Parties and Their Favors

Beyond a nine year old's birthday party, I'm not sure I get the fascination with party favors. I suppose when there is a gift exchange involved, which there frequently is at a wedding, it's not totally nonsensical. It's a reciprocity thing, wrapped up into the feasting that you lavish on your guests. They bring you prezzies and provide an audience so you feel like what you're doing is really important in the grand scheme of things, and you give them food, drink, and matchbooks with your name on them in ornate silver lettering.

Poking around the "blogosphere" today, I did a search for "bitching brides," hoping to find examples of nuptial grousing about the process, still on something of a 'bridal disasters and tantrums' kick. As it happens, there is a team blog called exactly that: "Bitching Brides." All told, it's really not that interesting, but that may just be because it seems to be a recent addition to the Land 'o Blogs. There is one reference to the doubtful wisdom of having a "chocolate fountain" in your wedding buffet when your bridal party includes six flower girls. Never mind the obvious imagery. Who does chocolate fountains anymore? And six flower girls? Isn't there a point when you are 'low' enough down in the social hierarchy that this sort of ostentation starts to smell like posing? It seems that anything ranking below a baronet should probably tone it down with the petal stewing cherubim. Three tops, people.

Anyway, what did catch my eye somewhat more profoundly -- if one can call it that -- in this Bitching Brides blog was a post by a woman who made her own bath salt party favors. She mixed up the blue-dyed ingredients, put them into glass soda bottles with tight fitting caps, and labeled them with a picture of her and her groom. Bath salts? Okay, whatever, as they say, but here's the thing; her concoction was a mixture of Epsom salts, bright blue dye, scented oil and baking soda, and the containers were airtight. Before too many days, this Molotov mixture was going off all over town and beyond in the homes of her guests. I would consider exploding party favors a portent. Mount St. Helen's blew her top the morning after my first wedding. Whatever happens, if any sort of explosions are associated with this next one, I'm going to stew.

Speaking of parties, today is this groom's 50th birthday. ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Senor Peligroso!

The "Bridezilla" Craze

Today in my email in box was the weekly newsletter from my buddies at WeddingChannel.com. Featured topic today on "Girl Talk," the site's discussion board: is your maid of honor trying to outdo you? This is not the first time I've seen this kind of topic featured by the site. A few weeks ago, it was "Brides beware: wedding sabotage is real," in which WeddingChannel posted the question: "Do you or your FH ("future husband".... wedding language has almost as many acronyms as the military) have someone who's trying to sabotage your wedding day? Share your story now!" Note gleeful tone.

There are over 40 responses posted detailing tales of future mothers-in-law ("FMIL") gone bad, bridesmaids ("BM") who are "big fat cows," ex-girlfriends ("ex-GF") finding unlisted phone numbers, maid of honor (MOH) and bridesmaid "attention hogs," future sister-in-law (FSIL) "attention hogs," plotting mothers, brawling groomsmen, "crazy" ex-wives, crashing ex-fiancee's, etc., etc. My favorite:

"my hubby to be's best man wont waer what i have chosen as my colors and has informed me that he will be wearing all black to my wedding including a sword. OMG talk about grose." [sic]

Like all big rite of passage celebrations, to say nothing of holidays, weddings seem to generate their share of bad behavior, and the entertainment value of such has clearly been noted. Much of the attention appears to be focused on the "cattiness" of women and ballistic brides having temper tantrums. The WE ("Women's Entertainment") Channel runs a program called Bridezilla, a reality show featuring various brides who would be queens, and bridal meltdown videos are a ubiquitous feature on You Tube (some of them, such as the viral "Bride has massive Hair Wig Out," are staged, but the point is the popularity of the shrieking bride theme).

Like becoming pregnant as an unwed teenager, it seems, being a temperamental bride has all the markings now of some sort of pop culture badge of honor. One "bride" with the handle of "Deliciousnachos" has a video wedding blog on You Tube, in which she does not hesitate to have meltdowns in several of her postings. I haven't found anything to suggest that Deliciousnachos is actually an actress and the whole thing is staged, but it's possible. In fact, it's downright probable. It's also possible that she's for real, but that she's using this as a opportunity to audition for an appearance on Bridezilla. I mean, posting in public a video of yourself crying because the wedding dress you ordered in ivory arrived in cream, then launching off into a thing about the groom leaving for a "more fun" girl named Selena, strikes me as something someone would do only if they dreamt it up as a stunt. But real or fake, it points to the same thing.

Ah, but Mary... you are forgetting the nature of the Internet, are you not? Yes. After all, I have a "wedding blog" of my own going, don't I? And it's possible that before all of this is over, I'll have a few meltdowns. I would wager that people who know me well are already making book on that possibility. I won't, however, publicly present my meltdown(s) in a serious, non self-deprecating way. What would be the fun in that?

But back to the line of thinking that newsletter from WeddingChannel.com sent me; this sort of gleeful 'glorification' of women behaving badly (frequently toward each other) smells like a bad case of misogynistic schadenfreude to me. It's not so much a delight in the suffering of these women, but in how bad their over-the-top emotionalism makes them appear. It's as if there's a collective pointing going on, with everybody saying, "See how irrational they are..." I find it bothersome. Yet, there I was, hitting that link in the newsletter, definitely interested in reading some juicy tales of maids of honor, bridemaids and brides involved in "catty" little battles with each other in some imaginary on-going war between women to be the one that all the boys like better than any of the others. For shame.