Ask Meg

Feb 2011

Ask Team Practical: Father-Daughter Dance

Alyssa is back with Ask Team Practical Fridays, and today we're tackling the father-daughter dance. This was an interesting subject to tackle. Alyssa had a father-daughter-dance and it meant a lot to her. I didn't even consider having a father-daughter-dance (though we had a family dance, more on that to come), because like a lot of complicated gender issues, it made me super uncomfortable. So, I can tell you that, hands down, this has been the most debated and most talked over Ask Team Practical column ever. And I'm happy with what we came up with. So lets dive in.

Today we have the following question from Amanda:

I am planning my wedding for next October, and have started thinking about which traditions I wanted to incorporate into our ceremony and reception. One thing I am really struggling with is the Father-Daughter dance. On the one hand, I can see how that tradition could be very important to my dad. On the other hand, I find the tradition to be a little creepy, and I can think of about a million other things I would rather do with those 3 minutes. It seems like a vestige of the system of fathers' ownership of their daughters, with the dance being the last exercise of dominance (I am also leaning towards having both my parents walking me down the aisle instead of just my dad for the same reason). I was wondering if anyone over at Team Practical knew anything about the history of the father-daughter dance? Do you have any recommendations on how to have this conversation with my dad?

Well, Amanda, I did some preliminary searching for you, but I couldn't find any concrete evidence that the father-daughter dance has any real basis as an exercise in dominance. I could search further, but I'll let you do that if you're truly interested in its roots. (Plus, ten bucks says some savvy reader will give us an answer, possibly with links.) But let's discuss tradition for a second.

In the end, does the history of a tradition matter? Walking a bride down the aisle definitely has its root in ownership and dominance, but sometimes a tradition is a tradition because a lot of people started doing it all the time. Even if there are sinister roots, there comes a point when something doesn't hold its original meaning anymore, when that's not what people think of when it occurs. There comes a point when we can grab a hold of a tradition and say, "F*ck it, this is OURS and it means whatever the hell I say it means." For example, if you pay attention to what a tradition originally meant and assume that it still holds that meaning, wouldn't both your parents walking you down the aisle mean that you're contributing to the notion that they both own you and are handing you over? Maybe, but that's clearly not what's happening at your wedding. You are asking your parents to take you on a final walk before you head into the next part of your journey as an adult, right?

So it's possible for the father-daughter dance be just that: a tradition that may or may not have roots in sexism, but is now a chance for you to have a brief public moment with your father. I can guarantee that none of your guests would think, "Ah. He doesn't own her anymore, now her husband does," as you dance with your father to "Wind Beneath My Wings." (And anyone who does has deeper issues and should be ignored.)

But the problem is that YOU may well think of that as you dance with your father, or heck, you might just not be comfortable with that (Meg wasn't, she requests that you don't get her started on the subject.) You're already having both your parents walk you down the aisle, so there is no reason for you to force the issue with a father-daughter dance. That makes it seem simple, which it isn't always. And you know that, so that's why you're writing to Team Practical.

Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Father-Daughter Dance

Posted in: Ask Meg, Gender & Feminism, Tradition | 207 Comments »

Feb 2011

Reclaiming Wife: Chores

We've needed an APW post about dividing up chores and household responsibilities for a while now, and I've really dragged my feet about writing one. Why? Well, unlike lots of you, in our house I'm the one who's really untalented in the chore department, so I felt like I shouldn't write the post. Until I realized that maybe that made me the *perfect* person to write the post, since I could see it from both sides.

So, before we dive into my thoughts about dividing household responsibilities, let me talk a little about how it is in our house. There are a lot of things I do fairly well: make money, make sure the bills get paid, keep things tidy. In fact, I grew up in a messy house, and as a result, I'm a compulsive tidier. When the house is a mess I feel like I'm slowly going insane, so I make sure the house stays very neat (David is not so good at this bit). What I'm terrible at is cleaning, not to mention cooking. (I know, I just said I was bad at cooking. The Lady-blog-o-sphere might fire me.)

In our house, David runs the ship in terms of actual cleaning, which means I sometimes find myself ordered to mop a floor, hyperventilating because I'm confused about how to do it. He also runs the ship when it comes to cooking (which is good, because he adores it and is good at it), and I handle the vigorous eating, complimenting, and the cleaning up. That's our imperfect deal. Really, we should probably have a chore wheel, but we've never gotten around to it. Our real dream is to one day have a cleaning person. In the meantime, our house is presentable and we're generally happy(ish).

So with that, lets dive into chores, divvying them up, and busting myths (as written by the lousy one at chores).

Cleaning Myths

Myth #1: It's not help if you have to ask for it

This is the comment I hear most often around APW. It usually goes like this, "I love my partner, and (s)he means well, but I always have to ask him for help. That makes me feel like it's all on my shoulders and I might as well do it myself."

Here is the thing (are you ready?): your partner can't read your mind. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Chores

Posted in: Ask Meg, Marriage, Meg's Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 315 Comments »

Feb 2011

Ask Team Practical: Questions To Ask Before Marraige

with Alyssa

It's Friday, and normally that means it's Ask Team Practical with Alyssa. But this week, I was gripped by a question that I personally wanted to ask all of you, so today you get me (our resident sassy Texan will be back next week).

A few months ago, we ran a brilliant post from Sarah about being pre-engaged, where she said this:

Please encourage me to talk to my boyfriend about our future and delete the word “pressure” from your conversations about that. Call me new-fashioned, but I believe that as an educated woman in my late twenties with my own assets, ideas, experience and opinions, I shouldn’t be waiting on my partner to make one of the biggest decisions of our lives on his own. What if I have expectations about marriage based on my religion, values or traditions? Shouldn’t he know that before he proposes? What if I want to be the one to propose? What if I don’t want to get married? What if I have some debt that I want to pay off before we make it legal? What if he does? I fully believe that if this is someone that I legitimately want to spend the rest of my life with, I should be able to talk to him about anything. Talking about marriage is not “pressuring for a ring.” It is creating a sustainable relationship. I am not a coy, blushing girl waiting for my over-the-top surprise proposal. I’m ballsy and strong and independent. He loves me because I’m opinionated, so why would I hide my opinions about our future?

As I re-read this post this week, I kept thinking about what an amazing message this was, and how little this message is heard. In fact, I sort of want to get a bullhorn and yell it from the rooftops. You know, as a public service announcement.

And I got to wondering; If the APW community were going to put together a list of questions to discuss with your partner before marriage, what would those questions be?

Here are some things David and I discussed before marriage, to kick off the discussion:

Faith: What did we each believe on a personal level? How did we view spirituality? Did we pray? What belief structure did we want in our household? What would that look like on a theoretical level? What would that look like on a nitty-gritty level? What holidays would we celebrate and why?
Money: How did we feel about debt? How did we feel about savings? What were our financial goals? What sort of life did we want to build?
Goals: What sort of careers did we want? How did we see family fitting in to those careers? What sort of totally non-career goals did we have (see: going to Italy)?
Divorce: What the what? How did we feel about that?
Family: Did we want kids? How many? What if one of us changed our mind?

But really, I want your feedback. What sort of questions did you ask your partner before you got married and/or engaged? What were the serious questions, and what were the "no one will tell you to ask this, but you should seriously ask this" questions? What questions did you wish you'd asked? Did you ask any questions that you regret? Dish.

(And of course, we'll totally pull together a Team Practical approved list of questions when all is said and done.)

Posted in: Ask Meg, Ask Team Practical, Engagements & Proposals | 298 Comments »

Jan 2011

Ask Team Practical: Wedding Dates

It's a brand new year, which means a lot of brand new engagements (Hi Leigh Ann, congratulations!), which means a lot of head space devoted to picking wedding dates. Earlier this week we talked about off-season weddings (because they save you so much money), and today we're talking about picking wedding dates, and the inevitable conflict that comes with the territory. It's hard to pick a wedding date that works for everyone, and it's not uncommon to find out that the date you were shooting for is a problem, in one way or another. When that happens, what do you do? Well, lucky for us, it's Ask Team Practical Friday, and Alyssa is here with her always sage (and hilarious) advice.

We talked before about starting to set dates, but what happens when you set a date and then you run into a snag with guests or your wedding party? That's what our brides Desiree and L. are facing.

Desiree writes:

My fiance and I finally decided on a date that worked for us. He is a touring musician and he leaves at the beginning of July so we decided on June 11th to give us some reconnecting and set up time before the wedding and to give us some marital bliss time before he's off again. Plus, I really like the number 11. I feel like the number looks like two people standing side by side. (I know that is cheesy). [Editors Note: Is not.]

Anyway, I told my Maid of Honor (who is my closest friend for 20yrs) our date. She said that her daughter's last day of school is on the 10th so it might be a little tricky but she could make it work. Her situation is amplified by the fact that she is moving at the end of June so she is worried about being there for her 7 yr old daughter on her last day with her friends. But she assured me she could make it work.

So my fiance and I continued to tell people via word of mouth our date. And as time went on and I talked to her about the wedding she would gently bring up her concern over not making it to the rehearsal dinner. I told her that I understood if she couldn't make it and that being there the day of was enough.

Well, we are only 5 months away from the wedding date and she tells me that her daughter's recital is the day after my wedding which is going to make it even more difficult for her to be there for me. She also said that if there was any flexibility on the date she would be so happy because she really wants to be there for me.

I understand and empathize with her situation. She is a great friend and I know she wants to be there and she even said she would fly out for just the day. I want her to be there too but it isn't very realistic. Unless we change the date.... Do we change our date?

If we don't change it I am afraid I will be sad she isn't there and I squelched her opportunity to be. Am I being a bad friend and selfish if we do have the opportunity and we still don't change the date? I am already tired of having to consider and juggle so many outside factors to do something so personal as get married. It is reeeaalllyy stressing me OUT and making me a little bitter! HELP PLEASE!

L has a similar situation:

I am of the "pre-engaged" set, my guy and I have been dating for 4 years and my ring is being made right now and I am just (im)patiently waiting for it. I've already bought my dress. [Editors Note: Babydoll, you know you're getting married and you've bought a dress? You're engaged. You're just waiting for a ring. Own it.] We've picked a venue and we were really hoping to have our wedding 9/15/12. It's a good time for an outdoor wedding where we live, and our anniversary is the 15th of June, his parents is the 15th of December, and my birthday is the 15th of August. Just an all around great number. Anyway, none of our friends know about any of this.

One of his close friends got engaged this past fall and we found out last night that they are hoping to get married 9/8/12. No date has been set yet, but that's the date they're looking to book. Out of allllll the dates in a 2 year span, that's the one they picked. I'm really, really bummed. I acted like a baby and started crying when I found out. I don't know what to do. I wouldn't mind not having it the 15th -- I'd be OK with the following couple weeks but the further we push it, it will get colder and colder and then our lovely outdoor wedding will not be fun/we'd have to spend more money on heat lamps. But isn't the entire month of September "out" now, anyway? Their wedding will be a car ride away/night in hotel and so will ours (for all our mutual friends -- probably 8 friends total). And I don't want to "steal their thunder" especially since they got engaged first [Editors note: Again? They went public with their engagement first is all. We're splitting hairs here.] We can't really say anything to them about it, especially since we're "not engaged" and I don't want to seem like a b*tch. I'm just so bummed. What would you do?

Ok, all: say it with me. You should only change your date if it benefits you or your partner first, and everyone else second. And by everyone else, I mostly mean your parents. Period. The End. Fin.

Okay, first, go read this post on how your wedding is not an imposition.

Done? Good. Now you have to believe it. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Wedding Dates

Posted in: Ask Meg, Planning, Planning | 190 Comments »

Jan 2011

Ask Team Practical: Picking a Vendor

Ohhhhh... Fridays. I get to read Alyssa's Ask Team Practical posts mid-week, and when I do, it's like a little vacation (where I high-five myself for hiring such awesome people). So I hope Fridays feel like a mini-vacation for y'all. Because seriously. Today we're talking about a question so enormous I don't know how we haven't tackled it ages ago: How to Pick a Vendor. And somehow, as practical as this post is, Alyssa and question-asker Sarah made me crack up, all the way through. So here we go ladies: how to think about picking a vendor (hint: it helps to go with your gut).

Today we bring you Sarah, who has a great question

I'm not sure exactly what my question is, but I need some serious advice and a healthy dose of sane. Turns out this wedding planning bit can be stressful, no?

Okay, first the good & important stuff: I am marrying a guy named Amos, I like him, he likes me, and we're totally stoked on this who-we're-getting-married-to business. The planning-to-get-married is a little more stressful than we originally anticipated. As of last night, we have a pretty-solid potential venue, and it's even within our budget. By budget, I mean we had to SWAG a budget, so we're kind of flying blind and making it up as we go along. (*SWAG = seriously wild a** guess. I think that what it's called when you Google 'how much does a DJ cost?' 'how much does a live band cost?')

So we have a cool venue, and I do like the people who run it. But they haven't done many weddings before, so we're forging a new trail. Which you think is exciting, until you get in the damn thing and can't see the forest for the trees.

We're going to have to rely on our caterer a lot here, and that's why I'm writing you all. How do I know what's a reasonable fee? How do I know what questions to ask? How do I know what I need and don't need (until a week ago, I never even thought or renting linens. Oooh, that's how the tables have those pretty white things draped over them!) And, perhaps most importantly, how do I know when one is good? I wish the good guys - the ones who use local and sustainable ingredients, who pay their servers and staffs fair wages, who reinvest money into the community, who don't want to rip us off, upon whom we can trust to do a great job and think of things we didn't - had halos. Because I'm on website after website and so terrified we are going to get into a situation where we will end up with a bigger bill than we thought, or we won't have things we need (wait, who was supposed to rent the microphone for the ceremony?) and be tots stressed... and broke... and <enter awful fantasy here.> I know, we should start talking to people, but how do you even find the ones to speak with?

Wait, wait, I got my question:
How do I pick a good vendor?

You pick a vendor like you'd pick any other kind of vendor. Sure, you've never thrown a wedding before, but chances are you've made other big life decisions. You've picked a place to live, a cell phone provider, hired someone to fix your car, and you've probably done that with minimal levels of anxiety. To help eliminate your current feeling of helplessness and "OMG, what if they suck?!?" try approaching finding your wedding vendors with the same pragmatism that you would any other service. By figuring out what you want, doing your research and then going with the best price (with a little help from your gut), it will lower the stakes for you.

So where to start? How about just asking your friends and family? The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to speak to people YOU know and trust to gauge their opinion. If someone you know has used a vendor that you might need, and you like how their end product turned out, find out who did the work for them. Notice that I'm not specifically saying ask people who've gotten married or engaged recently. Sure, your newlywed coworker is a great resource, but so is the uncle who just had his retirement party catered by a local restaurant or the neighbor who gets yearly family photos. The vendors that did those events might do weddings also. Remember, think in terms of "I need XYZ done" rather than, "I'm getting MARRIED." You'll be able to step back and widen your options just a little bit.

But, be careful with engaging others' opinions; people get a little excited to help and will all but sign the contract for you with their vendor if they liked them. (I got married over a year ago and I still have business cards of my photographer in my wallet; and when I didn't have my purse on me during a recommendation, I grabbed my friend's phone and put in my photographer's website into her favorites. What? I really like her.) Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Picking a Vendor

Posted in: Ask Meg, Planning, Planning | 142 Comments »

Oct 2010

Secular Ceremony Round-Up

In the past few weeks, I wrote a piece about finding a way to make a traditional wedding service personal, and Rachel (DDay, in the comments) wrote a piece about crafting a non-traditional service. After that post, we asked you to contribute your best tips and tricks on secular and/or non-traditional services. Today Rachel is back, summing at all up, and trying to create a Secular Wedding Resource for all of us.

After those posts, Kristina of Lovely Morning and 100 Layer Cake wrote me a really lovely and spontaneous email about their secular wedding service. She called it, "one of my very favorite parts of the entire day, complete with hummingbirds chasing each other in the flowers as the sun was going down," and expressed her wish that everyone get to have that experience. So today we take a shot at that. Because when we collectively pull up our chairs around you before you say your vows, we're there for you. We want the purest expression of who you are: religious, non-religious, traditional, non-traditional. We want to "one of the lucky ones who stood in the middle of nowhere, right next to neverland, and witnessed the declaration of real love." So let us join you there. And with that, I bring you Rachel (with some notes from me):

A little while back, Meg wrote about “traditional” ceremonies, and then I wrote about “non-traditional” ceremonies. I think we could just call them religious and secular, because traditional doesn’t really cover it, since we all may define the term differently. My wedding was secular, but was not without tradition. But I think if we can get away from semantics, we can get down to what’s important - creating meaningful wedding ceremonies, no matter what your background is. With that, the following is my attempt to sum up all the great advice offered in the comments, for a proper Secular Wedding Resource.

THE best piece of advice I saw in the comments was from Caitlin, who said, among other smart things, “Before you write a ceremony from scratch, I think you need to figure out what you believe about marriage fundamentally. That has to be your foundation...” And that really resonated with me because honestly, I think we sort of figured that out as we went along, and some of our struggle with finding the right pieces to put together might have been avoided if we had sat down first and really thought about how we define marriage and what it means to us. We did that, sort of, but maybe not with exactly that sense of purpose.

Once you have that foundation, I think we can all agree that the main thing is to find a great officiant. And “great officiant” can mean many things - if you’re a great writer, you don’t need an officiant to be a great writer, you need an officiant who is a good public speaker and will let you write the ceremony yourself. If writing is not your bag and you have no clue what to do, that’s when you need an experienced officiant to guide you. Something I think is universally applicable: the person who performs your ceremony should be a person you trust to do what you’ve asked them to do (whether they are a hired officiant or a friend/family member); someone who is fully on board with the type of ceremony you want, who will guide you and help you stay present through the service; and someone who will not take this opportunity to promote their own agenda to your captive audience.

And in that spirit, here is my list of the very best tips and tricks given in the comments: Continue reading Secular Ceremony Round-Up

Posted in: Ask Meg, The Ceremony, Tradition | 144 Comments »