No.

My idea of a fantasy wedding does not include the groom wearing brown Crocs. I mean, they do make them in red (the color scheme at these nuptials). It seems to me that if he had to wear those things for some reason -- like, perhaps he had to take a break to go do some weeding or turn the compost -- he could color coordinate.

Note to David: you are not wearing your Keens, either.

Photo from WeddingChannel.com

Where are the men?

Weddings are about women. Here's proof enough; the Rose City Bridal Showcase will be held in October the same weekend as the 16th Annual Northwest Women's Show (?). Both will be held in the Oregon Convention Center, and on the Bridal Showcase page, they pitch the other with the line: "Two great women's events all in one location."

Men are truly secondary to the whole concept of the wedding, even though one would think they would feature fairly prominently. They feature, to be sure, but the marketing of the Wedding Industrial Complex treats them as just so much decoration along with the flowers and the cake and the cute Chinese take-away boxes personalized with the Happy Couple's names filled with meaningless party favors. It's a wonder those sites don't have groom vendors through which one can procure the requisite Dream Boat. No, that's one part of the wedding schtick that's still DIY, although I have to note that no small number of "wedding stories" featured on sites like The Knot and The Wedding Channel and OneWed and Martha Stewart Weddings start with something along the lines of, "They met on Match.com..." I need to start bookmarking those when I run across them. They're positively mundane. Thank goodness I was at least a little bit original and scored my groom on Craig's List.

Of course, Jerry Seinfeld perfectly captured the seemingly throw-away quality of the groom in the wedding party when he commented upon the groom and groomsmen in their matching penguin outfits; it's a safety measure. If the groom poops out, the next one down the line steps to the left and takes his spot.

Men are a requirement -- in the standard heterosexual wedding, at least -- but the wedding industry seems to suggest that women can send the boys out to play while we arrange the whole thing, with ourselves as the celebrated centerpiece. Here's an example from the WeddingChannel.com:

"Denise had always wanted to have an intimate home wedding filled with fun and memorable moments, and a spectacular decor... . When it came to plan [sic] her wedding, Denise went for the wedding of her dreams and a chance to fill [sic] like a true princess. On her wedding day she and her father arrived to [sic] the ceremony in a traditional horse-drawn Cinderella carriage decorated with beautiful red roses to the sound of a solo trumpet...."

Where was the groom during all this trumpeted hoopla? Oh, you know, just hanging around waiting to see if his presence might be required at some point.

Well, I'll give David a somewhat bigger "role" to play, although we're not really wanting much in the way of role playing at the event, itself. But see... note that it's up to me to give him any kind of role at all. (I'll consider myself fairly successful at enlisting his involvement if he even just gives me a list of people he might want invited.) That said, he actually wants a public signing of the contract, as it were. I'd be all for skulking off in private before the guests arrive to get the actual marriage bit of it out of the way, but David's up for a more public merger in front of the assembled masses.

Speaking of all that, we had thought July 11 next summer might be a likely date, but we do have other possibilities we're tossing around. On the purple sidebar you will find another poll with possible dates. Do give us some feedback by picking any that would work for you.

Wedding Excess

I'm trying to imagine what this might cost. I would say that if you have started dreaming about marching down a long, thick carpet of rose petals, your fantasies have gotten the best of you.

It's not just the money... it's the fuss and bother

The Cousin M. sent me this link to a Washington Post piece on the "anti-wedding," a wedding planned by two correspondents for a carefully vetted couple who wanted to buck the Wedding Industrial Complex (ah... so... I'm not the only one to have made that connection, yet another extension of Eisenhower's ____ - Industrial Complex legacy. Actually, what I noted was the Guurlfriend Industrial Complex, which I have yet to see mentioned by anyone else).

The "planners" and their vetted couple, I have to note, went through contortions to come up with a wedding that would be sufficiently disestablishmentarian. They saved money on a princess gown and flowers, but the bride experienced almost as much trauma and drama as any Bridezilla specimen. Let's face it; organizing a protest on Lafayette Square across from the White House takes planning, too. And a community organizer is still someone who can rally a bunch of people together to pull off some major feat. Let's not pretend that either don't take remarkable amounts of work to pull off with any amount of success.

It's the organizing that looms as my biggest potential downfall. If anyone asks me to become their Veep running mate, remind me of myself, will you? Money? Money is no object, because we have none. Well, not "none," but sufficiently little to be able to throw at the problem so that organizing becomes less of an issue for yours truly. All that said, even if I had endless amounts of money, I wouldn't want the standard "dream wedding" that the mags pitch as the must-have of all must-haves. I just want a great party and a fabulous dress to wear to it. And I don't even care if I never wear that dress again. Will Cindy McCain ever again wear the $360,000 ensemble she donned for the first night of the Republican Convention? Doubtful. Maybe the shoes, the watch and the jewelry she'll re-run, but I'll make book on her never more sporting that cloth-of-gold dress.

I can get some great silk fabric for no more than $14-$23 a yard, and suss out a pattern calling for no more than seven yards (and that's one heck of a poofy skirt, my friends). That's $160 of fabulousness there, tops. And if I never wear it again? As long as I have photo documentation of me in my fabulousness, I really don't care.

But back to the issue at hand. Organization, not money, is my big stumbling block. When I pitched the idea of the homemade cupcakes and cupcake decorating "bachelorette" party to Ms. K, who probably knows me and my organizing skills as well as anyone (I got her bare-minimum edited wedding video footage to her in time for a big celebration of her seven year itch), she laughed and laughed...... and predicted with some degree of prophetic accuracy that I would still be working on my dress the night before the event. I can pull together a class syllabus on some random subject thrown my way in no time. Business anthropology? Okay. Web cultures? Sure. Immigration in the new Europe? Bring it on, baby. A groovy party that happens to have me marrying the man I love inserted into it? Well, that's a completely different set of thought processes.

So, the point is, just because one is eschewing the standard "dream wedding," minimizing the costs and the froo-froo and the matching maids all in a row and the various bits and pieces of kitsch and pseudo royal trappings the wedding industry says one simply must have, doesn't mean one eliminates the potential for pipe dreams and imagined "perfect" scenarios and subsequent theatrics when the dancing fairy plums in the head turn out to be ill-tempered trolls with bad breath when seen in the light of day (i.e. reality).

Speaking of dancing fairy plums, I poked around in the Mill End fabric store a bit yesterday, and got some samples of potentially promising fabrics for that fabulous dress thing I was talking about. David likes teals and purples. I dig reds and gunmetal blue. I forced myself away from those mossy greens I inevitable stumble toward, and here's what I came up with, with my apologies to those of you who just aren't that into sewing and fabrics and fashion and all that sort of rot:

Various shades of tomato with blues and purples in silks (dupioni, taffeta, charmeuse and chiffon)

Silk dupioni in eggplant

Silk taffeta in a brownish eggplant

Silk charmeuse in gunmetal blue

Silk dupioni in a teal-tinged gunmetal blue

Silk chiffon in gunmetal-y teal

Iridescent silk taffeta in eggplant with greenish-copper tones

Silk charmeuse in tomato with overlay of two-tone peach chiffon

Silk dupioni in rusty tomato red

Silk jacquard in slightly iridescent tomato red

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!

Buying Indulgences

Following a lead from my post about succumbing to the 'green wedding' trend, I dug up this piece on the carbon offset market on NPR. It is rather like buying indulgences for sins, but as long as what I buy is for real, and not just lining the pockets of some red-clad cardinal who will use it to buy jewelry for his mistress, I have no problem with that.

So... on with the quest for credible marketers in the forgiveness of sins. Again, any in-the-know super greenies out there among my buddies, step up with information if you have it.

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.