A few guests gathered around, asking what was wrong while I lay there, unable to move or speak. My chest felt tight, and breathing was getting harder. With absolute terror, I realized this wasn’t just being drunk or having a panic attack. Someone had actually put something in that champagne, and I was dying right there on the grass.
Diane pushed through the small crowd. “She’s clearly had too much to drink,” she announced loudly, her voice dripping with disdain. “She’s embarrassed herself and the family. Give her some space and let her sleep it off.”
Under Diane’s direction, two groomsmen I didn’t know picked me up and started carrying me toward the old mansion that served as the venue’s main building. I tried to tell them I needed a hospital, that someone had drugged me, but all that came out was garbled nonsense that made them laugh.
They hauled me up the back stairs of the mansion and into a small storage room that smelled of dust and old furniture. They dumped me on a moth-eaten couch, then left, closing the door behind them. I heard the lock click. Diane had just had me imprisoned while whatever was in that champagne worked its way through my system.
My phone was back at my seat. The room had no windows. I drifted in and out of consciousness. At some point, I heard voices outside the door. Diane was talking to someone in hushed, urgent tones about how I’d always been jealous of Felicity and had probably taken something for attention. The other voice, a man’s, said they should probably check on me, but Diane insisted I just needed to sleep it off. I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn’t work.
The footsteps walked away. I was alone again in that dark, musty room, my heart beating irregularly, my breathing getting shallower. I remember thinking about how my mom died when I was twelve from an undiagnosed heart condition, and how ironic it would be if I died at nineteen from poisoning at my sister’s wedding. The edges of my vision went completely black, and I felt myself slipping away.
When I woke up, paramedics were shining lights in my eyes. One of them was putting an IV in my arm while another took my blood pressure and looked worried. I heard one say my heart rate was dangerously low and they needed to get me to the hospital immediately.
They loaded me onto a stretcher. When we emerged into the main reception area, everything had stopped. The music was off, guests were standing in confused clusters, and police officers were everywhere. I saw Felicity standing near the head table, still in her wedding dress, mascara running down her face. Our dad was next to her, looking older than I’d ever seen him.
And Diane—Diane was in handcuffs, being led away by two officers while she screamed about how this was all a misunderstanding.
The paramedics rushed me past all of it. The last thing I saw before they closed the ambulance doors was my sister’s destroyed reception: overturned chairs, abandoned plates of food, and the wedding cake smashed on the ground.
The hospital was a blur. Doctors and nurses asked me the same questions over and over. “What did you drink?” “When did the symptoms start?” “Did you see who gave you the champagne?”
I told them about the bitter taste, how Diane had forced me to stay quiet and then locked me in that storage room. A doctor with kind eyes and gray hair explained that they’d found high levels of prescription sedatives in my blood, mixed with something else they were still trying to identify. “If you’d gone much longer without treatment,” she said, her voice grave, “you probably would have stopped breathing completely.”
The police came to interview me in the emergency room. A Detective Foster, who had a gentle voice, took detailed notes. He showed me photos of the champagne flute, now bagged as evidence. I explained that I’d grabbed it from a tray being passed by a server before the ceremony.
Detective Foster asked about my relationship with Diane. I told him about the comments she’d made all week—little digs about how I was too young to be a bridesmaid, how I was probably jealous of Felicity’s success. She’d made a big deal about me being in community college while Felicity had her master’s degree and a six-figure job, like my life choices were a personal insult.
Dad showed up around midnight, his bow tie undone and hanging loose around his neck. He looked exhausted, confused, and angry all at once. “What happened?” he asked in a broken voice.
I told him everything. He listened with his head in his hands. When I finished, he said the police had arrested Diane for assault and attempted poisoning. They’d found a bottle of prescription sleeping pills in her purse, along with something called GHB.
“Why would she do this?” I asked.
He shook his head. Apparently, several guests had seen Diane tampering with drinks, and a server had reported seeing her pour something from a small vial into one of the champagne flutes. Dad said Diane claimed she’d only meant to make me sleepy so I wouldn’t “cause drama,” but the combination she’d used had nearly killed me instead. He started crying then, sobbing, and apologized over and over for not protecting me, for not seeing how toxic Diane had become.
Felicity came the next morning. She looked like she’d aged five years overnight. Her hair was still partially styled, but her face was bare and puffy. She sat on the edge of my hospital bed, and we both just cried together for a while.
Eventually, she told me that her new husband, Jeffrey, had wanted to cancel the reception and come to the hospital, but by the time they realized how serious it was, the police had already arrived. She apologized for not believing something was wrong, for assuming I was just being dramatic, like Diane had been saying all week. She admitted that Diane had been planting seeds of doubt about me for months, making comments about how I was jealous and would probably do something to ruin the wedding. Felicity had dismissed it as future mother-in-law drama, but now she realized Diane had been setting up a narrative to explain away whatever she was planning.
The toxicology reports came back three days later. I’d ingested a dangerous combination of Rohypnol, prescription sedatives, and a veterinary tranquilizer that Diane had apparently stolen from her job at an animal clinic. The mixture should have killed me. The only reason I survived was because I’d only consumed about a third of the drink.
Detective Foster came back to tell me they’d charged Diane with attempted murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and several other crimes. They’d found evidence on her phone of her researching how to make someone appear sick, and messages to her sister discussing how to handle the “problem” of Felicity’s annoying little sister. Apparently, Diane had convinced herself I was deliberately trying to sabotage the marriage and that removing me would solve multiple problems.
Recovery wasn’t a straight line. Physical therapy started two weeks after I got out of the hospital. The drug combination had done nerve damage that affected my coordination and balance. I had to relearn how to walk without stumbling, how to hold things without dropping them. The therapist, a woman named Kira, explained that the toxins had affected my central nervous system, and it would take months of consistent work to fully recover. Some days I couldn’t hold a pen to write or a fork to eat, and I’d end up crying in frustration.
Diane’s preliminary hearing happened six weeks after the wedding. I had to testify. Her lawyer tried to paint me as an attention-seeking drama queen who’d taken the drugs myself to ruin the wedding. The prosecutor presented the evidence: Diane purchasing the substances, her online research, and multiple witnesses who saw her tampering with my drink. They played security footage from the venue showing her taking my champagne flute from a server’s tray, stepping behind a column, then placing it back. The time stamp matched perfectly with when that tray was distributed to the bridal party.
The judge ordered her held without bail until trial. Social media became a nightmare. People took sides, creating elaborate theories. Some blamed Felicity for not protecting me. Others blamed Dad for marrying into a family with someone like Diane. A disturbing number claimed I must have provoked her. I made the mistake of reading the comments on one news article and spent the next hour crying over strangers calling me a liar.
The trial itself took three weeks. I had to sit in that courtroom and listen to Diane’s lawyer try to discredit me by bringing up every mistake I’d ever made. But the physical evidence was overwhelming. On the tenth day, the jury came back with guilty verdicts on all charges. Diane showed no emotion.
Sentencing day was packed with reporters. I read my victim impact statement with shaking hands, describing how I still couldn’t hold things properly and had nightmares about being locked in that storage room, dying alone. The judge sentenced Diane to eighteen years in prison, with the possibility of parole after twelve, calling it one of the most disturbing cases of premeditated violence she’d seen. Diane finally showed emotion then, crying and turning to look at Jeffrey in the gallery, but he just stared back at her with a blank expression before getting up and walking out.
Life moved forward in small increments. The nerve damage meant I had permanent tremors in my hands and occasional balance issues. I had to drop out of community college for a semester. But Felicity never made me feel bad about it. Jeffrey and Felicity’s marriage survived, though they ended up in intensive therapy to deal with the trauma. They moved across the country for Jeffrey’s job about a year after the trial, putting physical distance between themselves and the constant reminders. We video call every week. They never had a real reception. The wedding photos sit in a box in Felicity’s closet, a memorial to the celebration that never was.
Two years after the poisoning, I finally finished my associate’s degree and transferred to a four-year university three hours away. Starting fresh in a new city where nobody knew my story felt liberating. I changed my major to criminal justice because the experience had shown me how much victims needed advocates who understood what they were going through.
Diane sent me a letter from prison about three years into her sentence, claiming she’d found religion and wanted to apologize. The apology felt hollow and performative. She asked me to write a letter supporting her parole application, saying she’d learned her lesson. I burned the letter in my apartment’s fireplace and never responded.
I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and got accepted into a good law school. Dad came to my graduation and cried when I walked across the stage, probably remembering a time when he didn’t know if I’d ever walk again. Felicity and Jeffrey had twins that year, a boy and a girl they named after our mother and Jeffrey’s father, deliberately excluding any connection to Diane.
The physical tremors improved but never completely disappeared, a permanent reminder of how close I came. I specialized in victim advocacy, using my experience to fuel my passion for holding perpetrators accountable. I graduated near the top of my class and was recruited by the district attorney’s office in a major city, finally feeling like I’d turned my trauma into something meaningful.
Diane became eligible for parole after twelve years. The notification letter arrived on a random Thursday morning. My hands shook worse than they had in years. Felicity and I cried together over the phone, both of us dragged back to that day. We agreed to write statements opposing her release.
Writing that statement took three weeks, trying to capture how her actions had permanently altered my life—the tremors, the nightmares, the hypervigilance, the years of therapy, the relationships that failed because I couldn’t trust people not to hurt me. All of it traced back to eighteen minutes at my sister’s wedding when someone decided I was disposable.
The parole board denied her release, citing the severity of her crime and her lack of genuine remorse. We had at least two more years of safety before the system would make us relive our trauma to convince strangers that Diane should stay locked up.
Now, I prosecute criminal cases and fight for victims. My hands still shake sometimes, and I still won’t drink anything I didn’t prepare myself. I still have nightmares about being locked in dark rooms, unable to breathe. But I’m also stronger than I ever thought possible, with a career I love and a life I built from the wreckage of what Diane tried to destroy. Some wounds heal, and some just become part of who you are. I carry both kinds forward. People sometimes ask if I’ve forgiven Diane. I tell them that forgiveness isn’t something she’s earned or that I owe her. She made a choice to harm me, and she has to live with that choice, just as I have to live with its consequences. The difference is, I didn’t choose this path, but I’m making the most of it anyway, turning my pain into purpose and my trauma into triumph.