The brief goodbyes he and Edmund shared felt lacking and empty, and came as no surprise to disappoint Oliver. He had to remind himself that it was for his image, and it would have to be like this for a lot of their lives now. Empty, touchless partings for the sake of appearances and keeping up the façade that they created for their own protection.
He gave Theo a short nod in greeting, before linking his arm with Geneva and heading out into the grand hall, unsurprisingly already filled with the many and numerous esteemed guests invited to come. Many Oliver had already met and conversed with at least once for one reason or another, as they were mostly of his kingdom's finest and best or shared alliances with his country. He stayed by Geneva's side, introducing her to anyone he believed she would enjoy the company of and did his best to avoid any particular trouble makers. Occasionally his eyes would roam the room, trying to spot Edmund in the crowd, but most of his attempts failed. It was much too congested, and Edmund was perhaps busy anyways.
Eventually, the short reception part of the wedding where introductions, arrivals and simple mingling took place was migrated to the grand dining hall in the next room over, already immaculately arranged with food, plates and cutlery. He and Geneva sat next across from each other, not able to converse without yelling but could at least send looks of pity when things turned sour in a conversation. Before the dinner could begin, Oliver stood up from his seat, gathering the attention of everyone already seated at the table.
He gave a short, mostly feigned speech about his meeting and experiences with Geneva. He elaborated heavily and embellished a lot of the facts, stretching the truth into an overly sugared story that he knew most of the nobles at the party would eat up. He made sure to keep his eyes mostly set onto Geneva, a loving smile on his face as he spoke his words. When he finally explicitly stated the engagement, an eruption of applause commenced, and he made his way to Geneva, falling to one knee and slipping on a heavily decorated engagement ring, entirely for show. To add to the 'love struck' effect, he placed a light, feather kiss to the back of her hand.
From then on, there continued to be no more hitch. Dinner went by smoothly, everyone buzzing with the already known news of Oliver and Geneva's engagement to one another, words about how sweet it was that they met at a wedding, inspired by another love to marry themselves. It twisted Oliver's gut in displeasure that the nobles couldn't gossip so giddly and positively about his relationship with Edmund. How he cannot embellish their meeting story, how he cannot publicly declare his love and place an overly expensive ring onto his finger. He did his best to prevent his mood from going sour.
Once ushered back to the grand ball room for the final dancing of the night, Oliver spent most his time with Geneva, to sell the love-struck appeal they started and had to maintain, and because he was growing exhausted of all the social activities. His mind kept wandering back to Edmund, of the study they were at hours and hours ago, of fantasies of a life they could've had if things were different. He and Geneva ended up speaking much about this shared feeling, of how much it damn well sucked, but also that at least it worked out somewhat in the end. Oliver's eyes roamed the crowd again, in habit, and he spotted Edmund for the first time that night. He send him a bright smile, glad to see him.