Wedding Liberation Philosophy

Dear Internets-
What is it about weddings that collectively ties our knickers in such a knot? Ideas? Because for-serious, the process of getting married subjects one to more bossing around then the rest of life combined (with the notable exception of having a baby). Make it bigger! Make in smaller! Real Brides do it this way! Etcetera.
So, I have decided that the world is ready for the launch of a new idea. I call it Wedding Liberation Philosophy, and it goes like this: leave us well enough alone, stop making us feel guilty for this or that, and let us throw a nice sensible wedding that makes us feel happy inside. Full stop.
Somehow, in our mad rush away from the bossing of the wedding industry, I fear that we stumbled into the trap of bossing ourselves around. We've gotten stuck between a rock and a hard place. The wedding industry tells us, "If you don't serve tri-tip, don't bother having a wedding," and we tell ourselves, "If you don't self cater you've sold out." The wedding industry yammers, "Vera Wang! Amsale! Monique Lhuillier!" and we tell ourselves, "Practical brides make their dresses. What's wrong with me?" The wedding industry screams "Kate Spade! Christian Louboutin! Milano Blahnik!" and we ask ourselves "If I don't get married in Payless shoes, what will that say about me?"

Sound familiar?

I am of course not suggesting that we all drop our practical plans and run out and arrange to serve tri-tip, wear Vera Wang, and buy Christian Louboutin's. Ick. But I am suggesting that we all remind ourselves that the point of getting married in the first place it to make ourselves and our loved ones very happy, and then resolve to be kinder to ourselves. Wedding Liberation Philosophy is this: every wedding is different, every couple is different, ever family is different. Within sensible boundaries, do what makes you happy, not what people tell you should make you happy.
I've written about two low-budget weddings (this lovely forest fete and tomorrows wedding) where the brides saved money on the side and bought lower cost Vera Wang's. Is that what a budget wedding checklist would tell you to do? No. Did it make them happy? Yes! Do I think it's awesome that they knew themselves well enough to figure out what the heck would make their wedding sing, and they did it? Yes!
I for one am tired of sitting up at night wondering if hiring someone to style my impossible hair on my wedding day would make me a sellout. I'm tired of wondering what people would *think* if I wore expensive shoes that I bought on sale. All of this worrying and nonsense makes me just as tired as wondering if people will think we are cheap because we arranged the flowers ourselves, or my sister made the wedding dress.

So this is my message to each of you: you are kind, sensible, thoughtful people. You know yourselves. You know your family. Trust yourselves. When you figure out what will make you happy, reach for it. Lets liberate ourselves.

With Deep Admiration,
Meg

Four Weddings And A Funeral...

...Is much funnier in the middle of wedding planning. If you haven't seen it recently, go rent it. I do hope someone uses the phrase "nightmare of recriminations and violence" in our toast.

And I know I've already mentioned it, but I'm bitter about the fact that we have no excuse to wear fabulous hats to weddings on this side of the pond.

The Next Chapter

I won't be posting much this week, as I try to take my annual week to reflect on the year, and make lists of goals for the year ahead. Plus, I'm preparing a monster post for you about Project Wedding Dress (yay!) It's not finished yet, but thus far it's turning out to be worth all of the pain and heartache involved.

My New Year's panderings have made me realize just how eventful this year has been. We got engaged, I started this blog, David transferred law schools, I took scads of night-school classes. We've been so busy it's been hard to think, but looking back over the year I'm grateful to all the many joys and the few disappointments. And if this year was big, next year is set to be a whopper of a year - we have piles of things to look forward to with the wedding being the cherry on top.

Setting out goals for this coming year has made me think about coping with the potential let down after the wedding, or post-nuptial depression, if you're being dramatic. Several of you have emailed me to ask for the practical approach to dealing with life post wedding. I am, of course, wildly unqualified to talk about this subject, but here are my thoughts:

In movies, weddings are always the very last scene - the point the whole story builds up to. life happens, and then if all goes well, you get a wedding. Done. Culturally (and even out here in blog land) we've developed something of an obsession with weddings. They are pretty! They are dramatic! They are emotional! They are easy to make fun of! So, it's not surprising that when a wedding is over, many of us slip into a bit of a depression… the party was really fun, and its sure not going to happen again. Now what? I think we need a invitation to re-imagining things. What if we didn't think of weddings as the End Of The Story And Happy Ever After, but we thought of them as The Very First Chapter Of A Brand New Book? Of late, when people ask me about the wedding, I tend to sigh and say "It can't come soon enough." After saying that to a few people, I realized that it might sound like I was excited for the big party, and I wanted it NowNowNow, when in reality I was saying, I was really excited about being married, and I wanted that to begin immediately.

So for 2009, I'm making lists of things that I want as a newlywed. I'm making plans for adventures we will take together, goals that our partnership will help me reach for. I'm making lists of places I'd like for us to travel before we have kids, and career goals that I'd like to get moving on now that I'm wed. The week we return from our honeymoon, David will start his final year of law school, and with so much ahead of us, I hope we won't be taking too much time to look back.

My wishes for 2009: May we continue to try to live bravely and honestly, and may our wedding be a joyful celebration of who we've become together, and how much we have ahead of us.

So, Team Practical:
1. How have you dealt with (or do you plan to deal with) post-wedding let-down? Did you experience it?
2. What non-wedding goals do you have for the year ahead?

(If you haven't read it already, go read Cate's amazing post on this subject)

It Happened

I am not ashamed to admit that I've read Martha Stewart Weddings since 2006 (I just checked my bookshelf to give you an exact date). Maybe it was being the only girl in my urban-alt-theatre friend circle who actively wanted to get married one day, maybe it was my love of pretty things, I don't know. But I used to buy them in the subway station, and sneak read them on the train, so when I ran into someone I knew I didn't have to explain myself (hiding my addiction to Offbeat Bride was simpler). Lots of their weddings were froofy and gag-worthy and I mocked them, but every so often they had a wonderful homemade wedding, and I would sigh and swoon, hoping one day it would be me.

Today, as I was rushing through Rite Aid, I grabbed the new MSW, mostly out of habit. I read it without shame on the bus home (I have an alibi now), and in 10 minutes I was done with it, cold. It was an excellent issue, mind you, same pretty pictures as always, but life moves on. My wedding dress - not in the pages. My bridesmaids dresses - well, no. My colors? Right. No colors. And so. More and more I find that the articles I'm clipping these days are on long happy marriages, tiny babies, places to travel, ways to nest, or just my old standbys of politics and pithy news.

So, to you today, a ray of hope. Our weddings will one day be behind us, and we won't mind a bit.

Update From Project Wedding Dress

Update from the wedding dress front: I just finished standing for an hour while my sister wielded sharp pins in front of my face and threatened that So Help Her God, if I didn't stop wiggling, she'd pin the muslin TO me. Good thing I can make crazy faces and hum silly songs without wiggling. Well, good thing for me.

Of course making a wedding dress is nothing like the making a wedding dress fantasy, where we all hold hands and hum, and create something so magical that the birds burst into song. It's a lot more about making something and then realizing you did it wrong and need to fix it, worrying that you are really making the worlds most boring dress and what were you even thinking, and trying to not be too cross with each other. But on we go. And on Christmas Eve no less. When I get back to San Francisco I'll have more photos and stories, but until then, I was hoping everyone could think really happy thoughts in our direction at once. It's quite nerve wracking, making a wedding dress from scratch, and we can use all the help we can get.

So, ready? One, two, three, HAPPY BEAUTIFUL WEDDING DRESS THOUGHTS.

(Thank you.)

Now, go fix yourself some eggnog (if you celebrate Christmas) or a big glass of scotch (if you don't), get yourself a cookie, and go back to relaxing. From Chez Practical to you, wishes for the very merriest of holidays!

Picture: This Oscar De La Renta dress is one of my perennial short wedding dress favorites

Vacation (whee!)

I'm officially on vacation for a week (starting now! hooray!) which means my blog posting will be a little less regular. I'll still be popping in from time to time updating you on Project Wedding Dress and other projects, but I'll also be spending time digging some of the fantastic things Team Practical has sent me out of my overflowing inbox, so I can share them with you in the new year.

For those of you that can - run, run away. Enjoy time away from the computer. Unplug. Don't even think about your wedding for a few days. Read, cook, nap, do yoga. For those of you that are stuck behind a desk this week and feeling grumpy about it, I'll visit now and then. In the meantime, go explore the archives. I've been writing this site for 9 months now, and there are some good things buried back there.

Happy Holidays to all! I wish you joy and relaxation and time with those you love.

Actually, Someone Is Marrying Me Because I'm Interesting

To lead us into the holidays, I thought I'd take the time tot talk about what it means to be people getting married (not just brides and grooms). David's little cousin is wont to say "I'm 10, I'm not stupid," and often I feel the need to say something similar - "I'm a bride, I'm not SLOW." Somehow the wedding industry seems to imagine us both as easily duped marketing targets (What? It will make my day a fairytale? Then I'll take it!) and as women who have let their wedding consume every fiber of their being (I'd love to go out with you this weekend, but I'm afraid I can't. Must stay home and bedazzle napkins with our monogram).

So, as we lead into the New Year, I thought I'd ask you for your thoughts on life as people, not brides. I suspect we will all be inspired by the answers. First question is this: What (other than weddings) really interests you? I love:

1. Innovative philanthropy
2. Pithy non-fiction
3. The machinations of domestic politics
4. Good food and wine

What about you, team practical? What excites you? (And if you tell me shopping for discount Vera Wang gowns..... gah!)

When Wedding Elves Desert

A long time reader sent me this great story, and how could I not share?
A recent grad from the campus church was married this past weekend. She had your typical small, white wedding. But once the guests arrived at the reception, it became apparent something was very wrong.

The caterer never showed up. Frantic phone calls were made, and once it was determined that they were a no show, the bride simply shrugged and said, "Well, I'm still going on my honeymoon!" So they all ate the cake and punch, and then the parents of the bride steered the guests in the direction of the local family diner (courtesy of the catering company) for some sustenance. The bride and groom ended up sharing another piece of carrot cake at the diner.

Team Practical, meet our new rallying cry: "Well, I'm still going on my honeymoon!"*

*Even if that honeymoon is nothing fancier than the rest of your life.

Tips: Fingers and Noggins

Coming in the vague and misty future to a blog near you: some fresh round ups. Namely, a new Indie Ring Round Up* and a first ever Things To Wear On Your Head While You Marry round up (which is going to be even more exciting than it sounds). So, I'm soliciting tips. Do you know of some secret source for an amazing engagement or wedding ring? Did you wear something unusual or handcrafted on your head when you wed? I'm all ears.

Comments are off on this post, but between now and when your post-Christmas eggnog hangover has stopped thumping your noggin, email me your tips at meg at apracticalwedding dot com.

*Squee! A delightful duo of architects got the hidden diamond ring with some help from the last roundup.

Registry: Telling People About It

As part of our ongoing discussion of registries (see: Part I, Part II, Part III), several of you have asked me to share what language we ended up using when talking about our registry. And I figured - why not? First, let me say, that since my sense of etiquette is firmly set in 1933, I would have been more comfortable not ever mentioning to anyone ever that we were registered anywhere, so as to not look like we were asking for gifts. But, if I've learned anything about wedding planning, it's that you should pick your battles, and the irony of the argument that it was more, achem, Practical to let guests know where we were registered was not lost on me.

So, here is what we said about gifts on our wedding website. It won't be right for all of you, but if it helps just one of you, than I've done my job:

What we want most for our wedding is to have all of our far flung friends and family in the same room, and so, more than anything, we consider your presence to be our present. (We mean it!) That said, if you really would like to get us something tangible, here are some suggestions:

• If you are one of our crafty loved ones, we'd love if you considered making us something
• Like shiny toasters? So do we: Our Registry Link Here
  
• And, finally, a gift that will make our day so much bigger than just us. For $45, you can give a gift of a goat in our honor, which will go to a special needs child in Uganda. This goat will give both status and nutrition to a child that is misunderstood by the society they live in. Best of all, you'll get a picture of the goat and the child, not to mention our eternal gratitude. You can read about the project here, and if you choose to give, you can do so with the green donate button on the same page.

How did you tell people about your registry. If you wrote about it on your invitations or wedding website, what language did you use?