Friends & Relations

May 2013

Every time I’m in charge of the food for a family event, the following scenario occurs.

1. I pick some kind of uniting theme, think about how much food we’ll realistically need for the amount of people we’re expecting, take the budget into account, consider what kinds of foods and food groups I love to see at parties, and plan the menu accordingly.

2. I make a grocery list.

3. My mom looks over said grocery list.

4. The questions begin.

5. I answer the questions (somewhat) patiently, and we go to the store. To my mind, there are no more questions. But somehow, when we’re standing in the bakery section of the grocery store, the questions begin again.

“Are you going to make those bacon-wrapped dates again this year?”

“Well did you think about having those spinach and cheese puffs?”

“Are you going to make that popcorn mixture with the white chocolate that you made last year? That was so yummy.”

No, no, and no. Because while those bacon-wrapped dates are amazing, they aren’t on the menu. We are going to have plenty of food, and I kinda had a thing going with what I’m planning to serve. I don’t want to just add to it for the hell of it. So we go back and forth; I insist that we don’t need that extra food and she insists that we do. And eventually, she gives me her go-to defense for all the stuff she’s throwing in my cart: “People want options.” “But we don’t need shrimp cocktail. I have all these other appetizers,” I say, removing the shrimp from my cart.

The day of the event, she’ll run out to pick up an ingredient we need and come home with three more appetizers that weren’t on the menu. When I get annoyed, she does it again. “Well, people like to have spinach dip,” she says. ”WHAT PEOPLE?” I finally demand, elbow deep in the buttercream I’m making for the new recipe I’ve decided to try and sweating bullets. “These aren’t strangers showing up to our house in an hour. Stop saying ‘people’ when we literally have five people coming over and we can just name all of them.” Continue reading The People Want Options

Posted in: Budget, Friends & Relations, Planning, The Day Itself | 176 Comments »

Apr 2013

Going To Mars

When I moved to Houston a couple years ago after meeting and falling in love with a Kansas-to-Houston transplant, I had heard the idea that Texas was less like another state and more like another planet. And it does feel like another planet to me…a planet filled with strange and interesting creatures. Men.

The only memories I have of my father from when I was young are spotty; trying to remember what it was like to live with him is like trying to remember a dream several hours after you had it. I remember seeing him perform in plays as a professional actor, but I don’t remember him at home. When I was five, my mother left my father and took me to Michigan to live with my grandma and my very young aunt. For the next fourteen years, this group of three women would come to define my concept of family. Though I had uncles and I saw my dad occasionally until his death in 1998, when I was speaking of my family, I was thinking of my mom, aunt, and grandma, as well as the other female relatives on my mom’s side with whom we were all close. It didn’t occur to me that anything was missing, really, because I had never really known what it was like to have a male presence in my life. When I got to college, I joined a sorority, extending the family I had become accustomed to include 114 other women, 50 of whom I shared a house with for two years.

Despite the fact that I loved being surrounded by women, a lot of my thoughts in high school and college were focused on boys. While this isn’t out of the ordinary, my appreciation for the opposite sex stemmed not only from attraction but also from…fascination. Who were these other creatures? How did they think? Why did they act the way they did? If men were from Mars and women were from Venus, I was mesmerized by the Martians. They weren’t my kind. I didn’t get them at all, so that’s what I focused on. Getting in their heads and getting them in bed. When I began my writing career, I wrote about both topics quite regularly.

My mom had another baby when I was nineteen, and for the first time, my family had a male presence in our multigenerational home. When Preston was born, he looked otherworldly; he had the large, curious eyes and careful movements of a Furby. As he grew up, we realized he couldn’t have been more different than I was as a child, and this, it seemed, was further proof that boys and men were not from my planet. They were Others. And I had no idea how to live with them.

When I first moved to Houston a few years later, I didn’t live with Eric. I found a roommate and took a marketing job at The Motherhood Center, which had pre-natal classes, baby and toddler music classes, and lots of family events. The staff and clientele were overwhelmingly female, so once again, I was surrounded by women and back in my comfort zone.

Then my boss left, so I found a new job, where I was one of two women on the staff. And then I moved in with Eric, which was pretty much like finding E.T. in my shed. All of the experiences I had gained from dating and observing men for several years did very little to help me understand Eric. And not long after I started at my new job, my female coworker was let go and I became the only woman on a team of eight people. At a tech startup. In Texas. Being surrounded by men in my personal life and professional life made me feel like my ship had suddenly crashed on their planet, and I was terrified. Continue reading Going To Mars

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Gender & Feminism, Planning | 27 Comments »

Mar 2013

Dear Friendly Advice-giver…

This one is for those of you deep in wedding planning land. In fact, if you’re more than a few months out from your wedding, just go ahead and bookmark this one. That way, when the day arrives (I hope for you that it won’t, but…it might) where you have pondered punching four people in the face over some insensitive and unhelpful crap they just said about your wedding, you’ll have this to read. (Note to friends and family: “How are you feeling?” and “How can I help?” are where you should start.) But since punching people in the face is impolite, Mackenzie’s letter is a constructive way to make yourself feel better. You’re welcome.

—Meg

I wrote this letter out of frustration, two weeks before my wedding, as the “helpful comments” and “hilarious sarcastic jokes” about my wedding choices were flying fast and furious. Examples of this kind of charming commentary included: “I think you shouldn’t get married until you are at least thirty” (he says to the twenty-seven-year-old bride); “Next time you should plan your wedding in Hawaii, because [small Canadian town] in March is hardly a worthwhile destination”; and, the best, “Don’t get married. Just get a dog instead.” Delightful!

Dear [Complainer],

Thank you for your input. Unfortunately, since it is the day/week before/of the wedding, I am unable to change the thing that is causing you some amount of discomfort/inconvenience. Before you move forward with further commentary about how you would have planned things differently for our wedding, I would like to ask you a favour. As my loved one, your words are very meaningful to me. So I’d like to ask you to take a moment and think about how you would like to be remembered on my wedding day. You see, this wedding day is a big deal for me. And, as someone who loves me, I hope that it would be important to you as well, though naturally not as much as it is to me. Because my wedding day is important to me, and you are important to me, I will likely hold the words you say to me about and on this wedding day very close to my heart. This day will be very emotional for me, and I will therefore be hypersensitive to negative comments, perceiving them to be criticism of myself and my choices. You might have been thinking that you could be more free to share your opinions since we are family/friends—while this might normally be true, I am a people pleaser trying to plan a fun set of events for 115 people, who are the people that my partner and I love best in the world. I do not take well to unhelpful negative opinions (even “jokes”) about things that I cannot change (such as the location, time of year, guest list, decoration choices, food choices). So I’m asking you to take some time to think about what sorts of things you want me to remember about you, about how you acted and what you said to me and those that I love. If you don’t really care—or don’t mind if what I remember is that you spent your time sharing opinions which I found to be hurtful, with lack of thought for my feelings—then keep on keeping on. If you were hoping to be remembered as being a supportive, loving person who rose above the inconvenience of travel and circumstance to celebrate with me, you might want to reconsider your current conversational style and get a tighter filter on the running commentary. Continue reading Dear Friendly Advice-giver…

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Sass, Wedding Undergraduates | 73 Comments »

Mar 2013

Dealing with an Emotionally Absent Parent

A few years ago we ran two pieces: one on getting married after your mother has died, and one on getting married when you have an emotionally damaging relationship with your mother. Right after we ran the second piece, Nicole wrote me a note that she wanted to write about coping strategies for when you have a parent who is simply emotionally absent. This often happens when you have a parent dealing with illness, as well as for people whose parents are not that interested in planning or are otherwise distant from the wedding planning process. The article Nicole took two years to write is, no surprise, brilliant. But perhaps more surprising, I found it profoundly helpful reading for dealing with a variety of complicated relationships, married or not. This one, with tons of wisdom Nicole figured out in therapy, is pretty much a must-read for everyone.

—Meg

My mom and I have a challenging relationship, to say the least. Though it has been improving over the years, it probably hit its peak of challenging-ness when I got engaged and began planning my wedding in 2009. I had this fantasy that though we had always butt heads about the most minute and mundane details, we would suddenly plan this wedding in perfect harmony, and it would be the most incredible bonding experience for us. It would lead us to have that mother-daughter relationship I had envied amongst my friends for my entire life. It just took me getting engaged for it to happen!

We all know what comes next.

The first instance of realizing this would not be true was at the very beginning, about five months after my husband proposed. We wanted to get a firm grasp on our budget and guest lists so that we could begin making plans. That two-hour long conversation ended with my feeling flabbergasted and my mother feeling angry. It ended with my mother telling me to do whatever the hell I wanted and she would just write the checks. With her saying that she didn’t want to take control and thus was leaving everything to me to do on my own.

And she was completely true to her word.

My parents paid for the wedding, but my mother was as removed from it as any one person could possibly be. She was completely emotionally absent, and I was completely emotionally drained. I tried and tried to get her involved (Want to go dress shopping? What do you think of these centerpieces? Can you help me make the invitations?) and nothing ever worked. To be fair, she has a load of problems that have nothing to do with me (a chronic illness and her own disappointments with her wedding, just to name a couple), but, even as I write this, I can vividly remember the pain of all those quiet glares and eye rolls and leaving rooms and unanswered questions. My dreams of a wedding bonding experience were never going to be realized. And that’s the case; they were never realized.

But this isn’t necessarily about venting those stories. What I really wanted to write about is what it was like for me to have a parent who was emotionally absent from my wedding process. Especially having a mom who is emotionally absent.

Think about all those perfect wedding images that include parents. The mother and daughter giggling as the daughter is trying on the dress. The mom clasping the pearls around the daughter’s neck right before the she walks down the aisle. The mom and daughter tearfully smiling at each other after the wedding. And when that didn’t happen, when that perfect relationship didn’t exist, all I felt was shame. Absolute shame and fear that there was something deeply wrong with me and that it was completely my fault. At the same time, I had so much anger because I knew, I knew, that this was not my fault. She was making her own choices and that was not my responsibility.

But somehow, that knowledge doesn’t seem to fix it. The knowledge and the emotions don’t fit together. And, because I didn’t have anyone to talk about it with, or anywhere to get help figuring it out, I wanted to share with you some of the things that helped me.

Boundaries. These were so important. I can’t even tell you how important they were for me, even if I failed to utilize them all the time. I had to figure out my boundaries with my mom, and I had to set them with her. So, for example, I learned that asking my mom to help with the invitations was going to be rebuffed every. freaking. time. So I stopped asking.

Rely on others. Because of a whole other set of issues around my wedding, this was really hard for me. But, I had a great maid of honor who stepped up and helped me even if I didn’t really know how I wanted her help. I trusted her, and I used her. I “let” her help me with those invitations. I tried not to shut her out because my absent mom refused to be a part of it all.

50/50. My therapist helped me figure this out about two weeks before my husband and I were heading back to Texas to get married. She pointed out that in my desperation to have the perfect relationship with my mom, I was putting about 95% of myself into it and my mom was only doing about 5%. Continue reading Dealing with an Emotionally Absent Parent

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning, The Hard Stuff | 70 Comments »

Feb 2013

Weddings And Mothers

The emerging trend of Not A Rom-Com month seems to be that while the grass may appear greener elsewhere, in truth it seldom is. So today Lydia tackles the frequently maligned (and simultaneously exalted) Mother of the Bride and why maybe she’s grateful that hers doesn’t quite fit the standard mold.

—Maddie

The cliché is perhaps as old as the modern concept of a wedding: Unable to let go of control (and perhaps of the spotlight) the pushy mother of the bride misses no opportunity to interject her own opinions on everything from the wedding location to the cake toppers–and won’t take “no” for an answer. This character is everywhere, from romantic comedies to wedding websites and magazines (The Kn*t has scores of posts giving advice for dealing with pushy mothers) to wedding TV shows (on a recent episode of his wedding makeover reality show, David Tutera confronted a “Momzilla”). In fact, this idea is so culturally ingrained that prior to our engagement my fiancé, who is not particularly familiar with rom-coms, said, “Well, doesn’t the mother of the bride just plan everything?” I erupted into laughter.

You would too if you had ever met my mother.

My mother is probably the least sentimental woman I have ever known. She and my father have been married for about thirty-five years. I say “about” because I’m not sure exactly what year they got married, and I’m pretty sure they don’t know off the top of their heads, either. It was definitely in the late 1970s, and I think it was in July. Neither of them wears a wedding ring—my mother is a doctor and washes her hands constantly, so she never wore a ring regularly, and besides, I am pretty sure both my parents lost their rings years ago. My father never gave my mother an engagement ring. They decided to get married because they were living together and grew tired of worrying about the wrong person answering the phone when one of their strict Catholic mothers called the apartment. Indeed, had caller ID been around in the mid-1970s, this issue could have been avoided and my parents may never have gotten around to getting married at all. Their marriage ceremony should be recorded in history books as the shortest wedding service in the history of the Roman Catholic Church—the whole thing took about thirty minutes. My mother wore a simple white cotton prom dress with green embroidery that she bought at Sears for thirty dollars. My grandfather did not walk my mother down the aisle—in fact there was no procession at all. Afterwards, the few family and friends that attended went to a local restaurant, ate dinner, and went home. There were no invitations, let alone save the dates, engagement photography sessions, or a bachelorette party. Forget about a wedding planner—my mother didn’t even have bridesmaids.

To be clear–this lack of formality was my mother’s intention. Granted, she and my father were broke at the time, and neither came from wealthy families, but I am fairly certain that money could have been saved for somewhat more of an elaborate celebration. A large part of my mother’s anti-traditional stance stemmed from her feminism—she recoiled at any element of patriarchy in the wedding ceremony, anything that appeared to stem from or reference the “transfer of property.” Indeed, my mother never took my father’s last name. But her stripped-down, purely pragmatic wedding was due just as much to her inherent nature as it was to her politics, to the extent one can distinguish between the two. My mother does not understand why rituals and symbols seem to hold so much value to people. Although she is a talented artist and can be hysterically, self-referentially funny, hers is the mind of the scientist, focused on the practical, the here and now, the things we can see and touch. She sees no value in symbols like rings, white dresses, and communion wafers. Her wedding was an act of rebellion—rebelling against patriarchy, rebelling against what was “proper” for women, and indeed, rebelling against the very Church where the wedding was performed (despite, or perhaps because of, her religious upbringing my mother has been an avowed atheist since she was in high school). Continue reading Weddings And Mothers

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning | 84 Comments »

Feb 2013

What Weddings Bring Up For Single People

Because there is an awful lot of single shaming that exists within our culture, we try to include positive representations of singlehood on APW whenever we can. (This decision may or may not be colored by the fact that the staff, on the whole, really enjoyed their single years and wouldn’t give them back for anything.) But the thing is, I know that there are just as many of us out there who decidedly do not enjoy being single and are coming to terms with that as well. And that voice needs representing too. So here is Carolyn, doing just that.

—Maddie

I was as obnoxious as any eighteen-year-old can be. When my friends and I graduated high school none of us had ever been on a date. I was certain that a wedding would be very soon in my future, though. I had been trained to be a wife. By that I mean that I grew up in a religious community that had very strict gender lines. I didn’t interact much with men, but I was led to believe that they liked women who knew how to iron a man’s shirt in three minutes and who would be demure and quietly respectful.

I thought that I was somehow more qualified than my high school friends to take this position of wife. And I thought that men would be quickly able to see how qualified I was with my wife résumé.

That’s not how life went. Surprise, surprise, I had a lot of learning to do. And at thirty years old, I’m single and I’ve never been married. (Engaged once, and that was a huge mistake. The relationship was terrible and I rushed it because of wanting the wedding.)

For years now I have listened to the messages of society about how a woman’s worth is directly tied up in her marital status. I try not to believe it, but it’s hard not to. It’s everywhere I turn. From the Huffington Post publishing an article claiming that if you’re not married by thirty the reason is you must be a bitch, to my mom’s friends gossiping about why someone is still single. “She cared about her career too much.” “She shouldn’t have wasted time with that man who wasn’t going to commit.” Everyone has an opinion about what a girl has done wrong to end up thirty and unmarried.

All that pressure and emotion is extremely present when going to friends’ weddings. I adore my friends, I’m delighted for them when they get engaged and married. That doesn’t make it easy for me, though. When I watch a particular wedding show about difficult brides (and I do, because hey, whether I’m engaged or not, I love weddings. There’s a reason I’m here at this site!), one of the things that surprises me is when the brides are upset with their bridesmaids for not becoming perfect robot wedding helpers without their own lives. The brides become outraged at their friends for being in the hospital or having a relative die. I think brides need to remember that their friends are not going to behave perfectly. They’re going to be themselves.

But more than that, they are going to be dealing with some very strong emotions of their own during this magical day of yours. It’s not because they are selfish, it’s just what weddings bring up for some of us. Continue reading What Weddings Bring Up For Single People

Posted in: Friends & Relations | 131 Comments »