Posts Tagged ‘APW Lauren’s Wedding’

Oct 2011

Well, it's finally here. Last year, Lauren joined APW as an intern shortly after she got engaged. In the last year, she's shared her wedding planning journey with us. She grew and changed in the position, moving from intern to submissions editor, and at the same time she grew and changed through her wedding planning, and engagement. And now, finally, she's a graduate. She's gotten to the other side, and she learned the things that you can never really learn till you're there. So today it's an honor to see her graduate and share her words with you.

A week before the wedding I thought I had it all figured out. If I had to do it over again I was confident with what I would ditch and what I would keep. I told my mom that a wedding was not worth it. It wasn't. If I had to do it over again I would have had an ultra small wedding (parents, 3 best friends, ta-da), a dinner at a great restaurant and a honeymoon. Bam. No fancy dress, no hullabaloo.

What I thought the week before the wedding was: how silly of me to believe I would regret not having aspects of the wedding I had imagined growing up—nothing happened the way I thought it would during engagement, and busting my butt for the reception and the favors and the details had not ended up making me feel awesome. The week before the wedding it made me feel like I just wanted it to be over. I didn't feel at all the way I thought I would about the things I thought I would.

And then, the morning of the wedding I woke with a surge of adrenaline that never ever went away. The girls and I went to Starbucks for breakfast and tea, then to our hair/makeup appointment at a salon. In the rain. Where the person with the key never showed up. The owner had to race over, forty minutes after our appointments were supposed to start. We rolled with it. Everything about a wedding has to do with rolling with it. This part of the day was where I felt the most calm. I was with my best friends, goofing off in a salon downtown in matching hoodies and pajamas. It was, oddly, the most normal thing I did.

By the time the wedding rolled around I was overwhelmed with the immensity of it. I couldn't breathe well sitting down so I leaned against the back of chairs like a plank. My anxiety was through the roof. When I was waiting to walk down the aisle with my dad, just us two behind a door while the rest of the wedding party filed in, he choked out, "I really love you," and we both cried. I told him he couldn't talk to me anymore, he couldn't say another word because we were going to be a mess otherwise. He said ok. We held on to each other and I gripped kleenex.

Walking down the aisle I only remember two things: knowing my dad had a hold of me, that there was no way I was going to stumble or mess up because he was there, and locking eyes on Kamel (who was beaming like a shooting star) at the other end of the church. I saw no one else. He waved at me, I waved back.

When my dad had dropped me off at the front and Kamel and I had taken our spots, off to one side of the altar, facing the guests, the Deacon said his opening remarks and I knew I was going to pass out if I kept standing. I knew it. I looked to the front row where my parents and best friends were sitting and they all knew it too. They mouthed to me to breathe, to yawn, that it would be ok, that I could sit if I needed to. They used subtle hand gestures and I started to see black spots. I tried to make it through the welcome, but 3/4 of the way through I sat. Kamel sat too. I told him, "I don't think I can do this."

Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Lauren & Kamel

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 72 Comments »

Jun 2011

Lauren’s Last Wedding Undergrad Post

And now, a post that needs no introduction. It's Assistant APW Editor Lauren's last wedding undergraduate post... the last post before she walks down the aisle, and joins us over here, on the other side.

It has come to pass that I only have 31 days until our wedding. So this will be my last undergraduate piece. My last engagement check in. I have the dress, the accessories, the paperwork that says we can get married in the eyes of the catholic church (and soon the state of Washington), a deacon on standby, and rsvp cards trickling in.

And I have a lot of respect for this phase, this crazy time that makes me want to rip my hair out and at the same time makes me so sure that Kamel and I are It. With a capital I. And I am so incredibly excited for it to be over. But the biggest thing I've learned? It's all about choices, decisions, and clarifying who you are as your own person, and who you are as a team.

For those of you in the early stages of engagement, you have lots of really difficult, and really rewarding things to go through. Make sure to keep the light at the end of the tunnel in mind. And to make you feel less freaked out by what's to come, to remind you that it mostly always works out in the end, here are the big choices Kamel and I had to make together.

Names, identity, who are we to the world after this?
I read this post by Brenna a few months ago and it occurred to me: Mail. I would be receiving mail and I wouldn't be Miss Dupuis anymore, I was going to be something else.

I had originally decided to take Kamel's last name and we both would take my last name as our middle names. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the majority of people would never know that Kamel's middle name was the same as mine. They would never know that we shared our identity with our namesakes. And no one would see me as Lauren Dupuis Perez. They would see me as Lauren Perez. I would introduce myself as Lauren Perez. And mail, even stupid junk mail, would arrive in my mail box addressed to Lauren Perez. But who is THAT? That is not me. And reading that piece, made it bright and clear. All kinds of warning bells went off, and I chewed on this idea for a while, until I was absolutely certain that changing my name to his last name was not going to work. So, we talked about it. We talked about it pretty much every day for 2 weeks. We talked about making up our own last name, of taking Kamel's other last name (He's Mexican, he has several to choose from in there), and of not changing at all. We talked about it in the morning before work and we lied awake in bed at night talking about it. And then we made a choice that felt super right, after much discussion, for both of us. We will hyphenate. He will be part of me and I will be part of him. Families merging to create a new one. Us.

Drama. It will happen. How do you deal with it?
I thought, that by sheer will alone, I could have a completely drama free engagement. No one would have hurt feelings, and everyone would arrive at our wedding with smiles and tears of (only) joy on their cheeks. No one would be upset about name cards or guest lists because I wasn't upset about name cards or guests lists. The TV talks about bridezillas, and I sure as hell was not going to be one, therefore everyone would play along.

No. That is not how it works. Continue reading Lauren’s Last Wedding Undergrad Post

Posted in: Engagements & Proposals, Friends & Relations, Gender & Feminism, Planning, Planning, Wedding Undergraduates | 74 Comments »

May 2011

Lauren Wedding Planning: Oh My! Dress… Part 2

I don't know about you guys, but I am really excited about assistant editor Lauren's final post on picking her dress. Lauren's dress search echos my dress search (which was so epic that it has its own section on the site). For both of us, figuring out the wedding dress was a story of figuring out ourselves, and who we wanted to be when we got married. It was loaded, and complicated. And for me, it was worth it. In July we'll find out if it was worth it to Lauren, but I'm betting yes. And now, without further ado, the long waited (at least by me) next post on Lauren's wedding planning.

So last time I left you, I was a sweaty mess in a bridal boutique in Chicago, aware of what I didn't want and with a vague idea of what I did. Before we go any further, I need to come out and say this, just so we're clear: Dress shopping is hard. It is not at all what I thought it would be, and even now, after spending a chunk of change and time at two fittings, it's still hard.

Two months after the bridal boutique that made me take my shoes off and wash my hands before they allowed me even to think about dresses, my lovely friend, Maris, visited me in San Francisco. It was time to have another go at this thing. I had an appointment at a bridal shop in Burlingame (45 minutes outside of the city) that had carried a few styles I had liked and seen on the The Kn*t's giant searchable-dresses website. (A very handy tool for a girl who has no effing clue what she's looking for, I'll give them that much.) When we arrived we were the only people in the store except for a lovely older Russian woman who could have been a fabulous aunt-friend-of-the-family type. She was fantastic. Her name is Georgette. And I had no issues, whatsoever, whipping off all my clothes in front of her because all she really did was praise my ta-tas and tell me every dress I had on was made for me. We all need these people in our lives. The ones who go, "Oh my god, whatever. When I was your age I was begging for an a*s like that. Put this on, you're going to look amazing."

So, I picked a dress. I bought the dress. I called my mom and told her I had bought a dress. I felt good about the experience. I felt relieved that the entire thing was over, Maris high-fived me and then we made our way over to the donut shop and I had the biggest apple fritter of my life. Done and done, right? Except not. Continue reading Lauren Wedding Planning: Oh My! Dress… Part 2

Posted in: Planning, Style | 110 Comments »

Apr 2011

Lauren’s Wedding Planning: The Weight Diaries

We've gotten a lot of requests recently to tackle the really horrific crap that is (increasingly? it seems?) permeating the culture about women and body weight at weddings. We've talked a lot about the underbelly of the wedding industry, and how they are willing to do just about anything in order to sell you more stuff. And preying on your insecurities and body image issues at a sensitive time in your life, to sell you wedding weight loss products? Well, that's almost too easy. When I was planning my own wedding, I was delightfully impervious to this nonsense (I was raised without a TV, or much access to popular culture, and I chalk up my 'oh-my-god-I-love-my-body' image to that). But today Lauren is here, by request, to talk about how being engaged finally allowed her to kick her body image issues to the curb. Because what is engagement really, if it's not an invitation to change our lives forever?

There is a lot of crazy losing weight crap about weddings. You know this. It's everywhere. Magazines, TV shows (reality TV shows, barf), the emphasis is on 1) how much the wedding costs and 2) what size the bride got down to in order to fit into her dress. I actually heard an audio clip on the radio the other day promoting one of these stupid shows. The bride-to-be was adamant that if they "didn't lose this weight to win the prize, they were NEVER going to be able to afford the wedding of their dreams. And then what would we do?" It disgusts me that a show exploiting desperate couples because of their body image issues is on the air, and that there are couples who are so incredibly desperate for a completely over the top wedding in order to have a "perfect" day, that they would sign up for it.

Now then, I have struggled with my weight pretty much my entire life. I understand that there are people who don't and it's hard to understand the chronic anxiety that comes with trying on pants or, god forbid, bathing suits when you haven't woken up one day and just ... not fitted into your clothes. Yeah, that's a real special moment when you have to keep the button undone and wear a big sweatshirt because your muffin top has finally said "Enough!" The anxiety of that ever happening again induces IBS, and increases the days where I look in the mirror and am more than disappointed with what I see. So, you'd think my wedding would be putting me in a salad-eating, two-work-outs-a-day frenzy, but it hasn't.

Here is what happened: Kamel asked me to marry him (hooray!), and my first, or even fifth thought, was not about my weight. It was not about what I was going to weigh in a year, and it was not about what I weighed right then. A few months went by and I started to think about my arms. My arms and I have always had a wary relationship. Basically, I don't trust them. I've never been able to do a pull-up, and no matter how many push-ups I do, they never change shape. They just are what they are. So I figured, well, it can't hurt... I'll buy a ShakeWeight. They sold it at Walgreens, I had walked by it dozens of times on my way to retrieve large amounts of candy. The infomercials had snared me, and no amount of ridicule from Kamel was going to stop me from marching in there and snatching it off the shelves. I had made a promise to myself not to tell a soul, but instead shock them with my amazingly toned biceps in a years time.

Sometimes, I can't help myself, I believe the hype regardless of the sexual innuendos, and Kamel's chronic secret videotaping of me while I, uh, worked out. In the end, the ShakeWeight really didn't last that long. It ended up being a pain to use, and I felt like it wasn't, um, effective? Ya think? And it wasn't until after we went on a weekend trip to somewhere that had a pool and sunshine, that we really got serious about changing our lifestyle. I say we because a lifestyle change involves the other person when you're about to bind yourself to them for eternity. Ahem. Continue reading Lauren’s Wedding Planning: The Weight Diaries

Posted in: Planning, Planning | 318 Comments »

Mar 2011

Lauren’s Wedding Planning: The Marriage Prep

It's been awhile since we've had an update from Assistant Editor Lauren on her upcoming wedding (it's coming up in July! It's going to be here before we know it!) So she's back today, writing really honestly about the Catholic Pre-Marital Counseling Process, Pre-Cana. As most of you know, here at APW we're huge fans of doing some sort of Pre-Marital Counseling, religious or secular, because it gives you a chance to talk about the real issues of marriage, and not just the flowers and the dresses and the wedding, wedding, wedding. But I will say that every single one of my girlfriends who has done Pre-Cana has come out with some really thoughtful and hilarious stories. And today, we get Lauren's:

I've already spoken about how important I feel the engagement process is over at I'm Better In Real Life, so I'll just start off this post with a small paragraph about it. I believe the space between dating and marriage is necessary. I believe the fighting, the team building, the surprises that pop up are more than necessary in building a solid foundation. I believe that these moments can be the beginning of how you define your small family against the families you've come from, and I believe it's a chance to go toe to toe with your partner in order to say, with complete certainty, that yes, we're in this together and I am a stronger person with you by my side. Or not. The or not is equally important.

That being understood, there are so many things during engagement that are just plain fun. For us, it's been our experience with Marriage Prep. Kamel and I are doing Pre-Cana through the Catholic church and it was something I was battling with from the beginning. I knew it was necessary, but just wanted to go through the motions to get to the end result. What's happened since has been a complete happy surprise. We're not quite done yet (we still have 4 classes with other couples to attend plus one more meeting with the representative from the church we're attending), but we've already met with our Deacon twice (up in Seattle) and our church in San Francisco twice, so we're well on our way.

The first time we met with the guy who runs Pre-Cana in San Francisco we were nervous. We didn't want to say anything that would eff it up. We didn't want to leave anything out that may be important. We didn't want him to suddenly decide we were unfit to wed, because then what would we do? So for any of you who are engaged and are planning to go through the process but haven't begun yet, here's how it went for us: We chatted with him for a few minutes in his office, giving him all of the deets for our wedding (date, place, deacon) and then he took us each, one at a time, into a different room to ask us other questions (are you pregnant? do you plan on raising your children catholic? have you been married before? are you entering into this union by your own free will?) and this is where I panicked a little because holy god, I had not prepped Kamel for what he was supposed to say - the control freak section of my mind nearly clawed through the door for an emergency run down of appropriate responses. But then I heard the guy ask a question, realized I had no control over the situation, heard Kamel respond, and then heard the guy bust out laughing, and figured it would all be alright. Continue reading Lauren’s Wedding Planning: The Marriage Prep

Posted in: Planning, Planning, Wedding Undergraduates | 60 Comments »

Jan 2011

Lauren’s Wedding Planning: Oh My! Dress

Long time readers will remember my long and involved dress saga (if you don't, it's worth a read, because what an epic story it was). So it only seems fitting that we're coming full circle, and Assistant Editor Lauren is here with the first installment of her dress story. Not to give away too much, but in it she's naked and sweaty with a bee-keepers mesh hat on. So, you know there is that.

So Kamel and I have been watching Say Yes To The Dress because Oh my god that sh*t is caarraazzy! And I'm totally fascinated with people who think nothing of spending 5k on a dress whereas it takes me six months and a lot of potatoes to save 1/2 that amount. But oh the pretty! And oh I digress.

You guys - I cannot BELIEVE I haven't told everyone the story of my dress hunting experience! Because isn't it supposed to be one of those ground breaking wedding planning moments? For some people it is. I've seen it on TV. I've seen the "oh my gosh this is THE ONE!" face and then the tears and the mother's tears. So I know it's not a myth, I know it happens to some people, probably to even some of you. Buying a wedding dress can be a long journey so when you finally make that decision I can see it being an emotional one.

My journey had two stops and the first was in Chicago where my dear friend, Maris, set me up an appointment at a used dress boutique. Because my goal was to find something that didn't look like prom and was under a thousand. Preferably like six hundred bucks. I was stoked because this place had straight up designer dresses, but were all used so they were greatly reduced. I had never tried on a wedding dress before, I had never even really seen one up close. I had no idea what all of the different shapes meant or how they would look on my body. But I did know that something was amiss when the storefront had a little basket of socks and a sign asking us to remove our shoes before entering. The entire store was white. White carpet, walls, furniture. The saleswomen wore all white. There was a soon-to-be-bride trying on her possible wedding gown on their shiny, white runway in the middle of the store. A full on runway, raised off of the ground about a foot, with a three sided mirror at the end. This decadence had always been what I had imagined for wedding dress shopping. The troupe of girls, the champagne, the sitting room with the glittering chandelier, the runway. The runway? Then why was I suddenly in the midst of a full on run-and-hide panic attack?

First, I was sweating like a mofo because it was mid-June in Chicago and the humidity was upon us, and god knows trying on clothes while sweating is a real treat. Second, I was asked to wash my hands before I was allowed to touch any of the dresses, for fear I would sully them. Then I was shown to the back room, with Maris, where hundreds and hundreds of dresses hung in bags on rows and rows of racks. I was told my appointment would only allow for 6-10 dresses, so pick wisely, and then we were left to our own devices. And the clock was officially ticking. Maris was like a kid in a candy store, and bless her heart because if it wasn't for her I would have probably apologized to the sweet lady in white and ran to the nearest bar. Maris was grabbing all varieties of dresses going, "Ooo THIS one! THIS ONE! Ooo lace? How do you feel about lace? Embellishment or not to embellishment?" and I would respond "nuumm? Eerr? Fuhhh..." and shrug my shoulders. Finally I was able to croak out, "I'm a little overwhelmed..." as I literally fanned my face trying desperately not to cry and be a total psycho in this fancy store. Maris continued to repeat, "Lauren this is SHOPPING. You know how to do this! Start picking things!" Continue reading Lauren’s Wedding Planning: Oh My! Dress

Posted in: Planning, Planning, Style, Wedding Undergraduates | 130 Comments »