Planning

Mar 2012

The first comment I ever posted on APW was in response to a comment by someone who expressed a sense that feelings were the new mason jars. She said blogs like Moment Junkie were worse for her than The Big Wedding Blogs because they made her feel bad about not having the right feelings.

This is blog envy gone mad! I said to myself.

I empathised because I know what it's like. As a nerdy shut-in of a kid I knew intellectually that people had all kinds of feelings. Look at Heathcliff and Cathy, I thought. Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Heck, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield's lives were a 24/7 feelings-fest. Unfortunately because I was so busy reading about them I had no friends, and so real feelings (which usually arise from interaction with other human beings, as opposed to secondhand feelings, which arise when you read Frederick Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot) were a mystery to me.

This was my emotional range at age thirteen:

Embarrassment
Irritation
Hunger

I didn't even have any crushes from ages thirteen to eighteen. What kind of freakish teenager doesn't have crushes? Clearly I was some kind of heartless monster.

But here's something I've realised over time. It doesn't freaking matter. Heathcliff and Cathy are made-up people! Even Elizabeth and Jessica don't actually exist! And in real life, ordinary people have inappropriate feelings all the time. They spend hours working themselves up to an intolerable pitch of excitement over a date, and then the date happens and they're bored the whole time. They worry about the laundry while making love to their partner. They're consumed by envy when their BFF announces the fabulous new job they've got.

Granted, these are all hypothetical situations rather than ones I've experienced myself (personally, I avoid thinking about laundry whenever possible). But at my graduation ceremony, f'rex, I didn't feel proud or satisfied or emotional about the three years I'd spent in the law library. I was bored with all the photo-taking, sweating in the jacket I was wearing on a boiling summer's day, and cross because my parents had made me put on high heels and my feet hurt. Continue reading Zen: On Having The Correct Feelings

Posted in: Planning, Planning: Journeys, The Day Itself | 98 Comments »

Mar 2012

Elisabeth: An Interlude Regarding The Patriarchy

Today, I'm so grateful to be introducing you to the third intern that will be writing about planning her weddings all year, Elisabeth. She is dealing with the decidedly complicated situation of having converted to Islam, getting married in a different country, and getting married in a different faith than the one she was raised in. She will be doing more long form writing once a month, because some things deserve a lot of words. Today she's getting started with a not-so-tiny topic: her blossoming feminism while planning a wedding in a new culture.

Four months ago I got engaged. One week later I packed up everything I owned and moved back to my American hometown. And now it is March, and I’m in the Middle East.

This was always going to be something of a transition year for me; I just finished an MA in London, and now I have to sort out where I go from here, whether it be a PhD or a job. What’s more, I have to figure out how those plans fit in with my other half, who’s gainfully employed and at least relatively settled. Now add to that the fact that I am planning a wedding God-knows-where, with a fiancé who is three time zones behind me and three thousand miles away, and you have the makings of a complicated situation, logistically and emotionally.

One additional complicating factor, one I didn’t really expect and I know Amin didn’t expect, is my increasingly vocal assertiveness about gender. I would call it feminism, but it’s so lukewarm I honestly feel weird calling it that. I guess I could best describe it as a rude (and, let’s be honest, pretty bitter) awakening to the fact that the gender-equality assumptions I grew up with in a WASPy liberal American suburb are not, in fact, universal. Surprise!

I converted to Islam roughly a year ago. Whatever you do or do not know about this religion, you certainly must be aware that the status of Muslim women is hotly contested. Muslim women themselves, along with Muslim communities, are struggling with what it means to be a woman and Muslim, what it means to be empowered and faithful, and what it means to be self-sufficient and, yes, equal. I bring this up not to debate the merits of Islam, or Islam’s position on women—obviously those debates are too big to do justice to here. Rather, for the first time in my life, I am consciously aware that some think it is relevant that I am female. And not in a good way, or in a way that reflects what I believe my religion teaches. It is an uncomfortable experience, and it has made me hypersensitive to any hint of unfairness.

Okay, oversensitive.

One day, walking to the mosque, we passed the imam, who called out a friendly greeting from across the street. I was immediately furious that he had said hello to Amin, but not to me. I raged, I ranted. Was he uncomfortable speaking to a woman? Did he think my modesty would be offended? As it turns out, he had said hello to both of us. Oops.

Unfortunately, wedding planning is not improving the situation. Lots of the traditions Amin and I find meaningful have patriarchal overtones, and these days I find them hard to overlook. Do I wear a white dress? Will my father walk me down the aisle? Am I taking Amin’s name or keeping my own (read: my father’s)? On the Pakistani side, will my father sign my marriage contract for me? Will Amin pay a dowry? I can’t blame Amin for sometimes feeling like he’s tiptoeing through a minefield. Continue reading Elisabeth: An Interlude Regarding The Patriarchy

Posted in: Gender & Feminism, Planning, Planning: Journeys | 69 Comments »

Mar 2012

Here Comes the MIB

Oh, the wedding dress. Two months before my wedding, after a long and arduous search (which weirdly turned out to be worth it) I still had no idea what I was going to wear to our wedding. I felt, in a word, nuts. But I wasn't nuts. All those websites I was reading that told me that everyone had at least the dress figured out were totally lying. And also? All that crap I was reading about how the dress had to be bridal to make you look like a bride? Also totally false, as proven by my friend Jamie, who has never regretted rocking a short cotton dress, and who looked every inch the Jamie-bride. So, today we have Katie here to tell us about a dress search with two brides and MIB (yes, you can hum it).

Lately I've been casually looking at wedding dresses online, but I’m having trouble getting into the dress shopping spirit. The wedding’s not until September, so there’s no real rush, but the reason I haven’t tried a single dress on is actually this sneaky little lady who lives inside my head. Let me introduce you.

A while ago I was perusing Anthropologie’s website, and I saw an adorable dress and thought, Oh my gosh, I need to get this! Now! It’s casual and short, exactly what I've been looking for. It was perfect. At the time I didn’t even know our wedding date yet and we had been considering a winter wedding, so I reminded myself to slow down a bit. Cute or not, short and strapless would be a no-no in January.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from imagining myself in the dress at my wedding. There I was cuttin' a rug at the reception, shaking it around, having an awesome time. But when I went in reverse—back to the moment of walking down the aisle, something went terribly wrong. I came face to face with... My Inner Bride. I call her MIB for short. She’s a treat.

Her problem with me in this adorable dress?

I look too normal. I'm not... wait for it... glowing. That's right. I'm not glowing. According to MIB, when I walk down the aisle on my wedding day, jaws should drop. Everyone watching me should think to themselves, "Oh. My. God. How have I failed to notice all of these years that Katie is the most beautiful woman to ever walk the earth?"

And when my fiancée Navah sees me, she should be overcome—o.ver.come.—breathless with her own brilliance, thinking to herself, "Wow! This is the best decision of my life. I'm marrying someone who looks exactly like Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, and Halle Berry all rolled into one. Impossible! And yet, here she is!"

I have tried to reason with MIB, to explain to her that I look exactly 0% like any of those people. I mean, I have hair and eyes and boobs, but that’s about as close as it gets. And no wedding dress is going to change that. What's more, I'm pretty sure if Navah were running this little celebrity wedding-day fantasy, it would involve me tripping as I walk down the aisle, catching myself as I make a witty and self-deprecating remark, and Navah thinking, "Wow, this is the best decision of my life. I'm marrying someone exactly like Tina Fey."

But MIB doesn’t care about any of that. She’s completely consumed by whichever wedding myth it is that says The Bride is supposed to look more beautiful than she's ever looked in her life, more beautiful, in fact, than anyone else has ever looked in the history of the world. You know that scene from Love Actually where Kiera Knightley's character watches the video that her husband's best-friend-who-actually-loves-her made of their wedding? And she looks sort of disgustingly ethereal and shimmery the whole time? And perhaps she’s wearing feathers?

That's what MIB's looking for. Continue reading Here Comes the MIB

Posted in: LGBTQ Weddings, Planning, Wedding Undergraduates | 51 Comments »

Feb 2012

Dear Pre-Wedding Self: Cool The Eff down!

Who here remembers when we started the Wedding Graduates series? Show of hands. Well, when we started it, the project was supposed to be nothing more (and nothing less) than people giving advice to their pre-wedding selves. It all started with East Side Bride's super simple advice post, and it has built into... where we are today. But I'm super crazy in love with Julia's post because it's so smart, and so funny, and so simple, and so perfect. (And yes, she promises to write a longer post at a later date.) So here it is, the advice you need to hear.

Dear Pre-Wedding Self,

Cool the f*ck down. Seriously. It doesn’t matter if you have a ring to “prove” your engagement is legitimate. You got those engagement rings tattooed on, remember? It doesn’t get more legit than that. It doesn’t matter that your amazingly sweet almost-brother-in-law (although he and your sister aren’t married—yet) printed the invitations he designed as your wedding gift with the wrong website for RSVPs.

Don’t be offended or hurt that two of your dear friends have an actual contract that means that they have to be somewhere else at the exact time of your wedding. Even though it’s sports-related, it is a super important part of their lives and they do not love you any less. Be happy that you spent a gazillion hours looking for the perfect wedding band in black for your wife (to be). No, a true and forever black metal band doesn’t really exist and yes, a nut (?!) and silver ring is a nifty alternative, even though it won’t last forever.

Also please don't stress out about your lives and selves colliding. Yes, there are people you love who will call you by your burlesque name to your parents who will be puzzled but polite and hopefully will have no idea that their daughter co-founded and runs a successful burlesque troupe in this same city. It will be fine and everyone will be thrilled that Violet and/or Julia is getting married!

Pre-Wedding Self, remember that your parents were excited, once they got over the initial shock. Remember that your wife (to be) also has wonderfully supportive mother and grandmother and friends. Remember that there is no one in your life who will decline the invitation to your wedding because of moral or religious conflicts. And remember that as a queer couple, these things are amazing, wonderful, and priceless.

Continue reading Dear Pre-Wedding Self: Cool The Eff down!

Posted in: LGBTQ Weddings, Planning, Wedding Graduates | 20 Comments »

Feb 2012

Introducing: The APW Writing Interns!

In November, I posted about hiring APW interns to write about their wedding planning process over the course of the next year. I somehow had it in my mind that hiring interns would be a fairly simple process: a handful of you would apply, and since y'all are a really smart bunch, I would pick an awesome intern or two, and we'd be done. Well, life often has a way of surprising you. By which I mean, fifty of you applied. Fifty! With a resume, a cover letter, and two writing samples each. That meant days and days of reading for me, in the middle of launching a book. (Whoopsy, timing!) I read intern applications everywhere. I read them on the train down to my parents' for Christmas. I read them by the Christmas tree. I read them on a computer in my lap on the drive home from LA to San Francisco (which was as absurd as it sounds). And in the end, I concluded that while I jokingly refer to you as Team Practical, you are actually a huge force to be reckoned with. You guys are wildly talented, cuttingly smart, phenomenally well educated, and, in this economy, are being offered too few meaningful opportunities. I'm still pondering that information.

Needless to say, I could not be more excited about the writing interns we ended up hiring. As I sorted through the applications, a few kept drifting to the top of the pile. And in the end, the trio of interns that emerged fit together in a beautiful way. First, there is Madeline, a British woman who just married an American in Brooklyn (the marriage happened rather unexpectedly over the holidays, as international marriages often do, but the reception is forthcoming). Madeline is a journalist, and she is excited to stretch her personal writing muscles and explore writing online. Then, there is Zen. Zen is a Chinese Malaysian woman who is marrying a Brit in London. Zen is a lawyer and is also a published short story writer. She's been blogging for the past ten years, and she is excited to bring all of this experience to the APW crowd. And finally, there is Elisabeth, an American woman currently living in Saudi Arabia, marrying a Pakistani-Saudi-British man who lives in London. Elisabeth converted to Islam almost a year ago, and she is now navigating planning a Muslim wedding while living in a different country than her partner.

Before I let these wonderful women introduce themselves, I just want to point you to the updated APW Staff Page. It's my new favorite thing. I'm so delighted to be living out my dream of gathering together a bunch of tremendously smart, super funny ladies, and making something awesome together. I'm just so damn proud to be writing APW with this killer staff. So without further ado, APW's 2012 Writing Interns, in their own words.

Madeline: When I came across APW about a year ago I was so relieved: I’m not alone! I didn’t need an RSS feed, I just hit refresh constantly for about a year. Somewhere in the middle I got engaged. Coincidence? I think not. In a wedding industry that is so much about what is certain, correct, or traditional, it means a lot to me to find a community where it’s not just ok to doubt, question, and second-guess, it’s what makes you awesome. I can’t wait to get started! Just one caveat: I’m already married. My husband and I were aiming for a wedding in April 2012. Then we learned I would need surgery in January and would be spending the first couple of months of 2012 recovering. Then Brandon lost his job. Wedding planning suddenly seemed even more daunting than it had before, and for underpaid writers in New York City, that was daunting enough. But we didn’t want to put it on hold. We wanted to go for it! We snuck off to City Hall with two beloved witnesses for a brief but meaningful elopement in December. In some ways, the pressure is off. In others, it has intensified. The response from family and friends was essentially, “OK fine. So when’s the party?” All I can say is, watch this space…

Zen: Hello, Team Practical! I'm a Chinese Malaysian lady working in London and engaged to a British dude whom I shall call—for fear of Google—Cephas. We're getting married in a gigantic Catholic cathedral in England on 15 September and in a boisterous tea ceremony in Malaysia on 29 September. I've been reading APW since I got engaged last May, and I loved that there was sensible feminist discussion about weddings out there—but I was disappointed that it was almost exclusively Anglo-American in focus. (Editors note: well, Anglo, at least. We have so many UK and Scottish weddings that, confusingly, Channel 4 voted us a top wedding blog last year. But still, POINT.) What I hope to bring to the site is a slightly different perspective, of someone to whom the traditions usually talked about on wedding blogs are only familiar via TV and movies. Whose primary colour association with weddings is red, not white. What I hope to get out if it is connection, and discussion, and community, with people with the same slightly off-centre perspective on weddings. What I hope to get out of it, in other words, is you.

Elisabeth: Greetings, Team Practical! I’m an American currently living in Saudi Arabia writing, studying, and trying to figure out my next move (geographically and professionally). My fiancé, a lovely Pakistani-Saudi-British man we’ll call Amin, lives and works in London, and we’re attempting to long-distance plan a wedding in an as-of-yet undecided location for November or December 2012. We are also trying to respectfully navigate a labyrinth of multicultural assumptions, some of which are very new to one (or both) of us. One of the more challenging (for me in particular) has been his culture’s expectation that there can be no recognized "relationship" before it becomes legally and religiously legitimate. And since we haven't even been in the same place for most of the last decade, you will have to content yourself with coy pseudo-artsy photos of feet from our limited collection. For The Big Reveal, we are aiming for an interfaith, intercultural wedding that combines our Islamic beliefs with the wedding traditions from my American family and his Pakistani one, hopefully in a way that everyone can feel comfortable with. Unfortunately, if this sort of wedding has ever happened before, you would not know it from the internet. So, in true APW style, we are inventing it. I know that so many of the ladies on APW have reexamined and reimagined traditions in their own lives to make sure that their weddings, and their marriages, truly reflect their priorities. I hope that my struggle to do this for myself will provide a new perspective and some entertainment. More importantly for me, I am looking forward to enlisting the knowledge of this incredible community.

*****

I trust by now, you all are as excited as I am and will give these women a warm welcome. Zen and Madeline will be writing for you every Tuesday, in rotation. Elisabeth will be writing for you in a more long form style, once a month. And now, we have a week to pick a title for this series... if you have a brilliant idea (I'm betting some of you have brilliant ideas), please feel free to leave it in the comments!

APW 2012, kids. It's going to be epic.

Posted in: Planning | 56 Comments »

Feb 2012

He Said No to a Wedding

This week, we've been exploring the idea of "Why a wedding?" Or as is the case today, "Why not a wedding?" Because sometimes, you need a wedding, even when you're courthouse people, to validate your relationship when your country won't legally do the right thing. Sometimes, you need to run off and get married among dinosaur bones to figure out what marriage means anyway. And sometimes, now is just not the time. Today's post is from Sara. Sara invented the term wedding dropout, she fell in love and had a baby, she got engaged, she threw me a book party in Denver. And now she's not getting married right now. Even though she planned a whole wedding in an afternoon. Which is sort of hard. But also sort of funny (God bless Sara). Let's discuss.

APW Book Tour Denver Moodeous Photography (9)

He said NO to a wedding.

I should preface this by saying that I’m not angry by any means. Our lives are all about being practical and taking the time to do things we want the way we want. Unfortunately, that means my amazing spontaneous ideas (PS. I can coordinate a wedding in an afternoon, apparently. No joke.) are really a thing of my single girl past.

I had it all planned. A wedding in a beautiful pavilion in my favorite park with a gourmet food truck reception and frolicking in grass! So fun! And perfect for a family with a eight-month-old crazy crawler. Perfect. I patted myself on the back over this one. I had nailed it. It would be true to our lifestyles, to our budget (less than $1,500) and we’d have so much fun.

But I never took the time to consider or consult that groom guy.

Shit.

Full story: I did email him earlier in the day and say I wanted to get married. I also added a second email saying, “No wedding, let’s just get married.”

I stand by the adage that as a woman I have the right to change my mind as often as I change my clothes. And I did just that between sending him that email at 10am and having the wedding all planned by 4pm.

Now, I have to admit, I have two very close friends getting married in opulent weddings later this year. So maybe, just maybe (a big maybe) I was getting a touch of wedding fever. Or I just wanted to feel pretty, or I wanted to feel special. Sometimes it’s hard to feel special when your baby is spitting in your face and your biggest accomplishment for the day is avoiding a poop disaster during a squirmy diaper change.

And having a family is f*cking awesome, but it’s also sorta exhausting at times. And it takes a lot of work and dedication and sh*t like that. Again, awesome, but with all the work some days, when I go to bed at seven p.m., I don’t feel special, or pretty, or glamorous or anything other than so happy Duncan is asleep so I can sleep.

There it is. Does a wedding actually make you feel pretty and special, or is that just crap I read on the Kn*t back in the day? Continue reading He Said No to a Wedding

Posted in: Planning, The Hard Stuff | 31 Comments »

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