Chapter 771 - 418: Wedding, Banquet, Reunion!

This wedding is too important; he needs to make it satisfactory for Zhao Qingge while also keeping the spread of information to a minimum, which makes things quite complicated.

Not considering extremely bad luck, the guests at the wedding will include relatives and friends from the Wu, Xu, and Huang families. At the very least, the fact of a teacher-student marriage must not get posted online. Once exposed online, the chances of it being revealed are almost 100%.

To this end, Li Peifeng signed confidentiality agreements with both the wedding company and the hotel, stating that as a public figure and a well-known online writer, he wished to keep the wedding as private as possible. Thus, if anyone was caught taking pictures with a phone at the wedding site, the employees of the wedding company and hotel were to step in to stop them and explain that while photos could be taken, they were not to be uploaded online, and so on.

Moreover, Li Peifeng didn’t even invite his classmates and friends, let alone fellow authors and editors.

To be precise, for this wedding, apart from the immediate family members called by Li Qiyuan and Yu Huizhi from the Li family, Li Peifeng didn’t inform anyone on his side!

Including Bai Xiaoyang, whom Li Peifeng had carelessly mentioned a wedding date to before. This guy remembered it, and on the morning of the fifteenth, he called Li Peifeng asking where the wedding would be. Li Peifeng laughed it off, saying he was joking back then, and let it pass.

In this way, while the security of the information was ensured, it also made Zhao Qingge a bit upset.

With the wedding just around the corner, the final reservation for hotel tables was only thirty-five, out of which thirty-two were from the Zhao family. She immediately understood what Li Peifeng was up to, and when he tried to get close at night, she turned cold on him.

"Don’t touch me!"

"What’s wrong now? Did I make you angry? I don’t think so..."

"You know what you did!"

Li Peifeng played dumb: "What do I know? If you don’t welcome me, I’ll just go back to the study to write; I’m not very sleepy anyway."

"Go!"

"..."

Li Peifeng quietly got out of bed, and just as he put on his slippers, Zhao Qingge couldn’t hold it in any longer and said coldly, "We’re getting married the day after tomorrow, and until now, who have you notified?"

"... The guests who needed notification, my parents have notified them."

Li Peifeng sighed, turned slowly, and dryly said, "But due to special circumstances, many relatives can’t come, so there aren’t many people attending. They’re just sending well-wishes via WeChat transfer... there’s nothing we can do. It’s not like your family, which is a renowned one in the capital, with vast connections from Uncle and Aunt."

"Can you die from telling fewer lies?!"

Zhao Qingge pointedly addressed the issue, sitting up in bed with arms crossed and turning on the bedroom light. Her eyes were sharp: "I’ve invited my former colleagues, yet you didn’t invite your classmates and friends, nor the fellow authors, not even your two former juniors... Li Peifeng, is it that your social connections are terrible, or do you feel marrying your former teacher is so embarrassing you’re ashamed to let people know?"

"It’s best for us to quietly make a fortune."

Li Peifeng’s eyes were sincere: "Besides, it really wouldn’t be appropriate to invite my classmates. Think about it, you’re inviting quite a few colleagues, all teachers from the North China Normal University. If I invite my classmates, it would be like mice meeting cats, how awkward would that be? Let alone if Lin Zhihui and Lu Jing came, it would be awkward enough to kill!"

The reasoning indeed made sense, but Zhao Qingge was still reluctant and said coldly after a while: "Your classmates and friends aside, are those three next door coming to the wedding site?"

Zhao Duoduo seizes every opportunity to embarrass her romantic rivals, never letting go!

She wants them to witness her wedding ceremony with Li Peifeng firsthand, and if no one collapses from anger on the spot, at least they should be driven mad with jealousy.

Upon hearing this, Li Peifeng laughed in exasperation: "Zhao Qingge, are you trying to destroy the world? What good would it do to have them at the wedding site?"

"I’m just asking, are they able to attend?"

Not waiting for a reply, Zhao Qingge picked up the phone by the bed: "If you didn’t officially invite them, I will!"

...

"This is the place, right?"

"Hah, it wasn’t easy to find."

"Let’s go in!"

On July 17th, at 8:50 AM, in front of the Capital Mandarin Hotel on Wangfujing Commercial Street, it was much more bustling than usual.

A red carpet stretched 200 meters to the parking lot, surrounded by red rose petals, and guests gathered, some with beaming smiles going into the hotel while others hurriedly walked out with urgent expressions.

Amid the crowd, three very conspicuous beauties, despite wearing masks, entered the hotel lobby together.

With Li Peifeng’s obstruction, Zhao Qingge had not officially invited the ’next-door neighbors’ to the banquet, but they showed up uninvited!

Originally, they didn’t want to come to watch and add to their own distress, but they felt even less content with the idea of pretending nothing happened when their man was about to marry someone else.

Moreover, they weren’t the only uninvited guests; there was also one more...

"Gift money?"

"He Yimeng, 520 yuan... Is this the groom’s side’s account table?"

"Yes."

"Then may I kindly ask you for a red envelope, please note it down."

Even Li Peifeng’s second aunt was taken aback, her gaze sweeping over the stack of bills, five red and one green, before staring at the pretty girl in front of her, thinking, just now three girls came by, each giving a one-yuan coin as their gift, and were pulled away by my sister Huizhi. Now here comes another one with 520 yuan? A complete number... what’s the meaning? An ex-girlfriend?

Doesn’t matter, I’ll take it!

"Thank you."

Upon seeing the envelope accepted and the amount and her name noted in the ledger, He Yimeng politely thanked them and walked upstairs.

Due to the unique geographical location, the surrounding buildings are all height-restricted. The main building of the Mandarin Hotel is only two stories high with a terrace. Wedding ceremonies are generally held outdoors on the terrace, where the views are expansive, overlooking the entire Forbidden City, providing a sense of historical weight and royal nobility.

Holding a wedding here has enough style, but of course, it can’t compare to those of royal relatives holding events directly in the Imperial City.

"Nice environment."

He Yimeng casually found a vacant spot in the corner, shielding her eyes from the dazzling sunlight with her hand, scanning the scene with a calm expression as if attending an ordinary colleague’s wedding. Yet even in the midst of midsummer, surrounded by wedding blooms, it didn’t stop her heart from undergoing a dreary autumn rain.

Dreams sought are hard to achieve. Who knows my feelings at this moment? Tears before the pillow merge with rain before the stairs, dripping until dawn from beyond the window.

Oh, Mengmeng, I really want to cry...

Huh? Did someone cry before me?

He Yimeng’s heart skipped a beat. She focused intensely towards the terrace railing behind her, only to see Xu Manning leaning sobbing against the shoulder of a middle-aged woman, her back facing He Yimeng.

"Mom, I knew this day would come... sob, but I can’t help it. Why? Why is my fate so bitter?"

Yu Huizhi consoled helplessly and bitterly, "Okay, okay, Manning, here, wipe your tears... oh dear, you really shouldn’t have come today."

"I just wanted to come, I couldn’t help it." Xu Manning’s eyes were tear-filled. "I miss him. He hasn’t looked for me these days... sob, can’t you do something about him?"

"I will, I will, after the wedding, I’ll definitely deal with him!"

Yu Huizhi cautiously suggested, "But Manning, please, you must keep it together, don’t cry anymore... or else why don’t you two take her downstairs to a guest room to rest?" After speaking, she looked pleadingly at Wu Wenyue and Huang Tianxuan, terrified that they might cause mischief once the ceremony began.

If it played out like in the movies, with someone crashing the wedding, and when it came time for exchanging rings, the three girls stood up emotionally in unison and shouted; ’I oppose this marriage.’

Oh my, that would be a massive spectacle!

But Huang Tianxuan simply smiled gently, "Don’t worry, we won’t act rashly. Today we’re just here to see how handsome Peifeng really is, but in the future, when he marries us, if he’s not more handsome than today, we will not consent!"

Wu Wenyue nodded in agreement with a faint smile, "Our main tasks today are just three: watch, feast, and drink!"