Things you can do

Just a bit of info here --

If you would like to help out with wedding day set-up, I have a volunteer "volunteer coordinator" now, whom we shall call Shiela L. Contact me for her contact information.

If you would like to contribute a food item (think tapas), the food man is my very own father, the famous El Sid. Likewise, I can provide you with his contact information upon request (it's also on the insert in the invitations that are going out).

I am also on the lookout for likely prospects for day-of child-minding duties. Several people may have young-ish children in tow. While this is an afternoon-into-evening affair -- cocktail attire encouraged -- I'm not of the school holding that children do not belong at weddings. Weddings are the touchstone of familial celebrations, and to exclude the end product of many a wedding strikes me as peculiar. That said, I am planning on setting up a Kiddy Zone with a couple of tough-minded, yet child empathetic minders to ride herd on the hordes, so that the mamas and the papas can enjoy themselves.

Finally, I will be encouraging carpooling up to the Nolan residence for the event, and can help poolers get in touch with one another, if they let me know their intentions/needs.

Anxiety Dream

I had my first anxiety dream about getting married last night. It involved the actual ceremony taking so long to perform, that it went far into the night. People started to drift away out of sheer boredom, having better things to do. Rings kept getting lost and the procedure interrupted by arriving and departing guests.

To make matters worse, the groom was not wearing his suit. He was wearing a dingy white tunic robe. He kept morphing into some other body that was shorter than me by about a foot, bald and rotund. In fact, I think he kept turning into a particular bald guru-guy on the local Public Access channel who wears a white robe and sits in a chair in front of the camera speaking with slow condescension about things spiritual (readers from this area will know to whom I'm referring). I was getting married to that guy. And when I started to cry, because he wasn't wearing his suit, people chastised me for being demanding with my to-be husband. They suggested I was losing sight of what I was really there for.

I was there to marry a four foot tall, pasty-white, bald public access guru who doesn't have the decency to put on a tolerable suit for his wedding? Reminds me of the women in my family admonishing me endlessly as a girl that I could "catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." You mean, men are flies, and women are supposed to not only be content with that, but to want to actually attract the buzzy creatures? Is that what it's all about?

Pass the vinegar, please.

The anxiety dreams were bound to start right about this time. I'm just amazed that first one didn't involve me putting on tremendous amounts of weight and being unable to get into my dress. According to the targeted advertising that keeps popping up on my Facebook page, this is what I'm supposed to be fretting over in my nocturnal musings. I'm going to have to quiz the groom to see what -- if any -- anxiety dreams he's having. Surely he must be. Then again, he's far less inclined toward angsty obsessions than I am.

Seperated at birth

Fiance, circa 1987


Brother, circa 2005

hmmmmmm..........

Another way to ruin a perfectly good party

This morning, I had a new message on my MySpace page (yes, I'm on MySpace, but find it overall pretty lame and much prefer Facebook, as far as I can possibly much prefer one social networking site over another). The "My Space Video Team" wants to give me a free "wedding of the century," or at least "social event of the summer."

"So you’re engaged… Do you want the wedding experience of a lifetime—for free? We’re looking for a couple to star in MySpace’s new wedding reality series and we think you’d be great! To enter, send us a video of your proposal story by April 17th. Check out the video below for more info. Click here to get Married on MySpace!"

Evidently, judging by the trailer, David picking me up and spinning me around is part of what makes a "wedding of the century" or "social event of the summer." I did not know this was one of the many requirements of the only "perfect day" I, as a woman, am allowed to have in my life. I think I'm going to need to lose some more weight.

Married on MySpace Trailer

Va-va-va-voom

It is done, my friends. It is done.

Ms. K and I met with the dressmaker today, and washed our over-stressed, over-reaching hands of the dressmaking affair. We handed some custom to a slight, charming and seemingly very competent Cambodian dressmaker from a long line of silk weavers and garment makers. Sovanna (or "Sovan," as he goes by, because "Sovanna" is either too difficult for Amis to get out of their mouths, or because, like me, it makes them assume he's a woman) and the K Lady walked me through fabric choices and styling details this afternoon. For $280, I'm getting a custom fitted and made silk dress, fabric imported from the village where he, himself, grew up and used to climb mulberry trees to pick the cocoons as a child. Or so the story goes. It sounds good to me.

What astounds me is that he is running this business, "Cocoon Silk" -- with two brick and mortar shops in Portland's Pearl and NW 23rd -- to help pay his way through a business management degree at Marylhurst. Wow. Whatever happened to waiting tables? Or stripping?

Just as a reminder, this is the vintage number I'm having reproduced (with some slight alterations). And guess what? Forget the peach....

Mary is getting married in a RED dress, baybee. Oh yeah. Uh hu.

::snap::

Next stop: shoes.

Such a productive day

We have paper. That is a tremendous leap forward in the whole wedding planning schema. We also have our bands orders, and have scheduled a 'consultation' with Cupcake Jones about the making of the cupcakes-instead-of-traditional-cake thing.

But wait! There's more!

We hit Goodwill and bought a bunch of pressed glass serving platters of varying sizes. I'm going to make a 'cupcake tower' out of them, using vases or some such as serperators between the layers (mine's going to look so way more awesome...).

And I may have found a place that can make my dress with much less stress and not that much more money than Ms. K and I making it would cost.

Finally, tomorrow night, the man and I will be subjecting our social dancing to public scrutiny for the first time. Wish us luck.

The Help Desk

It's not about weddings, but it seems reasonable enough to post this in any sort of blog...