Orchard Slope is the setting for Diana Barry’s wedding preparations and the intimate moments Anne Shirley shares with her friend before the ceremony. Its gray house and westward-looking gable frame a long-anticipated wedding, turning a domestic gathering into a threshold between childhood companionship and adult life.

Setting and Preparations

Five days before the wedding, Orchard Slope is in a bustle of baking, brewing, boiling, and stewing for a large, old-fashioned celebration. Anne enjoys the preparations, but the excitement is shadowed by the knowledge that Diana’s marriage will change their constant companionship. Diana’s new home will be two miles from Green Gables, and Anne understands that their familiar everyday closeness cannot continue unchanged.

The Bridal Gable

In the westward-looking gable at Orchard Slope, Anne ties white ribbon around Diana’s bouquet and reflects that pink roses are the flowers of love and faith. Diana stands in bridal white, her black curls beneath the veil Anne has draped according to a sentimental compact made years earlier. The scene gives physical form to a childhood imagining: Anne is Diana’s bridesmaid, as they once planned, and Diana is the bride Anne had pictured.

Friendship and Change

The wedding setting holds both fulfillment and loss. Anne can laugh about how closely the scene resembles her old dream, yet she acknowledges that her heart is not wholly broken and that she does not hate Fred Wright. Orchard Slope therefore marks not the end of her friendship with Diana, but a change in its terms: the childhood promise is kept even as marriage and a new home make their former daily life impossible to recover.