Friends & Relations

Apr 2012

Zen: Class Aspirations and Wedding Planning

So I had this total brainwave about my hen party. I'd read all the wedding literature, heard all the complaints by friends of demanding brides, and I wanted to be helpful.

Me: "You guys, I've got the best idea for a hen ever. (Dramatic pause.) Lord of the Rings movie marathon! You guys can come over to my place and we'll roll out the sofa bed. We'll bake! And skip the Eowyn soup scene!"

Friends: (blank stare)

Me: "It's a great idea!"

Friends: "No."

Bridesmaid S: "You can do a Lord of the Rings marathon any time."

Me: "You cannot do it any time. You need at least nine uninterrupted hours."

Friends: "Oh, what about an afternoon tea party?"

S: "That would be nice!"

Me: "You can do an afternoon tea party any time!"

I was bewildered. Admittedly nine hours of Hugo Weaving talking really slowly might not be everyone's cuppa, but I became friends with S at age seventeen when she remarked on the One Ring replica I was wearing around my neck (yeah, I was totally that kind of loser). So what was the problem?

The answer only came to me when I was complaining about the lukewarm response to my idea and a friend said, "It's because a movie marathon doesn't have the connotations of luxury an afternoon tea does."

Oh. Right. There it is again. Continue reading Zen: Class Aspirations and Wedding Planning

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning, Planning: Journeys | 72 Comments »

Apr 2012

The Flower Girl

When A. sent me this post, she told me that as a younger woman becoming a stepmother by marriage, she felt a bit alone. She said, "In reading around the wedding blogosphere, I've found it difficult to locate stories of women like myself: youngish, first-time brides without children of their own who are stepping into insta-families. A lot of stepmom stories seem to be geared toward women who are entering their second marriage, or who have biological children of their own. I admit that I've been feeling like the lone ranger." And I realized this is the kind of story we really need to be telling each other. We need to be talking about this not just because none of us should have to feel alone (and I know many of you are, or are becoming, stepparents). But also because A.'s story is about bravery. It's about stepping into all the complications of loving another person. It's about being scared, but not letting that stop you. And in the end, it's what love is.

The first thing we knew about our wedding planning was that we definitely had a flower girl.

She's seven years old. She loves chapter books, ballet, and swimming. She's bright, funny, and articulate, and she has her own sense of style, favoring brightly patterned tights and twirling skirts. She is my future stepdaughter, which means I'm a future stepmother. Which means... well, it means that my baby family is going to have to become a grown-up, fully-functional one in a hurry.

There was never much doubt in my mind that I wanted to be with my partner, B. I loved him from very early on. As our relationship marched forward, I became increasingly certain that I wanted to be with him for the long haul.

But a ready-made family had never figured into my vision of the future. I wasn't afraid enough of the concept to run away right off the bat, but I worried. I stayed up at night worrying about whether I could handle being a stepparent and all that I imagined that it entailed—and if I knew that I couldn't, whether I had any business being with the man I loved. I wailed, I gnashed my teeth, and I sobbed in my car in parking lots across town because I was just so terrified that I might be morally obligated to walk away from him if I knew that I couldn't handle eventual stepparenthood. Even ages before we were talking marriage, I knew it was an issue I had to deal with.

The logistics of dating a single dad were doable. His daughter was two when I met her, after B. and I had dated a few months and said “I love you” to each other. There were bedtimes to observe, custody schedules to juggle (he has her every other day) and occasional toddler tantrums to wait out. As a then-27-year-old who had never changed a diaper or rocked a baby in her life, I was perfectly happy with the fact that he never asked me to be a parent to her. Just hanging out together now and then was fine by me.

Besides, she had a mom already, who was doing a fine job of being a mom.

The things that so often bother the partners of single parents—the tough scheduling, the feeling of somehow coming second to a child—those things didn't bother me. I never saw myself as in competition with her, because...well, because she was a child and I was a partner and those things are very different. What wasn't fine, for me, was that I was basically terrified of a small, blonde moppet of a human being. My natural reticence around children was amplified by the fact that I believed getting too close to her was emotionally dangerous for both of us. What if my relationship with B. didn't work out? What if I turned out to be attached to her more than him? What if... well, what if I ended up loving her? Scary stuff. I know women are supposed to be all “Yay! Children!” but I'm just not. The scariest thing I could think of would be to develop a close relationship with my boyfriend's daughter. Continue reading The Flower Girl

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 95 Comments »

Mar 2012

Zen: The Save-the-Date Saga

I hadn't read Meg's book when I first got engaged, but (spoiler) it has recommended steps for the newly-engaged person. As a lover of lists and inveterate box-ticker I would've been delighted by this, and I would've been even more pleased to know that I had Step One down.

The first thing to do is to brainstorm and to dream. Let yourself dream unrestricted by reality at first, because the heart has a way of guiding you in the right direction, even when the heart seems a little crazy. —From Chapter One

Because weddings do weird things to your brain, what I started dreaming about was… stationery.

My save the dates came to me in a flash of light, attended by angels singing. A picture of me and my fiancé astride our Chinese zodiac animals—the tiger and the ox respectively—leaping in mid-air and high-fiving!

I had it all figured out. I'd get my ridiculously talented artist cousin to draw my vision and email it to me, I'd print it off on a bunch of postcards, send it to all my friends, and sit back and bask in the glow of knowing I had the cutest save the dates (wo)man had ever seen.

This, of course, is not the way any wedding-related dream goes. Reality took the form of my mother—and reality, as always, was stranger than you think.

"It's real cute!" said my mother via text message. But she hinted darkly at "some implications from some traditional old sayings."

My parents' concern turned out to be the prominence of our zodiac animals. "The tiger eats the ox so maybe people will joke you will bully Peter," said my mom.

"But if I bully Peter it's because I'm just that kind of person, not because I'm a Tiger. I'll bully him if I'm a Rabbit also."

Strangely my mother did not seem to find this reassuring. Continue reading Zen: The Save-the-Date Saga

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning: Journeys, Wedding Undergraduates | 48 Comments »

Mar 2012

My Dad and My Wedding

We've talked pretty extensively on APW about the pain that can come up during wedding planning when you have a parent who is emotionally absent, or when you have a parent who has died. But what we haven't discussed is how to move forward if you have a parent who you've chosen to not have as part of your life. This is an issue that's near and dear to me personally, and I think it is so important to discuss without shame. As I always say, the real difficulty with a wedding is it puts how we wish things were into conflict with what is. That can be deeply painful, but it can also lead to healing. Here is wishing you more of the latter.

Sometimes, when I read about all you lovely ladies struggling to figure out how to cope with absent mothers, or how to honor your parents who are no longer with you, I start to feel guilty. It’s a guilt that I’ve carried around a long time. My roommate in university whose mother passed when she was young, the friend whose father left her and her mother and never kept in contact but would do anything to have a relationship with him, friends whose parents won’t attend their LGBT weddings: I feel the same around them.

Like I had everything they ever wanted and threw it away. My father is alive. He has not been in my life since I was thirteen-years-old. He certainly won’t be at my wedding. That is, and remains, my decision.

Trust me, when I say it is not an easy one. Long story short: my father is not what I would consider Good People. He has a temper, a dangerous one, and I was on the receiving end of it one time too many. The blow ups might have been far between (thank goodness), but they were progressively getting worse. As a child, there is nothing harder to reconcile than the fact that your father is supposed to love you, and yet the displays of how he feels are very violent and intense and… well, the details don’t really matter, do they? Just that it got to a point where it was no longer physically safe to have him in my life, and I needed to not shake in bed at night or be afraid of saying the Wrong Thing at the Wrong Time.

When friends complain about their parents being too in their faces about wedding planning, or parents who aren’t living up to their financial commitments or who hate the venue or guest list and are doing nothing but judge, I listen and I tell them “I know it’s terrible, but she’s your mom and I know she’s important to you and you want her there.” There are a few, who look at me and say “Well, your dad is your dad, right? It’s the same thing.”

Here’s the thing, though. Sometimes, it’s not the same. A father who takes out his anger on his children is not a father in the same way. And yes, there’s a big part of me who wishes I had a father in my life. That’s a relationship that I wanted more than anything—but that’s not the relationship I had with my father. The relationship that I had with the man who was my father at birth is not a healthy parental one. It’s not a safe one.

Continue reading My Dad and My Wedding

Posted in: Friends & Relations, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 90 Comments »

Mar 2012

Married, With Roommates

When APW Associate Editor Maddie (girlfriend just got a promotion, cheers!) first told me she wanted to write about being married and having a roommate, I paused for a moment, and then said, "Of course you have a roommate! You're 25! I had roommates at 25. David and I didn't even live together at 25." By which I really meant, knowing Maddie, I was glad she wasn't missing out on the fun (and terror) of group living that can come in your 20s just because she was married. And, while most of us aren't married with a roommate-who-we-love-like-family, I think it's important for us to each think about the parts of our life that our culture says we have to give up when we get married and figure out if that's really true. Maddie points out that she needs a community around her, particularly as a married woman. And all the studies show just that: the more attached we are to a greater community outside our married bond, the better our marriages do. So that stuff culture says we have to give up when we marry: slumber parties, nights out dancing, ladies' nights, poker nights, roommates? Might actually turn out to be key to our survival as a couple. And now, Maddie:

On Valentine's Day, Michael and I went out to dinner at one of our usual places. The waitress walked us to our table and seated us—then handed us three menus. I looked left and then right at the two men sitting next to me, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I enjoyed a Valentine's Day date with my husband. And our roommate.

That's right. I'm married and I have a roommate. By choice.

The original decision to live with a roommate was not planned. While living on the East Coast, a friend of ours was offered a job in California, and his roommate (another friend) was going to be stuck with the unfortunate task of finding a one-bedroom apartment on short notice in an overpriced town. We had an extra bedroom at our place and figured that the additional income we'd get from his rent each month couldn't hurt, so we agreed to let him stay until with us until he found a new place.

I was hesitant at first because my last roommate experience had been during college and involved a suite of eleven females, which needless to say left me feeling gun shy about sharing a space with someone other than Michael. Not to mention, a roommate completely eliminates the freedom of being able to walk around your apartment naked, a privilege I felt I'd earned.

But then, much to my own surprise, the arrangement stuck.

Though really, it shouldn't have surprised me at all. Because up until that point, marriage had started to get lonely. Now, don't get me wrong. I love living with Michael and am so grateful for the life we have been building together. But until we got married, we were both firm believers that your partner shouldn't be expected to be everything all the time. And yet, marriage had somehow found us living in a state that was absent of any sort of extended community or nearby friends, and it was creating a huge void in our lives in the shape of The People You Spend Time With Who Aren't Your Partner.

And unconventional as it might be, our roommate filled that void.

So when we were offered the opportunity to move to California, a place where once again we would be without a built-in network of friends or family, I was struck by the fear that we would revert back to the lonesome cohabitation that had previously defined our lives. So I called up our best friend Joe, who was living at his mother's house in Maine at the time, and asked if he'd come with us. Without a job prospect out West, or even any savings, we knew that moving wouldn't be ideal for him. But we also knew that he needed the change of scenery as much as we needed him to come with us. So we told him that if he could get enough money to pay for gas to get from Maine to California, we'd take care of the rest. And that's what we did. Rather, it's what we're doing. Continue reading Married, With Roommates

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Reclaiming Wife | 73 Comments »

Feb 2012

Ask Team Practical: Accomodating Guests

with Alyssa

How do I stop stressing out about where all of my out-of-town friends are going to stay for my wedding? I live in a studio apartment with my fiancé, and while we are very comfortable, we can fit about one guest, and I really don't want to have anyone on the floor the week of our wedding. All of my bridesmaids and most of my friends (we are in our early twenties so all of our friends are dealing with student loan debt and not-awesome jobs) are flying in. I wish, oh how I wish, I could afford to rent a house for them to all crash in, or have them stay at my place, but I can't. I know it will be expensive for them to get hotel rooms and I keep stressing about it. How do I stop feeling like this is my burden?

~ Sara Judy

Oh, Sara Judy, I know you, and you are the best kind of friend. You always have our favorite snacks available when we visit, you let us have the window seat on the bus and you always know when we're having a bad day, don't you? You are a lovely lovely person. And I say this because I'm about to yell at you for forgetting a basic APW core belief—"Your wedding is not an imposition."

Your friends are lovely people also, which is why you invited them. They are also grown folks (even if they are young grown folks) and can handle their accommodations themselves. They are coming because they want to come to your wedding, not because the trip is free. You will have enough to do without entertaining guests you are not prepared for, so invite them and then move on to other things. You can be helpful by reserving a block of rooms at a cheaper rate at a nearby hotel (you may be required to give a credit card to hold them, but you should NEVER be charged for this) or suggesting mutual friends' couches they can surf on, but in the end, it is your friends' duty to figure our their own accommodations. Think about it! They go places all the time without a block of rooms to help them out. They use Trip Advisor! They use Airbnb. Block of rooms or not, they are going to be just fine (and if they won't be fine, they don't have to come).

Of course, I'm assuming your stress is self-inflicted. Now if the stress is coming from the friends in the form of "Oh, I don't know if I can AFFORD it, WHERE will I stay?!?" comments, well that's terrible and they should be ashamed. But my advice is still the same. If they can't come because they have nowhere to stay, that's very sad, but tell them you understand. Sometimes such comments are sneaky sneakerson ways of getting a free ride; when faced with empathy but little else, you may be surprised how fast they'll find a place to stay.

P.S. Under no circumstances should someone sleep on your floor during your wedding. Not to be obvious, but for god's sake, weddings are for getting laid. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: Accomodating Guests

Posted in: Ask Team Practical, Budget, Friends & Relations, Registries | 103 Comments »