wedding post II: getting to the ceremony

Okay, so where were we? Oh that's right, we were bolting down peanut-butter rolls and Tim-Tams and trying not to FREAK OUT about the fact that it was raining and we were about to leave for our OUTDOOR WEDDING.

Once my hair was done and we had inhaled our lunch, it was time for the rest of the preparations. Getting dressed was quick and easy: pull my dress over head, pull on a pair of tights, and slip my shoes on. I was wearing minimal make-up because a) I never wear make-up and I didn't want to look completely different, and b) I don't like the way it feels. I put a little soft eyeliner, eyeshadow and waterproof mascara on and that was that.

The boys got dressed quickly. Liz helped Robert tie his tie, which was kind of adorable. Liz took out her curlers and got all fancied up. Everyone looked beautiful.

A side note: I do not regret at all our decision to get ready together. Seeing one another in the hall of our home was no less special than doing it at the ceremony. It was a pretty magical moment.

At this point, we were running a little late and it was raining. We jumped into Tim's car and were off. Driving with friends, instead of in a limo, was definitely the best choice. I won't say I was calm, but I was definitely less freaked out than I would have been otherwise. We listened to Of Montreal and made jokes and it all seemed a it less scary.

Halfway to the university, Robert realised that I had forgotten my bouquet. For a moment, this felt like a TRAGEDY. My precious, beautiful bouquet! That cost $40! That was so cute! Now I was A BRIDE WITHOUT A BOUQUET! Waaaah!

After a few seconds, I decided to forget about it. I would like to say that this was because I turned my radiant face to my groom and said blissfully, "This is one of the happiest days of my life; I don't need anything but you, darling." In fact, I decided that I was too freaked out about the rain and our lateness and the fact that both my parents had their mobiles turned off to worry about anything else. And yeah, after a bit I realised that it really didn't matter, and if I let it matter to me I would just make myself sad, so what was the point? As it happened I forgot about it as soon as I stepped out of the car and didn't think about it all day.



Our wedding location was something we had given a lot of thought to, and I was really excited to have the ceremony in the Tropical Grove. Our backup location for the wedding was also pretty, sheltered under the clock tower, but it was very dark on a cloudy day. And we had really wanted to get married under the trees.

We made our way to the clock tower with umbrellas. The University is a popular place to hold a wedding, and as we walked we saw a very spendid and traditional wedding party go by, with the bride in a poofy white dress, several bridesmaids in red satin, and some nondescript men in black, all trailed by a photographer and a videographer. I felt a bit frumpy but very glad I wasn't them.

As we approached the clock tower, I saw a few people milling around. I started to feel even more nervous. Then I walked under the arches and saw Everyone.

I had gone over the invitation list several times; I'd even addressed and posted all the invitations. I knew that 80 people, plus about 15 children, were coming to the wedding. But in my mind's eye, on the way to the wedding, I had seen my family, Robert's family, and a few friends. Here is an interesting fact: when you put 80 people and 15 kids in the same place, it is A LOT OF PEOPLE. And when they are all dressed up in fancy clothes looking like complete strangers, and they all turn and look at you, it is the scariest fucking thing you have ever seen in your life.



I felt like turning around and running. Luckily our little friend Bella ran up to greet us, and I grabbed her like a lifesaver and dove into the crowd. All I wanted was to find my mum and hide!

I've seen a few photos of me at this point, and I look kind of drunk. I have this big, confused. terrified smile on my face, like I've wandered into a surprise party and everyone is expecting me to do a song-and-dance number. I felt completely overwhelmed, like this whole thing had gotten out of hand and I just wanted everyone to go away and stop looking at me.

***

I think I'll leave it there for now. Tune in tomorrow for the best bit: the ceremony!

it is done!

We're married! And it was wonderful.

Okay, I'm going to write about EVERYTHING. Partly because I feel like going over it all again, partly because I want you all to know, and partly so I can go back and read it when I've forgotten most of it (in about 6 months, probably). And now that I'm an old married lady I can give advice with even greater authority (and pomposity), and tell you from the vantage-point of Experience exactly how you should run your wedding. You lucky readers!

Anyway, I'll start with the day before.

This was kind of awful, mostly. Robert had to work and I had the day off, and I was running around trying to organise various things (getting a new car stereo so we could have music on the trip down to our honeymoon, picking up our wedding favours [more on them later], dropping stuff off at my parents, etc). I felt very anxious and I just wanted the whole stupid thing to be over. The nicest part was going to my parents' house to drop off the favours. They were very busy making food and cleaning the house, but we sat down and had a cup of tea and I took a deep breath. It made me feel so much better to see them, and see how lovely the house and the garden were looking.

Just a side note, here: we had the reception at my parents' house, and they were AMAZING. They took a week off work to work on the house and the garden, as well as many weekends before that. They made almost all of the food themselves, and worked so hard at the wedding making sure that everyone had food and drinks. They did an incredible job and I was so, so happy. To be honest it really made the day even more special, because so much love had gone into it.

Anyway, back to the dreaded Day Before. I hadn't really realised how anxious I was until Robert got home. I said, "I need a cuddle", but when we went into the bedroom I remembered that I had stripped all the bedlinen to wash it. SO I BURST INTO TEARS. Robert, understandably confused, was very soothing and gentle and sensible and made me feel much better, but that's the level of stress I was feeling. All of which now makes me realise how much worse I would have been if it had been a huge production with bridesmaids and waltzes and so on.

That evening, we were having dinner with friends. While we had several lovely friends flying in from interstate, the others had family in Perth; Ive, our Best Friend, was coming in from Victoria just for the weekend, and Tim came all the way from New Hampshire, USA, to see us get hitched. We knew we wouldn't get a lot of time with them at the wedding, so we decided to have dinner on the Friday night.

I really wasn't feeling like going out; I wanted to curl up under the covers and vibrate with anxiety. But it really did end up being the best possible thing. If you were to ask me what you should do the night before your wedding, I would strongly advise a relaxed dinner with friends. I felt so happy and loved and supported and calm.

The next morning we both woke up feeling nervous and edgy. We had breakfast (I couldn't eat much) and mooched around the house. We had heaps of cleaning to do, because our friends Liz and Tim were house- and rabbit-sitting while we were away, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do anything constructive. In the end we sat in front of our computers playing games on the internet, Picross for me and Uno for Robert. Romantic! Eh, it was better than rushing around between hairdresser and beautician.

At around 11:30 our friends Liz and Tim arrived. We had decided to get ready in our house, together. At first this worried me a bit. I felt like we 'should' be getting ready alone, and then hiding till I walked down the altar, so he could see me for the first time at the altar and blah blah blah. In the end we decided not to, for a couple of reasons:

1. We were getting married on the grounds of a University, which meant that in order to avoid Robert and the guests, I would have to skulk around the Physics toilets or something.

2. My mum was busy getting ready for the reception, I didn't want to drive at all on the day (a VERY wise decision, I would have driven straight into a tree) and I didn't want to ask people to chauffeur me around.

3. If I was separated from Robert all morning, I would be wound up to an unbearable pitch by the time I saw him at the altar and probably would have burst into tears.

4. It's stupid.

So our valiant and wonderful friends came over to help us get ready. Liz was doing my hair, which deserves a post to itself, so I won't dwell on it here. Having them over was another thing I was worried about (actually it would be more efficient to make a list of things I wasn't worried about: 1. Bat attacks. 2. Drought. 3. Tapeworms) but again, it turned out to be wonderful. I was able to chat to Liz which she did my hair and Tim talked to Robert and kept him occupied. We shamefully used Tim by sending him out to get rolls for our lunch, even though I was convinced I would be too anxious to eat. As it turned out, poor Tim got lost on the way back and was very late, which turned out to be a blessing because I was starving and managed to wolf down not only my roll with peanut butter but half a packet of Tim-Tams which we had planned to leave for Liz and Tim when they house-sat. Here is some good advice: try to eat something before the wedding, especially if you are not having a sit-down dinner, because you won't get to eat anything for ages.

Oh, and here was a lovely little extra keeping the butterflies at work in my stomach: after an unusually warm and sunny start to autumn, it had started raining on and off the day before, and was sprinkling while Liz and Tim were at our house. Getting us ready for our outdoor wedding. EEP.

More tomorrow!

bad advice

Presented for your edification and enjoyment, in no particular order, here is the worst wedding advice I have come across during my brief foray into this insane world.

1. Six months before the wedding, start having regular facials administered by a beautician. That way, when you get a pimple three days before the wedding, it will feel like a major disaster instead of a minor inconvenience.

2. Work out what is most important to you, and spend the major portion of your budget on that. If music is important to you, you may not use an iPod full of your favourite songs. If your dress is important to you, you may not wear a $20 dress from an op-shop. Don't you understand that the importance of a thing is measured by how much it cost?

3. If you're wearing a sleeveless dress (i.e. 99% of all wedding gowns) you must tone your arms. It's such a beautiful moment in a wedding when your grandmother leans over to your aunt, tears in her eyes, and says, "Check out those guns! This wedding is awesome."

4. It is important to supply out-of-town guests with a bag filled with maps, chocolate bars and cute reminders of your relationship. You don't want them wandering around town, lost, starving and without a magnet to remind them of your initials, do you?

5. If you see the perfect pair of adorable Louboutins and you just absolutely need them for your wedding day, go ahead and splurge! You deserve it and if you don't you will always regret it. You are a sparkly princess and everything revolves around you and there will never ever ever be any consequences to your actions.

6. Your invitations must match your decor. All your guests will bring their invitations, hold them up against the table decorations, and check that they are the exact same shade of lilac. If they are not, you will be PUNISHED.

7. Put your initials and/or the date of your wedding on everything. As we have seen in many films, people often have sex in laundry rooms and bathrooms at weddings, and your bridesmaid might need to check the date of the wedding against the date of her last period.

8. If you can't dance in your wedding dress, you might want to consider getting a second dress for the reception. This is the only way to solve this problem. Oh, wait-- you could wear rollerskates and just get the other people on the dance floor to push you around, maybe?

9. Find room in your budget for a videographer; it's an important keepsake you won't want to pass up. Especially if you can edit in cool effects later, like a dinosaur biting you on the butt or something.

10. Your wedding should perfectly express not only your taste, but who you are. Because the best (perhaps the only) way to express yourself is through conspicuous consumption, and the decision to have poppies instead of roses in your bouquet is the most effective way to communicate your innner self to the world.

aw jeez

I'm getting married in three days and I don't have my shoes. Just about everything else is taken care of, though.

I had a big fat freakout the other night. I stopped the car in a parking lot and cried hysterically while Robert patted my hair and soothed me (possibly while wondering if it was too late to escape). It was over something completely unimportant, which just acted as a trigger for all my stress and anxiety and worry about this whole thing to come pouring out, and I found myself making reasonable points like "WHAT IF NOBODY THINKS OUR MARRIAGE IS REAL BECAUSE IT'S NOT A SIT-DOWN DINNER" and "I SHOULD HAVE STARTED MAKING TISSUE-PAPER POMPOMS MONTHS AGOOOO-HOH-HOH!"

Deep breaths.

ring-a-ding ding

Handscape rings by Zlda

Yesterday was the 18th of March, and it was exactly one month from the wedding. Today it is one day less. Holy frijoles, Batman.

We have been Getting Things Done. We have signed and lodged the papers. We have met with the celebrant to discuss our ceremony. And we have our wedding rings, which ended up being surprisingly painless.

Robert wanted a plain silver band. The first silver jewellery shop we went into showed us a bunch of rings, and he chose one. It was $50. The whole process took about five minutes. WIN.

My ring was a little more work. I decided that since my engagement ring has a gold band, only a gold ring would look right. I had my grandmother's wedding ring, the one which goes with the engagement ring, but it was too small. I wanted to look around and see if it would be cheaper to buy a ring or have this one melted down and remade.

Here is my advice for buying a wedding ring:

• Know what you want. This may mean sitting down and trying on a bunch of rings until you find the material you want (white gold? yellow? platinum? silver?), the style (plain? engraved? with stones?) and the width. Oh, and find out your ring size while you're at it.
  

• Once you find out what you want, you aren't obliged to buy it. Make a note of what it is and how much that shop is charging, and get some more quotes. (Letting the store know you are getting quotes is also a good way to see if they will be flexible with their prices.) This way, you can go around to different stores or even phone around, and you can quickly find out if they have what you want and what they're charging.
  

• No, seriously, go and get some quotes. I was looking for a very modest ring: a 2 mm width plain 18-carat yellow gold band. One of the shops, which was beautifully fitted out and staffed with exquisite people who had been extensively trained in the art of eyebrow-raising, showed me a ring in this style for $360. The next shop, a less impressive place, showed me the exact same ring for $250.
  

• If you have gold, use it instead of buying something new. This not only saves you a whole bunch of money, it is better for the environment: the mining has already been done. A wedding ring is a thing that doesn't really get thrown away; chances are that your parents (or your partner's parents) have old rings lying around from grandparents, or even jewellery such as bracelets that they never wear. After getting quotes from shops, I went to a jeweller and asked how much it would be to melt down and remake my grandmother's ring; he quoted me $180.

In the end, when I tried on my grandmother's wedding ring, it was only a few sizes too small. Not all old rings can be upsized, as they may have structural defects, but this one was in good shape. It was also exactly what I'd been looking for: a 2 mm width plain 18-carat yellow gold band.

The jeweller changed the size for $32.

WIN.

it's a nice day for it

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Some wedding inspiration: a literal version of Billy Idol's 'White Wedding.' Please, someone tell me they are using this song for their first dance!

I just dropped into a St Vincent de Paul's op shop on my lunch hour, and bought a veil for $8.

I haven't quite worked out what I'm doing with my hair, but I thought it might be nice to work a veil in there somewhere. Since I'm not wearing a wedding dress per se, I thought it would be fun to go for a crazy head-dress to bride it up a bit. And really, when am I ever going to wear a veil again?

oh yeah, the wedding

I recently read a post in a wedding blog in which the writer apologized for writing so little over the past few weeks. She maintained that she had been so busy with actual wedding planning that she hadn’t had time to write about it. I considered using that excuse here but I didn’t think you would believe me. So here is the real reason: I pretty much forgot about the whole wedding thing for ages. Then I remembered but I couldn’t be bothered talking about it.

You see, first there was Christmas and holidays and it was 2008 and my wedding was in April 2009 and that was like a zillion months away, and I got a wonderful new job and I was drawing and seeing people and planning and being happy. Planning a wedding seemed a lot less interesting than having a life.

But then suddenly it was January and the wedding was magically much, much closer. April, as it turns out, is the fourth month of the year, which is really rather sneaky. My airy declarations of “All the important stuff’s booked, the rest will take care of itself” sounded a little hollow. Apparently we are supposed to send out our invitations 8 weeks ahead of the date? Ridiculous! Anyway, I have been doing Wedding Things and the whole thing is moving along. Wedding invitations have been designed and are almost ready to go to the printer (more on that later) and a dress has been bought.

Yes, you heard me, I bought a dress. I’m not sure if it’s The Dress, though. I went shopping with my mum and found a lovely dress with a lot of the features I wanted: sleeves (or at least covered shoulders), bright colour, flattering cut. But I did have a particular type of dress in mind, and this one had some differences: It wasn’t any of the colours I had in mind, and it’s a bit low-cut for my liking (although I could pin a bit of lace there to save my blushes, like a character from a Victorian novel).

Anyway, I like this dress very much. If I find another, more perfect dress, I’ll get that and this will be a pretty party dress; if I don’t, this will do very nicely, and I can stop worrying about it. (In case you think I’m being extravagant, this dress was on sale for $70, and will do for almost any occasion.)

I’m getting pretty excited about this whole wedding thing. That reminds me: I must remember to get the licence.

princesses don't need oxygen

From one of my all-time favourite Blogs, Photoshop Disasters, comes this insane image originally found at dreadful wedding site The Knot. Maybe the bride was a member of the Long Island Staylace Association? Suck it in, ladies!

is it just me, or is this strange?

I was looking online at B&Bs and hotels in a little country town where we are thinking of spending a few days' honeymoon. One of the hotels promised the following:

"All rooms have remote control colour TV, footspas, teddy bears etc."

Um... of course.

juxtaposition

As soon as you change your Facebook status to 'engaged', the ads start coming. Lose weight, fatty! Give me money to 'manage' your wedding for you! Don't you want wedding photos of you and your generic groom in front of a sunset? We can make it happen!

Then this conjunction of ads came up today and I had to take a screenshot:



The best thing about this is the tagline "Guilt free shopping." Yes, there will be no consequences of using this credit card! February 2009 is ages away! Only takes 5 minutes to apply because we won't ask you any rude, nosy questions about whether or not you can afford to pay it off. Don't worry, the debt consolidators will take care of all that!

And sandwiched in the middle, an invitation to spend some dough on your Special Day. Possibly guilt-free.

Meg over at A Practical Wedding just posted some Wedding Rules which made me think about mine. When we sat down to talk about our wedding, it was pretty easy because we felt the same about nearly everything. Our main goal is to be comfortable, happy and relaxed on our wedding day. Here are the rules by which we are planning our wedding:

1. No wedding colours. Meg had this as one of her rules, and it sounds like she's copped a bit of flak about it. I've had a few people express concern that we haven't chosen colours, too. But here's the thing about colours: they are seductive, and they are dangerous. If you choose teal, then you will be more likely to burst into tears when the table runners you ordered are too green; you will also be more likly to make impulse purchases because "it's so cute, and it's in our colours!" Not having wedding colours is part of our theory that the more you strive for perfection, the more stressed you will become, and the more disappointed you will be with little flaws. I want our wedding to be colourful, but I don't need it to be perfectly matched.

2. No creepy oversharing, references to ecstasy or bliss, or "nod nod wink wink" stuff in the ceremony. That stuff is weird.

3. Related: no garter toss. I HATE this.

4. No uncomfortable clothes. I wouldn't wear high heels or a corset to your wedding, so why would I wear one to mine?

5. No video. We'll be asking our friends to take photos (as if we could stop them) but we really don't need or want a film of the wedding.

6. No speeches.

7. No "first dance."

8. No registry.

9. As little as possible should be purchased just for the wedding. No special knife to cut the cake, no special glasses for the toast, no 'heirloom handkerchief' (note to sellers of wedding crap: you can't buy an heirloom. It becomes an heirloom once the buyer has passed it on to his or her descendants. There's a clue right there in the name!). Clothes and will be able to be worn again; glasses will be rented; if we decide on favours, they will be something people might actually keep, as opposed to photos of us in pewter frames.

10. No going into debt. If we can't afford to pay cash, we don't get it.



P.S. The blurb for that toilet paper pictured above promises that not only will this product "bring a smile", wedding guests "will be amused and amazed with your attention to every detail when they discover...even the toilet paper has a wedding theme!" Well, if it's going to impress my guests, I guess it's worth the $10 a roll. But can I get it in my wedding colours?!?

flowers

I wrote a while ago about bouquet alternatives and made the following statement:

To tell you the truth, though, I think I'm going to drop into a florist on the morning of my wedding. I've never been in a florist's without liking at least some of the flowers, and I figure I'll find a pretty bunch and make them into a bouquet myself. If I can't find anything I like, I'll just grab a bunch of daisies from my mum and dad's garden!

Since then, however, I have talked to my mum, and she has made it clear that she would like to pay for my bouquet, and that she would like it to be a Bouquet, not a bunch of daisies. I'm fine with that; I'm going without so many traditional elements that I figure I should give in on this one. It's a mother-daughter Fun Thing, right? (Note: it is probably only a Fun Thing if you are not too bothered by the outcome; if you are going to burst into tear on finding that you can't afford orchids, or that tulips won't be in season, it will be just another Stressful Wedding Thing.)

So. Flowers! I, like most people, like flowers in the abstract but am not too knowledgable about the names of my favourites. Luckily, I have the internet to tell me what is in season when, and give me pretty pictures!





Photos by ComputerHotline

Poppies are so lovely! They're fragile and asymmetrical and windblown and romantic.



Photo by Vaula

Anemones are similar but more simple and very sweet.



Photo by Flickrolf

I'm not sure what this flower is, but it's lovely. (I can see that I definitely do have a specific taste in flowers!) I think it must be a poppy or a relative, since the buds are similar. This photo is fantastic, too-- it looks like a snapshot from the seventies.



Photo by John Hann

Daffodils will be in season in autumn, and they're lovely. They might be a bit too structured for what I'm envisioning, though.



Photo by wolfgang.wedenig-wuschL

And I honestly do love the idea of carrying daisies on my wedding day. Unpretentious, pretty and low-maintenance!

tagged!

I Hate Planning My Wedding is perhaps my very favourite wedding blog of all. In fact, I have been meaning to write about it for a while now. I don't have time now, though, because Engaged & Enraged (the hilarious author of this blog) has tagged me to tell 7 facts about myself!

The rules:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blog.

4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog!

Okay, here it goes. What have I still not told the internet about?

1. One of the things that makes me feel most calm and happy is sitting outside, holding my rabbit on my lap and stroking his back.

2. I think glasses are fantastic accessories and kind of wish I needed them.



3. I would rather read than do almost anything, including go to parties and go shopping.

4. I constantly worry that people hate me, because I'm loud and annoying and obnoxious, but I'm not sure how to be any other way. Also, I tend to worry about this after the fact, not at the time, when I could actually do something (ie shut up).



5. My favourite kind of lollies are the chalky, pastel ones like the kind they use to make candy bracelets and lovehearts. In fact, I'm not allowed to buy bags of them because I sit and obsessively eat them until I get a sugar headache! I also have a bit of an addiction to popping candy, but that's not so bad because it takes me 20 minutes to slowly eat a little bag and they only have about 3 grams of sugar (plus something worryingly called 'propellant').

6. My ideal job is writing and illustrating comics and children's books. My ideal job which I might actually be able to make a living from is working in a museum.



7. I love aquariums so much that going to them is almost like a spiritual experience for me. My favourites are the giant sea-turtles, the cuttlefish, and the rays.

Thanks, E&E! Hmm, I don't know that I can find 7 people who haven't done this yet... how about 6?

The Confusions of Hogsandwich

Another One Bites the Dust

Jo Emmons

Nina

Osier

Jinjur

Second image by Dawn Endico on Flickr; third image by Amarand Agasi on Flickr; others by me.

bouquet alternatives

Recently invisiblyrose posted in her wedding blog Another One Bites the Dust (which is great, by the way) that she is looking for flower-free bouquet alternatives so she doesn't spend her wedding sneezing. I started to write a comment on her blog and then realised, wait a minute! I HAVE A WEDDING BLOG. So here you go!

I too have been thinking about my bouquet. At first I thought, that's just an extra thing to spend money on! We'll do without it. And then I read an excellent comment by another bride: IT GIVES YOU SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR HANDS. And I realised that not only would it be a great relief to have something to stop me fidgeting at the (non-existent) altar, I would in fact benefit in my daily life by having a bouquet to hold. When I'm waiting for the bus, for instance, or standing in line for sushi. I have never really worked out what I am supposed to do with my hands.

Anyway! I have looked around Etsy for some bouquet alternatives, and I've found some lovely ones. Check em out!



If you're going for a somewhat traditional look, you might like a silk bouquet, like this one from Hannah Roses.



The Russian's shop is a little bare right now, but she always has lovely things. I especially love the bouquets she makes from vintage and cotton fabrics, they're so bright and pretty.



Suili crochets the most gorgeous semi-realistic flowers. Since she sells them by the stem, you could buy a few different kinds and make your own bouquet, or just get a mass of one kind.



But for sheer cuteness, you can't beat button and felt bouquets like this one from Violonjello. This is probably the kind of bouquet I would lean towards; it's so fun and colourful!

Hand-crafted bouquets like this are not cheap, but they are lasting decorations for your home, so if you love them they're not a bad way to spend your wedding budget. To tell you the truth, though, I think I'm going to drop into a florist on the morning of my wedding. I've never been in a florist's without liking at least some of the flowers, and I figure I'll find a pretty bunch and make them into a bouquet myself. If I can't find anything I like, I'll just grab a bunch of daisies from my mum and dad's garden!

summer bride

Pink, turquoise and yellow wedding by tinymonster

It's starting to really feel like summer here! This would be a fun outfit for a summer wedding.

Can you tell that I really, really like colour?

Weddingbee and the right to marry

Photo by l3m4ns

If you read the wedding site Weddingbee, you might be interested to know that the owners have sold the site to eHarmony, a company which positions itself as "Christian" and disallows gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from using their site.

Going through the process of planning my wedding and thinking about marriage has made me very aware of the injustice that other people are denied this right. One of the things that attracted me to our celebrant was that one of the first things she mentioned on her webpage was that she did commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples (in fact when I told her about that she said they're her favourite ones to do, because they're so special). I don't support companies that build discrimination and prejudice into their corporate mission.

I guess what I am trying to say is: BITE MY BUM, EHARMONY

wedding photography

Photo by Jon Fravel

I just finished reading One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead, and I highly recommend it. The cover of my copy has a quote which compares the book to Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death (one of my favourite non-fiction books, and one which I re-read regularly) and the comparison is just. Like Mitford, who investigated not death itself but the way that the funeral industry shaped practices and attitudes to death in order to maximise profits, Mead investigates not so much weddings and brides but the wedding industry and how it has shaped the way we celebrate marriage. Her prose style also reminds me of Mitford's: sharp, dry and often hilarious. My only complaint about the book is that it wasn't longer; I wish I could have read it for twice as long.



Photo by Modomatic

One of Mead's targets is wedding photography. I have been thinking about this recently. Our budget has no room for a photographer; instead, we will ask a couple of artistic friends to bring their cameras and get a few nice shots. Sara, the author of one my my favourite wedding blogs $2000 Wedding, recently wrote about their decision not to hire a photographer and made an exceedingly sensible point:

We have never hired a professional photographer for other important events in our lives and never plan to. College graduation, birthday parties, the birth of our first child--we are fine with all of these things being captured by an amateur's click. Our wedding didn't seem any different. In fact, we were afraid that hiring a professional photographer might make our wedding feel like a show.

Robert and I feel the same way; neither of us particularly enjoy being photographed, and we're not the sort of people who will take out a wedding album and coo over it. (Are there any such people?) In One Perfect Day, Mead argues that the purpose of the professional photographer, like so many other elements of the modern wedding, is in fact to create the experience of faux celebrity and record an image of perfection, rather than to record reality.

Formal portraits are still a standard part of a wedding photo album, but the purpose of wedding photography today is not to preserve for posterity a documentary image of the individuals who are getting married... Rather, wedding photos today capture a couple's specific incarnation as bride and groom, and their arrival at the apogee of romance.

Photo by Brian and Mimi Tsai of Life Mosaics

I have never been interested in being professionally photographed. However, when I started looking at wedding sites on the internet, I noticed something new. Wedding photographers now take pictures of what is known in wedding-speak as "details". The bride's shoes; the centrepieces on the table; the groom's hand-made cufflinks; the bridesmaids' vintage parasols. Here is an excellent example; the wedding photos include the invitations, the 'gift pails' for the guests, the matching white umbrellas available in case of rain, the colour-matched drinks, the votive candle holders in a fabric that matched the bride's dress. These are things that I doubt many guests will remember; in fact, most of them wouldn't even notice. But luckily, the photographer was there to record them. Mead writes that the wedding album functions

as a means of capturing images of the material production upon which so much thought, time, and money have been expended. The wedding album serves as a riposte to the disquieted murmurings a wedding can generate amongst family, friends, and the couple themselves-- all this, just for one day?-- by ensuring that the sugar-spun flowers on the wedding cake and the silk grosgrain ribbons wrapped around the bouquets' stems are preserved not just in memory, but upon archival-grade photographic paper.

A good set of wedding photographs can be called upon to justify all the expense that preceded them; and the anticipation of acquiring a good set of photographs can also encourage that expense in the first place.

This sums up my discomfort with wedding photography. Weddings are ephemeral; they will leave behind some good memories, but in all honesty those memories will not be enhanced by buying matching pale pink candles instead of cheap white ones. The insistence on "details" in both wedding photography and in wedding blogs and sites (even those that claim to be "alternative" or "indie") insists that the ephemeral can and should be made concrete, and that the more beautiful and perfect your decorations, shoes and cake, the more wonderful your memories will be.

Green and black wedding by tinymonster

Damn this thing is fun. It's like playing dress-up with Barbies!

I would love a 30s-style wedding outfit like this. So much fun!

links for reubenesque brides

Hee hee, I am having fun thinking of charming euphemisms for fat. Being an artist who specialises in adorableness helps you not mind so much about being fat, actually. Fat things are the cutest things!



Exhibit A.

Anyway, I have been looking at sites which have plus-size dresses. Because I'm from Australia, I've only been checking out sites that ship internationally, so if you live in the US you can probably find lots more. I also wasn't specifically looking for bridal dresses, although some of these site do carry those (or even better, pretty white dresses which haven't been categorised as 'bridal' and so cost half as much). I also ignored any sites which had what I considered to be overly expensive dresses. (One site had a cheery "Coming soon!" in their $200-$300 page, and a single lonely dress in their $300-$400 page.)

Alight
B & Lu
Cherished Woman
Daddy-O's (retro forties and fifties style dresses, absolutely gorgeous!)
Igigi
Kiyonna
Size Appeal
Torrid (including some very pretty and affordable wedding dresses)
Zaftique
eShakti: beautiful Indian-inspired dresses that you can apparently customise as you order-- add longer sleeves, etc. Looks like a fantastic source for pretty wraps and shawls as well!
Evans

And a couple of Australian sites:

Entitled
City Chic

I hope this is useful!