The Wedding Toaster

Twenty-eight year old Maggie McDonald is a self-proclaimed singleton. She came close to tying the knot once but bailed out on her own wedding when she realized that she didn’t want to do anyone else’s laundry or account for where the money in the checkbook goes. Maggie witnessed first hand the heartache that both her mom and Uncle Hor (which is short for Horatio and not indicative of a certain character trait) endured and has no desire to suffer the same fate. But a serendipitous turn of events just may alter Maggie’s fate after all.
A prolific reader and Scrabble player, Maggie has always seemed to possess the gift of words. She hones her skills daily as an obit writer for The Boston Hub and is accustomed to the response her words elicit, but when Maggie gives a toast at her best friend’s wedding, she is not prepared for the proposition she receives from Morty Finklestein, a newly engaged senior citizen and Elk member extraordinaire. The proposal: one thousand dollars to give a toast at the couple’s wedding in Florida. The catch: Maggie must stay with the couple for a week, observing their relationship in order to give a heartfelt and personal speech. Spending a week at a retirement home in Florida isn’t exactly the vacation that Maggie has in mind, but, as Maggie finds out, things don’t always turn out as she plans.
After obtaining a few “toasting gigs” through coincidence and highly questionable circumstances, Maggie soon catapults to semi-celebrity status. With a profile in People magazine and a shout-out on Perez Hilton’s website, Maggie becomes the quintessential “it” girl: the highly sought after (and expensive) wedding accessory for the rich and (somewhat) famous. When Samantha Chase, the stuck-up daughter of a well-known vineyard owner in Napa Valley, hires Maggie to toast her wedding, Maggie thinks she has been hired for another typical wedding by one of her typical clients, except this time the experience is anything but typical. Samantha Chase’s fiancée is none other than her own ex-fiancée, Jack. Now it seems as if it is Maggie who will be stiffed at the alter, although, quite to her surprise, Maggie finds that her feelings about love, marriage, and especially Jack, have changed.
Told with humor and wit, The Wedding Toaster chronicles the journey of one woman’s transformation from a lovelorn cynic to a hopeless romantic. From a retirement home in Florida to a trailer park in Tennessee to a dude ranch in Wyoming, Maggie celebrates the unique love stories of a cast of quirky characters and finds out, along the way, that love just may be worth it after all.