Planning: Journeys

Feb 2012

Today I’m thrilled to introduce the brand new APW writing intern series for 2012, Planning: Journeys. I’m delighted for you guys to start to get to know the wonderful women who comprise our intern team this year. You’re going to love them, I’m sure of it. Our very first post is from Zen, who you’ll remember is a Chinese Malaysian lady, living in London. Today she’s writing her long held hatred of the concept of weddings and what being engaged has taught her. It’s damn good stuff. So, let’s give a huge welcome to Zen.

I used to hate the idea of weddings.

I didn’t hate weddings—not weddings as I knew them. To me a wedding meant a gigantic Chinese banquet in a hotel ballroom. You’d have to wait half an hour past the time on the wedding invitation before the food was served, but there would be compensations. The slide show before dinner showing pictures of the bride and groom at various stages of childhood, puberty, and adulthood, tracing their development before the separate tracks of their lives converged. The film of the ragging that would have taken place that morning, in which the bride’s friends and family would’ve set the groom embarrassing, hilarious challenges before he was allowed to claim his bride.

And of course, the eight-course meal, and the toasting of the bride and groom when they came round to each table. Even if you didn’t drink you could hold up your cup of tea and shout “yaaaaaaaaaaam SENG!” with everyone else, prolonging the vowels until you ran out of breath.

No, weddings were ok. It was the idea of weddings that I hated. In a Western-dominated world, it was the huge white dress. It was the rock on your finger that measured by the percentage of your fiance’s salary spent how much your love was worth. It was the bride being passed, a prized possession, from her father to her future husband. It was women hating each other, squabbling with each other, envying each other, all for the glamour and achievement symbolised by that one big day.

I was totally above all this. No mystique about the wedding day for me, no sirree. It was nothing more than a means of formalising a legal relationship you entered into to please your parents and placate the tax collector. The real relationship underlying it was all that was important. Weddings and marriage were only a social institution laid on top of that love, the way a layer of fondant (ew) is laid on top of delicious cake.

You could be married without getting married. In a lot of cases, e.g. if you were gay and lived in all except a small number of countries, you kind of had to!

“The wedding is for the family; the marriage is for the couple,” I said, with all the profound wisdom of inexperience.

Then I met someone, and we had the delicious cake of affection and comradeship, and earlier this year he asked me whether I’d like some fondant on it. I said I could go with that. Continue reading Zen: Confessions of an Ex-Weddingphobe

Posted in: Planning, Planning: Journeys, Wedding Undergraduates | 38 Comments »

Mar 2012

Madeline: The Proposal

Today’s post is our first from APW Intern Madeline. The second I read it, I fell in love with her. Not just because she proposed to her boyfriend, but because she made me laugh so hard I did a spit take on my screen (true). So here she is, in her own words, to tell you how you don’t need anything fancy (or even an engagement chicken) to decide to get married. You just need your very own couch.

I wanted a proposal story the way I wanted an origins story of the “Our eyes met across a crowded room” variety. Actually we met online dating (our eyes met in an “Are you from OkCupid?” kind of way) and I asked him to marry me, nearly two years later, on our couch. There was no one-knee-age; merely, as our friend Jeff characterized it, a “casual lean.” It’s not the story I was expecting, but it’s our story nonetheless, and it turns out to be a pretty good one.

Proposing is not as easy as it looks on YouTube, even though the answer was never in doubt. We’d picked out the ring together. Like many an APW reader, I’d already spent hours on the Bario Neal website and we took the Megabus down to Philadelphia to try on my favorites. (“She got the ring made by Barry O’Neil,” my U.K. friends tell each other.) We came back to New York, and at some point several weeks later, the package arrived in the mail. Now we had the ring but I wasn’t wearing it yet, so we weren’t engaged—what now?

An awkward pause ensued. I’d check in every now and then and we’d agree that we were still planning to get married. But something was wanting. I had a nagging feeling that he was supposed to ask. Formality would be involved, and maybe, I don’t know, violins or something. The longer I waited, the bigger The Proposal seemed to loom, and the harder it seemed to move ahead without it.

Then I remembered an email from Bust Magazine about Engagement Chicken. You know, the recipe that’s so good he whips out the rock and makes you his kitchen staff for life? I’d rolled my eyes along with the good readers of Bust when I’d read it, but I’d fallen into the same trap as the poor girlfriend in the apron, looking for some external event to transform me, and our relationship, into exalted, proposal-worthy territory. We didn’t need it, I realized, and I didn’t even want it. Everything I wanted was already right in front of me. Continue reading Madeline: The Proposal

Posted in: Engagements & Proposals, Planning, Planning: Journeys | 77 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 | 74 Comments »

Mar 2012

Zen: On Having The Correct Feelings

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

Madeline: A Bride’s Guide to Uterine Fibroids

What are Uterine Fibroids?

Uterine Fibroids are benign tumors that grow in the uterus. If you ask Dr. Wikipedia, he’ll show you a picture. If you’d rather not, I’ll just quote him here:

“While most fibroids are asymptomatic, they can grow and cause heavy and painful menstruation, painful sexual intercourse, and urinary frequency and urgency. Some fibroids may interfere with pregnancy although this appears to be very rare.”

What happens when a fibroid becomes symptomatic?

Sudden, heavy vaginal bleeding may occur during business meetings. You may need to explain this to your (male) boss. Don’t worry. The Duane Reade on the corner sells underwear. Wipe your shoes and carry on.

Track your period. Seek medical advice. When your doctor prescribes iron pills, take them with a tall glass of water and plenty of food. Order the burger. Ask everyone if they know that apricots are high in iron. They usually don’t. Hah!

Blood may emerge in large clots, of a size you imagine to be consistent with useful internal organs—this is normal. You may wish to call your partner to explain your fear that you are carrying a half-vampire baby who is eating you from the inside. Go ahead. It could be worse, you could have picked the werewolf. Continue reading Madeline: A Bride’s Guide to Uterine Fibroids

Posted in: Planning: Journeys, The Hard Stuff | 62 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 | 49 Comments »