Bride Wars

So, by now, if you're on the internet (and you are) you've probably seen an ad or read a review of Bride Wars, the new film starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. Here's a confession: I love Anne Hathaway, and I even like Kate Hudson. And I love stupid comedies. And I am primed to love wedding movies right now, what with wedding planning consuming an embarassingly large portion of my brain right now. And yet, I refuse to see this movie. I flat out refuse.

Most of the reasons for my one-woman boycott are summed up in Jezebel's recent post on the subject. (As is so often the case, Jez says it best.)

I will confess that, at times, wedding planning has made me a little bit of a "crazy bride." What it has not done, could not do, is make me into a totally different person. A bad person. Which is what it seems that Hollywood believes or at least wants us to believe. And I refuse to support another movie which perpetuates the myth.

I've seen a couple interviews with Kate Hudson promoting the movie, and she has mentioned that she was also the producer of the movie, and that it took her five years to get the movie made because "it was hard to make a movie about two women being petty and catty also sentimental." It seems to me that this should have been a red flag. Why, oh why, must movies aimed at women so often also show women as creatures who are (1) catty and petty, (2) obsessed with men/have nothing to say other than about men, or (3) you know, just plain crazy. WE ARE NOT ALL LIKE THAT. Frankly, most of us aren't.

If you're on the fence about seeing the movie, and my mild tirade hasn't dissuaded you, perhaps a compilation of the critical pans will. (Also from Jez, because really, what else do I read?)

fight the power

So I was reading an article today about Danica McKellar (aka Winnie Cooper of the Wonder Years, and Elsie Snuffin if you're as big a West Wing fan as I am and stuck it out past season 5.). She has her PhD (I think) in math and is otherwise just a crazy-smart super-nerd. She wrote a book called Kiss My Math aimed toward tween girls, to get them to believe that it's okay to be smart and not just boy-crazy. She was on the Today show this morning and explained that "she wanted to put math in terms girls could understand, like boys and popularity." (Then Al Roker told her he would have been more interested in math if his teacher looked like her. Sigh.)

So my internal question is this: can you fight the problem if you're still kind of buying into it?

I am a little conflicted about a lot of wedding planning. On the one hand, I really want to have an amazing gathering for all of our friends and family. And I know people can do that for pennies on the dollar, but you know what? I can't. I don't want to ask my family to cater or do flower arrangements. I don't want to DIY my invitations. Hell, I don't really want to DIY anything. I am not that crafty.

On the other hand, though, I don't want to buy into this idea that you have to have a fancy caterer and flower arrangement and the best invitations. I don't want to, but I totally have.

I read somewhere that the average cost of a wedding in the US these days is somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000. Particularly in this economy, it's hard not to think about all the "better" places that money could be going. But I guess at the end of the day, I'm only doing this once and I want it to be perfect. We're not extravagant people, and our wedding won't be either, but I have definitely bought into a lot of things that I didn't think I would and I'm not totally comfortable that I have. I guess the uneasiness is probably a good sign--I think if I were spending this much money willy-nilly, someone should probably have stopped me by now.

paper paper paper

So one of the things that going in to this whole thing that I didn't care much about that I now suddenly have strong and irrevocable feelings on is the invitations. Or as they say on the wedding blogs, the Paper. The Paper is an important way to set the tone for your wedding. The Paper gives you an outlet for a recurring motif like a monogram or particular flower. The Paper is very important.

I had never heard of letterpress before I got engaged, but now I apparently have to have it. I had sort of thought I would just go to Kinko's and pick something super simple out of a book and be done with it. Like everything else, this has spiraled into something totally different.

I now have an invitations lady. A whole lady. Just for invitations. Oh, and programs, and seating charts, which I obviously need too. Julie the Wedding Planner says she's just great. (Did I mention I somehow have a wedding planner too?)

Anyway, so I'm meeting with the Invitations Lady next Sunday. The Mister's Mother and I both. (See what I did there? Again?) And that means sometime between now and then I should probably figure out what it is I want out of an invitation. Here's one I like:



I hope the Invitations Lady can work with relatively little guidance. I am not good at guidance.

P.S. RED ALERT: THE MISTER HAS FOUND MY BLOG. I am not good at keeping secrets. Frankly, it's a miracle it lasted as long as it did. Le sigh. Hi, Mister!

but this was supposed to be fun!

When I got engaged, the number one thing I was looking forward to was registering. It's like shopping, but with other people's money! And you get the fun scan gun! And I can have any kitchen gadget that my heart desires! What could be better?

The Mister and I both love to cook. And we have a pretty well-stocked kitchen because we use it pretty frequently. But we have a lot of low-budget kinds of things, like SHARPSU brand knifes. Literally. The Mister broke one this week. When I asked how, he replied "oh, I tried to cut something." We are waiting for our wedding guests, to paraphrase Beyonce, to upgrade us because damn, knives are expensive.

Anyway, this weekend we went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to begin the registry. We're trying to keep the guest list pretty small, so we decided not to register for fine china. I'd rather have everything we actually desperately need than like 75% of that plus some stuff that we might like to have in a perfect world (like and
). So we decided to keep the registry smallish. But then I worry that it looks like we're angling to get cash (which might be nice, but we're certainly not) so we add some more kitchen gadgets. But then I decide we don't need all that crap (nor have anywhere to put it) so we take a bunch of it off. The process was repeated at Macy's.

All through this process, about 4 different women with the frightening title "Bridal Consultants" hovered around, offering to "help" us pick items. Yes, Melissa, I know that this is a wish list. I'm sure, Bethany, that our guests would LOVE to spend four times as much on dishware for us, but I really don't think that's necessary. And no, Lori, under no circumstances do we need fancy leaded glass wine glasses. You clearly have never had wine with us. It usually ends with The Mister doing "the surfboard" dance, me passed out, and at least one glass broken. I'd prefer if that glass didn't cost $24.

Anyway, it's EXHAUSTING traipsing through these stores and trying to strike a balance between "the world is my oyster, and I want this to last forever" and "that's just absurd." This was what I was most looking forward to, and somehow I left ready to cry. Or nap. Preferably both.

The Running of the Brides

So I've mentioned The Running of the Brides here a couple of times here. Or at least once. It feels like more, but I can't find the others to link to them. Whatevs. Anyway, I feel I owe it to you, my loyal band of two readers who weren't there with me, to describe the experience. And, dear readers, it was an experience.

So once a year, Filene's pushes all their regular merchandise to the side and brings in racks and racks full of wedding gowns which were discontinued or otherwise cast off by the bridal salons of the world. The doors open at 8, I think, but brides camp out the night before, waiting in line to get first crack. When the doors open, the women (in "teams," normally designated by hats or t-shirts or some such) run in a frenzy to grab as many dresses as possible. The dresses are not sorted by size or style, so this means they have a ton of dresses, most of which won't work. They then trade their cast-off dresses for other teams cast-offs, trying to get things which fit their needs. Some carry signs like "I NEED A WHITE, STRAPLESS SIZE 2." There are no fitting rooms to be had, so the brides are wearing bike shorts and sports bras, and changing in the aisles, with bridesmaids holding up full length mirrors and saying things like "I don't know, it's a little frumpy."

If you hadn't guessed by now, this is not exactly my style.

So, my bridesmaids and I roll in at about 10. 10 seemed right--the real crazies have either found their dresses and left or given up and left. Either way, they're gone. It also means that the dresses aren't so picked over that there's nothing left. Don't get me wrong though--there are a lot of FUGLY dresses. (The Mullet Dress comes to mind.) There were also a lot of brown dresses. I mean, there's ivory, but these dresses were past tan into straight up brown. And, of course, there were the '80s poufy dresses. But in the midst of all of that were some really gorgeous dresses. Including mine.

I think most brides second guess their dress choices at some point, particularly if they (like me) look at all these websites with other brides wearing such breathtaking dresses. I have had this problem exacerbated by the fact that my dress has been stored at my mom's place and I haven't seen it or tried it on in six months. Though maybe that's better? Anyway, sometimes I wonder if I missed out by skipping the bridal boutique experience, but I'm sure I would have fallen in love with an $8,000 gown. Ah, well. That's the way it goes I guess.

photos?

So all the other bride blogs have photos. For "inspiration." And then they have links to where you can purchase the things which have inspired you. How convenient, Wedding Industrial Complex! Why thank you, bloggers of the bridalsphere, I DO need to peruse $700 shoes! Why yes, I WOULD like to imagine what it would be like to spend $4000 on a cake!

So I'm debating whether to put photos on here. On the one hand, weddings are pretty. And this is likely to be the only time in their lives most people have a professional photographer follow them around for a day, so the photos are extra-pretty too. But on the other hand, I think the purpose of this blog (for the moment anyway) is for me to put into words how I feel about all this wedding planning nonsense and that doesn't need photos.

Probably pretty will win.

Check, check, check

So we're in the crunch zone of time where I have been booking things right and left. The Mister and I have had a long engagement and for literally about a year and a half, I did nothing. I mean, I looked at wedding magazines and blogs, and I fantasized about what all I wanted (and obviously couldn't afford). But most places weren't even ready to talk to a bride more than two years from her wedding date, and I wasn't ready to commit to any particular vendor that early anyway. I think of this period as making up for the fact that, until that date, I hadn't really thought about what my wedding might be like. At all. I definitely wasn't that girl when I was little who had the big poufy dress all picked out. I crammed a lifetime of wedding fantasies into two years. It was a sort of sickening time.

Anyway, that time has passed, and now it falls on me to actually make decisions. In the span of the last two weeks we've picked (1) an officiant, (2) a photographer-avoiding a potential familial landmine maybe I'll talk about later (3) a florist, and (4) a D.J.

All of this makes me think I'd have been better off getting married 2 years ago. Le sigh, too late.

It's a PARTAYYYY

Basically, the Mister and I are as good as married in my mind (but married in my mind's no goooood). We live together, we have a legit partnership....not that much is going to change because we have some piece of paper. Or at least so I say now. But so all of this makes the wedding basically one big party where I get to look extra-hot and everyone we love gets to come.

Tonight we had some people over to our place, several bottles of wine, some delicious eats, and I felt so happy. I just hope that I don't lose that sense of fun and lightheartedness (and, frankly, booziness) in the intervening months. Over the course of our engagement, I keep trying to tell myself "it's just a big party." But then the Wedding Industrial Complex wants to tell me "yeah, just a big party to celebrate THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE MEANINGLESS LIFE SO BUY BUY BUY." And I need to get better at saying "pipe down, WIC."