The Missing Casino Bride (Part 2)
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📞 Hello? Hi. It’s me, Jen Glantz. Welcome to the Bridesmaid for Hire Hotline. A place where real stories are shared and your best advice is given.
This week: We dive into part two of the missing Connecticut casino bride. If you missed part one, here it is. I found her, eventually, and it was a bit of shock that involved dozens of hamburgers.
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🔎 The Missing Casino Bride (Part 2)
The first time I ever saw the Connecticut casino bride who went missing was a few days before her bachelorette party.
We met at a coffee shop near the Hudson River and drank matching cappuccinos.
“I’m not hiring you because I don’t have any friends,” she said. “Don’t you dare think for a second that I’m some kind of loser.”
In those dark moments when you feel so terribly down and alone, it can be wickedly hard to reach out and ask for help — to even pick up the phone and say: Hi, I need you.
It feels almost impossible.
In 2017, after isolating myself from 99% of the people in my life and trying to hide my pain, depression, and sadness behind pounds of makeup and brightly colored clothes, my boyfriend at the time (who is now my husband) begged me, with all of his might, to get help.
I crawled into the midtown office of a therapist I secretly found online, refused to look her in the eyes, and stuffed my hand deep into her tissue box.
“I know you must think I’m some kind of loser, don’t you?” I started off.
I’m one of those tough-hearted humans who thought, for so long, that I could handle everything myself. That I was stronger than my demons. That my emotions could be muted with denial and distraction. That if you show weakness, you will crumble.
I was obnoxiously wrong.
The therapist sat very still. Even her lips didn’t move.
“No, I don’t,” she said to me. “I think you are brave.”
People who hire bridesmaids are not losers.
Lonely? Yes. Sad? Sometimes. In need of support? Always.
“I just need you for a reason I can’t explain,” the bride said. “So don’t ask me why.”
I put the mug to my lips and let the steam from the cappuccino heat them up.
“I do not think you are a loser,” I exhaled.
For a total of 5 seconds, the missing Connecticut casino bride looked at me with her foggy eyes and upside-down smile as if to say: thank you for seeing me and not judging me.
But then she snapped out of it and quickly got to work.
She rattled off instructions, and I jotted every word down.
“At the wedding, my cousin is going to try to make us all late, and my mom is going to ask the hairstylist to redo her hair five times because she’s so picky.”
“Got it,” I told her.
“Do not let this happen.”
She continued on and on but stopped when I asked her:
“How are you feeling about the wedding and marriage — and all of that stuff?”
She put down her mug, looked at her phone, and got up to leave.
“Be at the bachelorette party early and make sure I don’t withdraw too much cash from the ATM,” she said. “I have a gambling problem.”
The security guard stared me down. A group of guys we were dancing with laughed in my face. The bride’s friends shrugged their shoulders and kept dancing.
I looked everywhere, darting between the bathroom, slot machines, and poker tables. I circled the cocktail bars and nightclubs, then moved on to the restaurants, parking lot, and coat check.
My pulse quickened as I reflected on what little I knew about her: 32 years old, Newark native, employed in software sales, and engaged to someone she'd met a mere eighteen months prior. She mentioned she hired me for a reason she didn’t want to share. Her strong personality made her a little intimidating to be around, but I didn’t mind it. I knew there was something hiding underneath it all, and perhaps I’d find it when I finally found her.
What I found was this:
The bride sprawled across her hotel room bed, surrounded by 20-something hamburgers and buns, on the phone with room service.
“No! You don’t understand me at all,” she screamed to the person on the other line. “You brought mustard! I hate mustard… and I hate him too!”
She started hysterically crying. I took the phone from her hands, sorted things out with room service, and moved the mess off her bed.
Her cousin was snoring on the bathroom floor, and her other two friends were still at the club.
I sat on the bed and didn’t say a word.
"He’s awful, Jen, the worst,” she confessed. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t want to marry this guy.”
There was liquid everywhere. Tequila on the floor. Tears around her eyes. Mustard all over the pillows.
“You don’t have to marry…”
“Stop!” She yelled back. “Everyone is always telling me what to do, and nobody actually even cares to listen to what I want to do.”
She didn’t have to say another word. I knew that she hired me for one reason and one reason only:
To get her out of this engagement.
Though she was never going to straight-up admit that. She was never going to ask me to help her with that. Instead, she was going to use me for something nobody else in her life could provide her with:
Silence.
She needed me to listen.
For an hour, she sat there and confessed everything. The guy she was marrying sounded awful. She knew he wasn’t right for her and that life with him would be toxic. She felt embarrassed to leave him and end her engagement. She went on and on about how she was going to call the wedding off, get her own place to live, and end the relationship for good.
Eventually, she fell asleep and I cleaned up the hamburgers and tossed the bottle of tequila in the trash.
I hoped this wasn’t some drunken promise she’d wake up in the morning and forget about. I hoped she’d find the courage to get out of this mess. I hope she knew that the best first step toward changing your life is saying how you will change it out loud.
The wedding never happened. Days later, the bride called the whole thing off. I tried to reach out to her after she ended her engagement, but she wouldn’t answer my calls.
Weeks later, out of the blue, she texted me:
Thank you for everything.
I wanted to know how she was doing and if she wanted to meet for cappuccinos or a hug. But I knew she didn’t want to ever see me again. She didn’t need me anymore.
So I simply just said:
Ps. “I don’t think you’re a loser. I think you are very, very brave.”
She had disappeared again, but this time, she was running away from what was lost, and didn’t need to be found.
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Ps. I have another newsletter you might adore about my persona life here & here's more about who I am when I'm not a hired bridesmaid.
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Love the insightful moment! Really, don't we all just need someone to listen to our thoughts so we can figure out what to do next? Glad she didn't go through with it and could acknowledge how helpful you were T_T