Wedding Planner

The Wedding Planners Daughter

“The Wedding Planner’s Daughter” is a book for children written by Coleen Murtagh Paratore and released in 2005 by “Scholastic Inc.”. Is the first in the series of the books related to the same plot: “The Cupid Chronicles” (2007), “Willa By Heart” (2008) and “Forget Me Not” (2009). The story of the book is focused around the character Willa, a 12 years old girl who is the daughter of Stella, a career woman which has her profession focused around wedding planning business. Since she is very successful in her profession she intends that her daughter will grow up in the same spirit: to follow a career that will bring her success and money. But Willa has other plans. Since her dad died right after her parents wedding, Willa is wishing every year on the occasion of making a wish while blowing off the candles of her birthday cake, a man to marry her mother.

Due to Stella’s decisions to relocate from one place to another, Willa didn’t have any chance to take her plans of getting her mother married to an end. Till one day when they moved in Cape Cod. There, everything seemed to settle down, she was attending the classes in that town and made a good friend named Tina Belle. Because her English teacher, Sam Gracemore, a.k.a. the Poet, was a fine and single man, she started to see him as a good material for being a dad. Now step by step, the wedding planners daughter began to take seriously her part as the matchmaker, and thanks God everything seemed to work out.

Her mother, Stella, on the other had had no idea on what her daughter was up to. She was minding her own business, organizing weddings, being renowned for planning the perfect weddings ever. For these perfect weddings, Stella had a recipe to include 12 successful ingredients: the wedding gowns -dress and tuxedo, bridal groups, the invitations, the ceremony, the reception, the menu, the flowers, the table decorations, the photographer, the music, the wedding cake, the limo, and last but not least, the secret ingredient added by Willa – the cherry gracious pit – love.

The wedding planners daughter decided that it was better to put this ingredient because in the past whenever her mother organized the wedding events, the brides used to cry a couple of days after the wedding was over. The only explanation that Wills found was that her mother didn’t put enough “love” into the planning of a wedding. Her mother was so turned against the feeling of love was due to the fact that her husband died and she said to herself that she would never fall in love again for fear not to suffer one more time the same pain of losing someone dear.

But meanwhile, Sam, the English teacher, had gained her heart in one way, but whenever he used the word love, Stella would turn away from him and closed again her heart in the steel armor that surrounded her soul. Due to a wedding that was ruined and because of the fact that Sam was getting too close to her heart, Stella decided that they should move again, in this way she could preserve her desire to keep her soul intact away from any other sentimental interference. The romance which started to bloom between Stella and Sam is continued in the other book of Collen Murtagh Paratore and even if it has been released in the section of children books, this series is still considered a good reading for both children and grown ups.