearingly romantic comedy about standing out in the crowd even when everyone's wearing the same celery-green dress...and daring to make every day The Happiest Day of Your Life.

Publishers Weekly

For any bridesmaid who's gone down the aisle too many times accompanying others, Lyles's uneven but perky debut will provoke many grins and groans. Wedding-weary Cate Padgett, kindergarten teacher, freelance photographer and reluctant San Diego single, has endured more than her share of "bride's slave" duties. She's had to buy overpriced shower presents, don nightmarish wedding garb she can hardly afford and suffer through a bachelorette party where she's given a lipstick vibrator for a favor, along with a penis crown she's supposed to wear while having a lap dance from a male stripper her pal Val calls "Cheesedick." Cate would much rather plan her own wedding, but she's having trouble figuring out who her groom should be-GQ-cool "No Call Paul" or her faithful friend, caterer Ethan Blakely? Although Lyles's prose style wavers from wooden to wonderful, her eye for delightful details-a bride who becomes a controlling and fiendishly demanding diva, the ubiquitous wedding drunk, over-orchestrated "fairy tale" touches that backfire (brides falling off of bucking horses are so not Martha Stewart) and a freakish costume change at a Hotel del Coronado wedding that leads to Cate's happy ending-makes this the ultimate bridesmaid gift. Agent, Julie Burton at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. (Feb. 3) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.