This was going to be the best day of my life.
That was what went through my mind as I stared at myself in the mirror. My golden brown locks were done into a braid that hung down to my waist, woven with dozens of white flowers. I was wearing a pure white dress held up by thin straps alongside floating sleeves that bared my shoulders. The top part was tight around my hourglass figure, but the bottom spread out into a floor-length, frilly gown.
On this day I, Gloria Weaver, was getting married.
My romantic life for the longest time had been rough, to say the least. Throughout high-school I had never managed to keep a boyfriend for more than a month, the relationships never working out for one reason or another. My prospects didn't improve much in college despite the fact my dating pool had doubled from realizing I was Bisexual. The only long term relationship I had in those years was my dorm-mate Elizabeth, the two of us having dated for close to six months before breaking up. Luckily that particular break up was clean enough that we stayed friends, with Elizabeth even being one of my Bridesmaids today.
After college I had even worse luck finding a significant other, the IT job I landed soon after graduation leaving me little time to look for romance. It was only after turning to online dating apps that I had managed to, after several months of trying, find Chris. He was a teller at one of the local banks who had broken up with a long-time girlfriend a few months before. The two of us had hit it off right away and, over the course of three years, that initial spark only grew brighter until Chris proposed on valentine's day. After a romantic home cooked dinner in the apartment we had been sharing for the past year he pulled out a gold ring with a modest sapphire that was the same hue as my eyes and I had accepted without hesitation.
That had been six months ago. Now I was stepping out of the dressing room and into the small auditorium we had rented out as the venue. My father, a tall man with a heavy set body moulded by years as a construction worker, was waiting before the central aisle in his nicest tuxedo to escort me to the altar. As we walked, elbows locked, I cast her eyes around the room. On either side of the aisle both my and Chris's friends and family were seated, close to fifty people in total filling out just about half of the seats.
Once we were at the foot of the stairs up to the stage, my father unlocked our arms and went to take his seat beside my mother, dressed in her nicest blouse and dress pants. Both of them were teary eyed as they saw me begin my ascent to the stage, proud of their little girl finding love. As I looked at my parents however, I furrowed my brow as I was overcome with the feeling of there being something off about my father's appearance. After a moment of staring I simply chalked it up to the fact that he rarely wore something like a tuxedo, his slim figure being more suited to the cute dresses and skirts he liked to wear when not at work.
I continued to walk forwards, the man I would marry today standing in the centre of the stage before me, his black tux framing his well-built frame handsomely and the purple tie adding just the right amount of colour. His brown eyes glimmered with love as he watched me approach, a hand placed on his bearded cheek as if to keep his jaw from dropping at the sight of me. Once I was in place next to my husband-to-be the officiant, who as we both agreed was secular, began his speech.
"We are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Chris Franklin and Gloria Weaver, ready to be joined in the bonds of matrimony and live their lives as one..."
As the officiant continued, I once again began to feel as if something was off, almost as if his skin was changing colour; however the feeling passed the moment I blinked, his skin the same lime-green colour it had always been. Deciding that it was just a trick of the light, I turned back to look up at my fiancé and his chubby, clean-shaven face stared back at me as we shared a loving gaze.
When our gaze broke, my eyes began to wander. They first landed on the man standing behind Chris, his best man and childhood friend Terence. His tuxedo was cut to show off the dark skin of both his midriff and the cleavage of his breasts, with his bulbous, brown-haired spider abdomen still protruding from over his dress pants.
I then cast my gaze over two Chris's parents, wanting to see my soon-to-be in-laws. His father still had the same slim figure from years of cardio, his pronounced curves filling out his sequined yellow mermaid dress nicely. When my gaze met his, he gave me a subtle thumbs up with his lower left hand. His wife meanwhile was rocking her purple, knee-length pleated dress. The colour contrasted nicely with the cluster of blonde tentacles she had for hair. To her my look went noticed as she was too absorbed in recording her son with a cheap camcorder.
"We now invite the best woman to say a few words."
The melodic sound of Sister Sylvia's words brought my focus back to the wedding and I turned back to the lime-green slime-girl, dressed in her priestess habit that exposed her nipples and dual-sexed crotch. Seeing her reminded me about how glad I was that we were able to hold the ceremony in this church, the stained glass window depicting the goddess over the front entrance cast a gorgeous array of dancing lights as it fell on me and Chris, making his purple tuxedo shimmer as he used his four chitinous arms to adjust it's fit around his chubby belly.
Having been given her cue, Terry stepped over to centre stage. The woman's gait was a bit unstable thanks to the narrow, arachnid legs underneath her knee-length dress skirt but she managed to reach the podium and take the microphone from Sister Sylvia's podium with her bottom left arm.
"Honestly, when Chris first introduced me to Gloria I was a little worried. He was still in the rebound period from breaking up with his previous girlfriend and when he told me about his 'perfect' first date with a girl from a sketchy dating app I couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't just desperate." The arachne rolled her four shoulders and stood up on her eight legs as she continued.
"Of course, as you all can probably tell, my assumption proved to be wrong; otherwise we wouldn't be here today." She turned her head and looked at us with all six of her eyes, "and I've never been more glad to be wrong! Gloria has proven to be a wonderful friend to me over the years, and I hope she and Cheri have a long and wonderful life together!"
A round of applause followed Terry as she returned to her spot behind Cheri, both her arms and the pedipalps that her dress loincloth was tied to waving energetically. I used the time it took for the applause to die down as another opportunity to glance around, this time turning my head towards my side of the aisle, starting with my three Bridesmaids.
First was Elizabeth, my past girlfriend. She was a chimera, someone born from two Monsterborn that was a mixture of their two parent's species instead of simply one or the other. From her faun father she inherited the brown and white spotted fur that covered her deer-like legs as well as the doe ears and short horns that adorned her head, while her four-legged, tauric lower body was from her centaur mother. During our time as girlfriends I also learned that she had received another "gift" from her father: a foot and a half long horsecock that was currently covered by the long-sleeved, green caparison dress she wore.
Next in line was Josilyn, another of my old college friends, who's nine inch tall body fluttered about at head level with Elizabeth thanks to her pair of pink and white patterned butterfly wings. Her neon pink hair was left straight, framing the light brown skin that was left exposed by her bright yellow, floor length (or at least what
would
floor length if she were actually standing on the floor), sleeveless dress.
The final Bridesmaid was my younger sister Natalie. Occasionally I wonder what it would have been like if I was born a bee-girl like her; to have six, chitinous limbs, black and yellow fuzz covering my shoulders, and a large insectoid abdomen capped with a stinger attached to my tailbone. As always however, I didn't linger on these thoughts and instead appreciated how my sister managed to always find a way to look nice despite her bee features limiting her colour palette. Her pastel blue dress alongside her white elbow gloves covered the exoskeleton on her arms and legs completely which, alongside the blue ribbons tied to the base of her antennae, gave her a very cute appearance that made the gap in our ages seem larger than only a year and a half.
Finally my gaze reached my parents, wanting one last look at them before I married. Traditionally, Monsterborn refer to the parent who sired a given child as their "father" regardless of gender, though some people have started adopting a more modern approach, finding the idea of purely gender based titles personally more fitting. My father however was in a minority of Monsterborn that would be referred to as such regardless of what standard you applied to him. Of course that fact hardly stopped him from showing off the petite and cute body he was born with, as evidenced by the bee-patterned sundress he wore both to compliment the bee features he shared with Natalie as well as to pair with the yellow blouse and black dress pants my mother was currently wearing.
"The betrothed have prepared their own vows, which they shall now state here before both their loved ones and the goddess."
Me and Cheri turned to look at each other, my fiancée pulling a folded sheet of paper from her tuxedo pocket. The light purple fuzz on her chitinous hands made a soft sound as she unfolded it and began to read its contents.
