More Stuff to Buy

I followed the groom to one of the larger chain purveyors of books yesterday, and noticed the ubiquity of "scrapbooking" paraphernalia. What was once a fairly simple and organic method of personal archiving has become commodified to the point of practically selling folks the very mementos that go into the archive. The hyper commodification of this practice is not exactly new, I know. I had a colleague seven or eight years ago who was obsessed with it, and it was then that I became introduced to the phenomenon of scrapbooking for scrapbooking's sake. She would have "scrapbooking parties," and kept inviting me, but I never could stomach the thought. I realize now that I should have gone to at least one in the name of ethnography, but as is frequently the case for even professional anthropologists, one so often fails to see ethnographic significance when it's staring one in the face in the course of everyday life, even when it's doing so with much fanfare, waving around ribbons and rubber stamps and bits of colored paper and scissors that will cut it into decorative edging.

At the time of those many enthusiastic exhortations to come get in on all the cuttin' 'n pastin' fun, it struck me as peculiar, this hoopla over the new thing to do. My mother has some old scrapbooks up in the attic full of detritus accumulated mostly during her stint as a stewardess flying the New York-South America route for Pan American in the mid-1950's, back in the old propeller Constellation and Stratocruiser days: cocktail napkins from hotels in Caracas, concert programs, notes from suitors in her various ports of call, etc. (hmmm, she thinks to herself.... I ought to dig those up and do some preservation work). I've always associated this collecting of bits and pieces of this and that specifically with travel. The old family Christmas tree is a "scrapbook" of sorts, full of souvenirs from various wanderings, and the guest bathroom in my parents' house is a veritable museum of Mini Soaps of Many Nations, squirreled away from hotels all over the world. My parents (and I think it's specifically my mother) are hotel mini soap magpies.

It's not scrapbooking, itself, that bugs me. Anyone with a modicum of archivist tendencies does it, and my guess is that the practice dates back centuries. I found some examples of cool "scrapbooking" in Latacunga in Ecuador associated with the La Mama Negra festival. Part of the costuming involves elaborate headdresses and chest pieces embroidered with bits and pieces of everyday life: buttons, coins, little toy airplanes, flashlight bulbs, doll body parts, etc. Below is a sadly not very sharp picture, but you get the idea.
I'm going to make one of those one of these days. It's a great use of all those little pieces of junk filling up that one drawer in the kitchen, suitable for framing. But I'm "scrapbooking" here, aren't I? I'm just doing it online, ostensibly in connection with nuptials.

But, back to the large, chain purveyor of books. I could choose between any number of wedding planners/organizers with scrapbooking features, I could buy The Book of Us: A Journal of Your Love Story in Fifty Questions, and I could buy a journal/scrapbook for just about every aspect of my life. In fact, the scrapbook, journal and personal organizer seem to have melded into one massive industry of paper and glue and scissors and ribbons and stickers and rubber stamps and glitter ink and stuff, stuff and more stuff to stuff into pre-themed books in a frenzy of crafty documentation of the mundane. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except when one starts to wrap one's head around the massive scale of the commodification of archival documentation. The sheer volume of stuff that's sold to stuff into those books would seem to leave little room for personal mementos. It's as if what's being pedaled is the archival documentation of scrapbooking paraphernalia.

On a different note, while at the mall where said large purveyor of books was located, we wandered past a wedding/prom dress store called Emporio Bridal and Formal. Now, before I go any further, I think you can pretty much guess what sort of concoctions might be found at a place called Emporio Bridal and Formal located at the Clackamas Town Center. CTC may be more 'upscale' these days since the departure of Tanya Harding's practice rink and the arrival of REI, but this store had enough polyester to critically affect the ambiance of the whole complex. Between Emporio and Frederick's of Hollywood just down the mall a few steps, no amount of REI-ness can exorcise the ghost of dear Tanya.

The place was full (and I do mean full... those dresses take up a lot of room) of things like these prom/quinceanera dresses from online retailer BargainWeddingGowns.com:

Lots and lots of tulle, super saturated primary and almost day-glo colors, sequins, and glitter galore. The wedding dresses were along the same lines, but in various renderings of white. They even had this exact wedding dress:

Imagine me in that, folks.

David looked at the price tag on one of the dresses and just about choked. "A thousand dollars...!"

Oh, honey, you're so naive and such a charming little doodle in your wide-eyed naivete, but $1,000 is cheap. I do have to admit, however, that it seems like an awful lot of money for fabric I could easily get for under $5 per yard, and that manufacturers can buy wholesale for less than a dollar per yard. Let's see... a manufacturer could buy a shipment of polyester crepe back satin wholesale for about 59 cents per yard, using approximately nine or ten yards, which comes out to about $6 in fabric per dress. Add stuff like lining, notions and embellishments, and we can estimate it at an even $10. Let's just say for the sake of yucks that this manufacturer pays his or her garment workers $13 per hour (the average wage of American Apparel workers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle). Skilled garment workers producing dresses in a Fordist fashion could easily churn out one of those Emporio off-the-rack numbers (we're clearly not talking couture here) within eight hours. That's $104 for the labor. The reality is that garment workers in countries like Bangladesh, where a lot of these dresses are made, make under $100 per month, so the labor might actually be costing somewhere around $3.50 for that dress, tops. Looked at in that light, $1,000 does seem like a lot of money to pay for a dress that cost under $15.00 to make, even accounting for "shipping and handling." I can see why David was shocked, but he hasn't seen the $10,000+ specimens that are out there. Emporio Bridal and Formal was not going to provide quite that kind of shopping experience.

No, I did not try anything on, just for fun. The place was a madhouse of women with their daughters (some accompanied by a male figure skulking in a corner with a look of terror on his face) flinging vast amounts of hot orange and lime green tulle around in an orgy of fashion hysteria. Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much. It was busy. Besides, I've never had any real desire to dress up in Barbie doll clothes, even just for laughs. David and I came to the conclusion that the manufacturers of these dresses go straight to Princess Barbie for inspiration, which seems reasonable enough, given that so many little girls grow up with her as their most formative fashion icon. When they reach prom or bride age, they have in their heads an image of themselves looking just like their Barbie doll in her finest. Back in the old days, when Barbie first came out, that phenomenon of giving little girls ideas wasn't quite such a taste disaster in the making as it has become.

Just looking for reasons to play with the guurls

After the wedding fest is all said and done, it doesn't have to end there. At that point, I can start looking forward to the divorce and yet another opportunity to plan a big, fun spree.

Or so this article in a peculiarly narrowcasted magazine called Girlfriend Getaways suggests:

"Til Death Do Us Party"

Heck, there's even a kitsch industry just for this niche market complete with services that can turn a picture of your ex into a cutting board, and wedding ring coffins from online retailer, WeddingRingCoffin.com.

"I was just so beyond excited to get divorced," gushes Andrea, an L.A. publicist, to GG. She went with a "princess theme" bash, handed out rhinestone tiaras to all her guests (guurlfriends, presumably), and they spent the evening giving "each other facials" (yes, that's what it said), playing guurl games like "Girl Talk" (also comes in a Hannah Montana version), and eating chocolate off of pink Cinderella plates.

Suddenly, sitting here typing this out, I'm overwhelmed with a great longing for the days of "angry feminist" sisterhood and grim consciousness raising sessions. All this over the top, kitsched-out celebration of guurliness is beginning to grow tiresome. Women are more fun when they're intelligently pissed, in my opinion. All that gleeful screaming in the Sex and the City movie curbed my appetite for certain types of camaraderie with the girls for a while, and my self-imposed exposure to the fluffy, pink exuberance of the guurlfriend-industrial complex is threatening to turn me into a misogynist.

But never mind guurlicious divorce parties. There's plenty of screamy guurl festivities to be had before the Big Day that leads to the other Big Day of the glittery, pink-frosting divorce bender. Browsing through the retail site BachloretteSuperstore.com (warning: may contain photos of cupcake and inflatable phalluses), I see I am supposed to have a pre-wedding party (or several) during which I get together with all my guurlfriends dressed in clothing that identifies me as the groom's possession...

...and my friends by their wedding party honorifics.

I can go with the fluffy Pretty in Pink theme, for which I can get an entire package of goodies and favors...

...or go the Oh So Naughty route.

.

And me and the guurls can snap each others' pictures with special throw-away cams festooned with photographs of other guurls having the appropriate fun, so we know just what we should be doing at this little shindig.

(must be sure to get one of someone whispering in my ear)

All that horror aside, I have been contemplating making my own wedding cake out of cupcakes, and having a little cupcake festooning get together with friends in place of the standard shower or Naughty But Nice themed bachelorette party.

First things first, though; we need to come up with some kind of date for this grand affair. People are getting restless. Apparently those who might want to be present have lives and plans of their own, and the Bride must not start to think like a "Bridezilla," operating under the delusion that the world is at her beckoning.

How much did you say...?

While scoping out venues for this bash, I looked into a garden spot in nearby Philomath that I've heard is rented out for weddings. It's a lovely place, all very Merchant and Ivory with fields of tulips and dripping rose arbors and weeping willows and ladies floating dreamily about in white lace and dashing, mustachioed gents in boaters and striped jackets and all that. To say nothing of the dog. You get the picture.

For a wedding with up 350 guests, the rate is $18,000. Events with up to 750 guests require one to plunk down $24,000 for the privileges. OK, they do provide tables, chairs and a couple of small tents, but $18,000? Who around here spends $18,000 just on the venue? I mean, even when locals (Corvallisites) are rich, they tend to be pretty cheap. Not to denigrate the good people of Corvallis, but in my experience, they lean toward miserliness, grousing much about being nickled and dimed all the time, and $18,000 goes well beyond nickles and dimes.

The other day I said something to my betrothed about a $2,000 budget. He seemed to think that was reasonable, and started listing things this $2,000 might cover. I had my first indication of potential trouble when he threw the honeymoon into the mix. I don't know where he's going for a honeymoon... I am horror struck at the thought of the newspaper wedding announcement reading: "...and the couple honeymooned in Lincoln City." Even with no marriage party at all, we're not going on any kind of a decent trip anywhere for $2000.

Here I am fantasizing about shoes and cakes and some musically inclined brazeros to rally 'round with some rousing conjunto and mariachi dance music, giving a respectful nod to the groom's Mexican-American heritage, all followed by a trip to Panama or Portugal or some such (see poll on sidebar).

And then there's the acquisition of a house that will hold all my stuff to consider. One of the great advantages to this marriage business is being able to operate on economies of scale; two can live as cheaply as one, etcetera. However, it's easy to forget (or for it to not even occur to you) that this old chestnut does not take into consideration the initial layout of cash to make it all happen. Mergers may save money in the long run, but they aren't necessarily inexpensive to undertake. As we can see, it's incredibly easy to spend lots and lots of money just on the public recognition of the merger. That said, I've thrown some parties in my day, even some fairly sizeable parties. The 'Come as Your Parents' costume bash I put on some years back was probably at the top of the heap, as far as crowd-size and lavishness go, and it was quite the merry spree, but it certainly didn't cost me $2000.

That party was held at my parents' house. My first wedding reception was held at my parents' house. My parents' house is big, decently holding a crowd of some 75 people, with the wood-floored kitchen dining area cleared out for as decent a ballroom as I've seen in many smaller European manor houses, measuring somewhere on the order 300+ square feet. Where am I going to find some other venue like that for free? See, I'm a cheap Corvallisite, too.