Chapter 32: The Wedding Gifts to the Bride

I used three tangible gifts to give Abril the inner sense of emotional security she needed for her acting job as my bride, given that I was not going to actually marry her but was going to give her to horny old men every month. The first two were obvious, the ring and the dress. The third gift was wheels.

I knew Abril would see the ring every day. The other wives would also scrutinize it. Based on some advice I did more than was expected rather than less, and Abril knew it. But I was not excessive enough to make the other wives question their husbands. It was a fine line to walk.

The bride’s dress was from a designer with a super exclusive cachet, none of the other lawyers’ wives could even get an appointment (well, maybe Jessica Stern and Ann Barnes could). The dress had come into the picture with repeated fittings that reinforced how Abril was special. In fact, the Hollywood designer said, repeatedly, how good Abril looked without the dress. As per tradition, I had not yet seen the one-off dress before the ceremony.

As an adopted Los Angeleno, there was only one other item, on the same par as her ring and her dress, that would refill Abril’s soul with a brilliant glow each month after the ceremony while some older law partner was working up a heart attack while slobbering over her tits. That was a set of custom wheels she could look to with pride. So I made that special too.

The Ring

Foremost of these three gifts was the one Abril would see every day, her combined engagement and wedding ring. Abril first saw the ring during our “wedding night.” The two rings were welded together and would be presented at the ceremony, but I said that the bride usually wore both rings on the wedding night, so Abril could as well. There was no engagement ring given ahead of time - I told people it was a family tradition reflecting a practice of arranged marriages before the war.

I had originally thought of a large relatively inexpensive stone ($10,000 to $20,000) in a very nice setting. But two things changed my mind. Abril had been so wonderful on the job during our entire time together and especially the last month-and-a-half, so I really wanted to give her more. (She was a natural tease, but an exceptional one who is always true to her role, so I did not fault her in that.) The second, and more convincing argument was made by Samantha, about how all the lawyer’s wives would want to see the ring, and some of them had serious training in gems. They knew the general rule about spending two to three months income, but they also knew how exceptional looks had a multiplier effect. In their eyes, a large $30,000 diamond, off-color with flaws, would be as obviously inappropriate to them as one that fell short of the standard. Sam also mentioned that, despite Abril’s great beauty, a greater crime would be to exceed reasonable expectations of my wealth. For example, something that looked like a million dollar stone would not do, that would upset the balance between spouses.

Then Sam explained that no appraiser could give a reliable evaluation of a stone in a setting. In effect, a $50,000 stone (the target range for my income) could not really be distinguished from a $500,000 stone in the right setting. However, if Abril knew the ring was really in the $100k plus category she would naturally act differently, and in her job acting was everything.

We shopped. Eventually Samantha picked out a $125,000 stone and ring set that was stunning enough for all concerned without being “too much” for an associate lawyer “looking ahead” at a partnership. A smaller “shopping and housework” ring set, similar but with a $20,000 stone (great color but there was a flaw), was also purchased for everyday use.

Samantha selected a brilliant stone, going smaller to get a near perfect very pure white gem, placed in a setting where the few minor internal defects were well hidden. It’s color was very pure, of the highest grade and would impress all, but would not shine out-of-place among the critical wives of the partners.

As long as Samantha was in stores dealing with such things, I also asked her to pick up a pair of items I designed, based on some sizing that Kwool sent to me from Peru. I had to keep a promise I made.

The Dress

The second gift for my bride was the fabulous scandalous wedding dress, which would be looked at very closely by the men and women who attended the wedding. I am told that, for wedding dresses, the name of the designer is the first and last consideration. (Recall, the grooms DO NOT see the dress until the bride appears at the ceremony.) Abril’s dress had to be from somebody with a degree of name-recognition among the wives as a high-status designer.

However, given Abril’s personality the dress had slant towards the risque. Nothing that Snow White would wear, it had to convey Abril’s unique heightened sexual personality, without violating local ordinances or the “designer name” standard.

Mostly this was an area where I was completely without a rudder, the very few department store names I knew were quite useless. Fortunately, I had Li to remind me I had a special “in” with a name that was so exclusive that it was so widely rumored as to be considered mythical. Ji El actually existed but could be seen only by those who were seriously “in the know,” like Ann Barnes. Li,

Cynthia, Samantha and Carly would carry it through. I would see the dress at the wedding.

A boutique designer named Ji El had designed Li’s obscene and completely impressive outfit for our date at the Blank. With that one design, exposed exclusively to Blank members who saw pictures on display at the Blank, Ji El’s name as a designer exploded through the very highest levels of the entertainment industry. She quickly became inundated with requests for “Red Carpet” wear, the type where the first question of any star is “who are you wearing?” At every mention her name was linked to the mysterious Oriental multi-media superstar Do Wong. The two names were so intertwined that a person could not talk about one without the other, and both were too mysterious for anybody to have direct knowledge. This was because the only pictures associated with those names were quite obscene and were strictly controlled by the Blank. On TMZ - which had to have pictures - there was no reference, only those who were able to enter the private sections of the Blank could carry word-of-mouth descriptions to others. By the time of the wedding about a half-dozen law firm partners or their wives had seen the pictures at Blank and marveled.

Because of the very exclusive exposure, which got her orders from the Emmy, Oscar and other award shows, Ji El owed me a significant favor. A custom, one-off wedding dress - her first - was a breath of fresh air to her, something she was happy to provide. I was glad to grant her exclusive advertising rights to the wedding photos of the dress.

At the same time we were talking, Ji El was inspired by a new, very expensive fabric that was constructed in such a way as to continually change transparency. The technique was based on a thread that varied in cross-section in a very gradual and predictable manner. She was moved to incorporate this new fabric into the dress. Some areas of the dress were effectively transparent while other parts, made of the same sheet of fabric, were opaque.

The dress was white, floor length. Ji El used a bright, shining white satin for most of the material in the sleeveless pencil skirt and the trim which provided the outline of the bodice. On each side of the dress a panel an inch wide of fine white lace, a just-beyond-the-edge-of-see-thru fabric, which ran from the underarm to the lower hem, tantalizingly exposing flesh, including Abril’s hips.

Such a full-length side-strip was Ji El’s design trademark. From it’s first appearance in late May it became one of those features nobody else could use without being called out and shunned as a copy of something original. All their designs would be suspect after that.

Well, serious fashion critics were among the greatest bitches in Hollywood, glad to pile on at the slightest excuse, and they had a communication network that rivaled the Pentagon for bandwidth. Their word was law in the upper reaches of the industry.

By far the most interesting part of the dress was the front, from the neckline to the top of the skirt, which featured the very special lace that varied in transparency. For the length of the white lace front the fabric was totally opaque on either edge/side of the dress, where the fabric met the satin side of the dress. However, moving from the edge towards the center transparency slowly increased so at the center-line it was completely see-thru, like transparent wrapping material, concealing nothing. Two pieces of the variable lace were joined in the center with a seam that was invisible to the naked eye, the dress had this material all across the front.

The opaque region extended inward just barely enough to cover each nipple. That was the border of what you could not see through. Slightly less than half of the horizontal width of each breast was under the visible portion of the fabric. What was visible was the top to bottom of the interior portion of each breast, from just inside the nipple to the center of the chest. One could not look away, the mind was sure that at some angle, with some motion of the body, the nipple would appear.

Abril’s belly was covered by the transparent portion, her belly button was covered by the fabric which was as clear as Saran Wrap.

The fabric was hard to make, outrageously expensive, and very difficult to work with, but Ji El planned to use it as her unique trademark for custom wedding dresses. She called it a “windowless” feature.

In Abril’s case, the lace insert making the front of the dress was a “shield-shape” (a “U” shape with a daring point of transparent fabric at the lowest point) extending from her throat to a point so low on her pubic region that you could see just the very start of Abril’s slit. On the center line and to some distance on each side of that the lace was transparent from the neck to the tantalizing tip of the point at the bottom. A tiny dab of body glue suggested that the fabric stayed put at the lowest and most visually delicate region, but the glue only lasted so long before it gave way. The shield-shaped insert was surrounded by a framing outline of white satin.

The back of the dress featured a broad “V” of this variable material from the shoulders to the start of the cleft of her bottom. This material also progressed from opaque at the edges to being transparent in the center, the designer took light readings in the location to make sure.

The lace in back also had a series of heart-shaped cutouts in the fabric, arranged in a “V” pattern. At the shoulder blades the hearts were about a half inch in diameter. They increased in size until the one in the center at the bottom of the “V” was closer to 1.5 inches across. The intention was that, when a man put his arms around Abril for a hug after the ceremony, if the hand was positioned properly, they would have lovely flesh-to-flesh contact at a position low on her spine where he could feel the complex curve of Abril’s flesh just before it started her cleft and buttocks. If a guy reached too low he got the stiff satin, which was less of a thrill.