Weddings

by Danielle Steel

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

When a wedding dress designer’s daughter becomes engaged, it raises issues of love, safety, and second chances for all the women in her family in this powerful novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

Dominque Dupont is one of the world’s most sought-after designers of wedding dresses, and is as unfailingly chic as her gowns. Her international list of clients includes royals and presidents’ daughters.

As for her own adult daughters, Felicity and Violet, they have unconventional views on marriage, due in part to their family history. Dominique’s French mother, Marie-Aurélie, was the adored mistress of a famous financier, and Dominique and her faithless husband divorced decades ago.
Felicity, an artist, is in no hurry to get married. Unfortunately, her beau, Taylor, is. When she expresses ambivalence, Taylor reveals a dark side that frightens her. Too ashamed to confide in her mother or sister, she agrees to an elaborate wedding with deep misgivings.

Fun-loving Violet is dating a sports reporter, but firmly believes one should never spoil a good thing with matrimony. When he slips an MVP ring on her finger, they decide to celebrate their love in a way that is true to themselves.

Dominique’s own long-term relationship with a married man is no longer giving her what she wants. As she struggles with making a change, her Parisian mother considers rekindling an old flame.

As plans for Felicity’s wedding proceed, each woman will question the true meaning of commitment in this dazzling novel from a master storyteller.

Release date: June 23, 2026

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

On a gray November day, Dominique Dupont sat looking out the window of her office on Fifty-Seventh Street, just west of Fifth Avenue, on the forty-fifth floor, with a splendid view of Manhattan. She was the founder and designer of Dupont Designs, now in its thirty-fourth year. She designed the most beautiful, most expensive wedding gowns in the bridal business. They were sold all over the world, in the finest stores, at breathtaking prices. Her bridal gowns were considered almost as fine as haute couture gowns in Paris, where she had trained. She had been scribbling sketches of bridal gowns since she was five years old. She had been obsessed with brides as a child. There was an even more rarefied echelon of her designs, called Platinum Label. Presidents’ daughters and royals had been ordering her gowns for years, with special designs created just for them by Dominique herself.

Tall, blond, and unfailingly chic, she had a good head for business as well as real talent as a designer. Her financial advisors had helped her set up licensing agreements for high-end china, crystal, and linens, luxury items relating to brides and weddings, which were extremely lucrative. And she had written several coffee table books about her most beautiful brides, her most lavish weddings, and her most exquisite table settings and flower arrangements. Dominique Dupont was synonymous with luxury and flawless taste, and the most elegant weddings.

She had just turned sixty, and didn’t like it, but she didn’t look her age. She took ballet and yoga classes, and had the same figure she’d had at thirty. She was divorced, with three adult children, Tommy, Felicity, and Violet. Originally French, she had the faintest trace of an accent, although she spoke English fluently. Her mother, Marie-Aurélie de Palme, was the only daughter of impoverished French aristocrats, and was exceptionally beautiful. At twenty-four, after a brief modeling career in Paris, Marie-Aurélie had become the acknowledged mistress of a famous French financier, Armand Dupont, and as was still a common occurrence in France, Dominique’s father had remained in an unhappy marriage and had had mistresses for years. There were those among the most staunchly elite people of French high society who did not receive Dominique’s mother, but for the most part, Marie-Aurélie and Armand were accepted as a couple, and welcomed by almost all of Paris society. Official mistresses were no longer considered scandalous. Marie-Aurélie had been a well-brought-up young woman from a respectable aristocratic family with no money. Her father was a banker and her mother didn’t work. Her parents were outraged by their daughter’s choice of lifestyle when she became Armand’s mistress. She was with him because she loved him, not for the money, or what he gave her. Her parents shunned her for the rest of their lives, although she was their only child. They refused to see her or speak to her and were ashamed of her, which was painful for her, and brought her even closer to Armand.

Marie-Aurélie was an enchanting young woman, deeply happy with the man she loved, who adored her and was a loving, kind, generous partner. He lavished affection on her and showered her with gifts. She had a lifestyle she wouldn’t have had otherwise, in a beautiful hôtel particulier he bought for her on the rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement. They lived there quite openly, while Armand’s wife turned a blind eye, as she always had.

Dominique was born a year after they met, when Marie-Aurélie was twenty-five and Armand was sixty-five. They weren’t married, and he didn’t divorce for her. He had three older sons from his marriage, and Dominique was the joy of his life. He was a wonderful father, and acknowledged her legally at birth. She bore his name, and her three much older half brothers didn’t approve of her, particularly when she inherited her fair share, a quarter of their father’s fortune. They were still alive, two in their late seventies now. Dominique’s oldest brother, Tristan, was eighty-two. She hadn’t seen them since their father’s funeral forty-seven years before, when Dominique was thirteen. Two of them, Alexandre and Tristan, still lived in Paris, and the youngest, Grégoire, in Bordeaux, where he ran a famous winery he had inherited from his mother. Armand had a vast fortune and had provided for Dominique handsomely when she was born, as well as for her mother. Marie-Aurélie was set for life and treated with respect for all of her years with him, although they never married. Armand had told her right from the beginning that he would never divorce. As staunch Catholics, no one in his family had ever divorced. Marie-Aurélie was eighty-five now, and still lived in the house Armand had bought her years before, filled with beautiful paintings he had given her for special occasions, Degas, Monet, Corot. She was an important donor to the arts, and had acquired great knowledge on the subject.

Marie-Aurélie had been “unofficially” widowed at thirty-eight. She had honored Armand’s memory since then, still in love with him so many years later. Her mother was still a young woman in her forties when Dominique had become aware of a discreet man in her mother’s life, an artist, but Marie-Aurélie had never married him, and he had eventually given up and married someone else.

Dominique visited her mother in Paris when she could, and spoke to her often. She was in good health and had all her faculties at eighty-five. She led a quiet life and appeared socially once in a while, going to the opera and ballet and important museum events. Armand’s wife had died not long after he did, but Marie-Aurélie was remembered as his widow, having been seen with Armand most often in their years together. There had never been any secrecy about their relationship, or their daughter, in Paris. Most people had long since forgotten that they had never married and that she had been his mistress and not his wife. And Marie-Aurélie didn’t seem to mind.

All of Armand’s sons were respectable and important. Dominique’s middle half brother Alexandre had been prime minister. He could probably have been president if he had run, but he’d chosen not to. He had skeletons in his own closet by then, and opted for discretion rather than scandal. Dominique heard from Tristan, her oldest brother, every year at Christmas, although not from the others, who resented her equal portion of their father’s inheritance even forty-seven years later. They were still angry at her, in defense of their mother and humiliated by their father’s unabashed pride in his mistress and love child. Dominique had been aware of their unmarried state and embarrassed by it growing up.

The fortune she had inherited from her father had allowed her to set up her own business at a young age. She had gone to the best schools as a young girl, and had wanted to be a designer of bridal gowns even as a child. She went to New York from Paris to attend Parsons School of Design, and after she graduated, she went back to Paris and apprenticed for three years in the haute couture ateliers of Chanel, then returned to New York at twenty-five to put her business together. After careful research and planning, she had started the business in New York at twenty-six, without investors, financing it herself, from her inheritance. By the time she was thirty, Dupont Designs was a solid success, based on her talent, not her money. Her bridal gowns were magnificent, and the business had built steadily from there. Dominique had a quiet grace about her, wasn’t arrogant, and worked very diligently. Her success was well deserved and hard-earned.

When she got to New York at twenty-five, she sought the financial and investment advice of an ambitious, well-respected investment advisor on Wall Street, Andrew Walker. He was older than she, though not as old as her father. He was forty-two years old, he courted her energetically, and she married him at twenty-six, shortly after she opened her business. They had a small ceremony attended by her mother, who flew over from Paris for the wedding, and a few close friends. She had no desire for a big dress or a showy wedding. She wore one of her own designs, a simple ivory lace dress inspired by a vintage design from 1925.