Getting Married
I just love the comment made about Uma Thurman’s engagement ring from this page.
The two have been engaged since June, when Busson presented Thurman with a diamond the size of North America, orbited by 20 smaller diamonds that have become trapped in its gravitational pull.
It’s pretty standard belief that when it comes to Weddings, guys are not only clueless, but we’re aggressively irritatingly clueless. We become passive aggressive, complain all the time, and start raging against “society” for telling us to “behave” a certain way. We stop thinking (if we ever really did any thinking before hand) and become worse that your stereotypical mother-in-law when it comes to helping with the wedding planning. We become unhelpful and resentful because we don’t like how much the wedding costs, we feel like we’re being shut out of the process because “it’s the bride’s day”, so we drag our feet, make a bunch of sarcastic comments, and piss off our fiancee by going on a bachelor party to Las Vegas and meeting a stripper named Precious. And then we get mad that anyone gets mad at us.
Man. That guy should be dropped off a cliff.
And that guy still exists for some reason. A poster posted two very common THAT guy questions on ask metafilter. His first question was how much a wedding should cost when it was really a screen that weddings are expensive wastes of time. The second question was framed originally as a question where he wanted to get married away from his bride’s family but the bride’s family wasn’t happy about that. It wasn’t a real question though – it was one of those types of questions where he wanted everyone to say that he was right, the bride’s family was wrong, and he even made a joke that the bride’s family didn’t have to attend the wedding if they didn’t like where it was. It was one of those “dark humor” moments that are really a screen for a passive aggressive behavioral trait that guys get at weddings. And how do I know that? He admits to not even fully knowing the budget for his wedding or who is going to pay for it. He isn’t taking the wedding seriously at all; he’s dragging his feet and hope that his passive aggressive behavior will break down his partner and they’ll get married on his terms. That, however, works better at ending engagements rather than getting better wedding terms.
There are a lot of reasons why THAT guy comes up. Part of it has to do with a lack of control, with the feeling that the groom gets shafted at the wedding, and that there’s a big party going on where the groom is specifically on the sidelines of the celebration. Part of this behavior is taught and expressed in the fact that mainstream advertising is bride focused. Open a wedding magazine and it’s 95% ads for dresses and maybe one ad for a tux rental. That’s it. There’s no real attention directed towards guys and that, I think, is the real crux of the issue. Everyone likes to be the focus of attention and it’s really hard to NOT be when you’re use to it. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s what happens when a person never learns to be able to fully live outside their own head. And this overall type of behavior is definitely not something that an Engaged Groom should be doing.
This is kinda why I’m blogging about leading up to the big day. I understand what it’s like to feel slightly shafted from the process. I understand that it’s easy for a guy to feel pretty clueless when it comes to weddings because we’re never really taught to care about them from a young age. I heard more about bachelor parties when I was growing up rather than weddings and that’s not right. One way to step outside of that pre-defined box, to feel as if you have some control over your own life, is to just be engaged with the process. Make decisions, take this wedding seriously, and don’t drag your feet or become a passive aggressive annoying brat. Weddings are stressful. Weddings can be a huge planning ordeal. But if you, Mr Groom, are unable to participate in it successfully with your fiancee, how are you going to be able to handle any of the bigger problems that come in the future? Kids, a house, jobs, retirement, inlaws, deciding on who’s family you stay with during what holidays, arguing over the remote, where cookies go in the kitchen, etc? I’m learning how to work things out with my fiancee now so that our married life is as pleasant as possible. I’ll can wait till my kids show up before I really get stressed out.
Personalized cookies
If I had a million dollars, all my food would be personalized. I like these heart shaped macaroons. I’d have fancy desserts like that at my wedding. And I’d order the homemade marshmallows from Jean George, chocolates from Jacque Torres, and enough desserts so that every person could have ten each. But then they’d only eat one. And I’d have to eat the rest. Watch out love! I’m letting myself go after the wedding! WOOHOO!
New York summer weddings
I probably should buy this; New York‘s summer wedding issue is out. But I’m broke so maybe I’ll just go to Barnes and Noble’s and just stare at it. I’ll get a stack of magazines, go find some window sill, sit down, and start looking at the pictures. I won’t read it, of course, but I’ll admire the photography work on the models, the macros of the plate settings, and wonder if I’ll ever be able to afford the camera equipment that I want. Wait? What’s that? I’m suppose to look at the dresses and get decoration ideas for my own wedding? Please. Wedding magazines are like fashion magazines – pr0n for the camera inclined and nothing else. Okay, that’s a lie but that is what I tend to notice first when I open wedding magazines up first. It takes effort on my part to notice what is actually being advertised.
Bird Cage Veil
Bird Cage Veils are huge right now. It seems that every DIY Wedding blog right now loves talking about Bird Cage Veils and the “vintage” look for weddings. I don’t know if DIY means your wedding has to look vintage or if brides who are into the DIY social economic spectrum just love the vintage look. My fiancee bought one in Florida at an antiques store for $10 (she bought another, larger, non-bird cage veil for our wedding which she received last week and she wears around her apartment). When she brought it home to show her family, her grandparents told her that those veils were worn by women a half a century ago when they were attending bible studies and they wanted a fashionable way to have their “hair covered” (according to St Paul). I don’t think the current trend of women wanting these veils have that same reasoning in mind.
Bridal Spring 2010
Project Rungay does Spring 2010 bridal fashions and sleeves might be in next year. This is me hoping that’s true. And why, as a guy, am I fixated on bridal dresses? Did you not realize that 95% of all ads for wedding stuff are just about dresses? Dresses and weddings are one and the same. You can’t look at weddings and not get smacked upside the head with a dress. It’s the rolled up newspaper of the Wedding Industry and I’m the dog who jumped on the couch with muddy feet.
E-vites for Men
E-vites for men. I’ve said it once and I will say it 1000 times; when it comes to weddings, social gatherings, and anything that consists of taste and culture, we men tend to sell ourselves short. In fact, we encourage ourselves to sell ourselves short. When being well dressed is a crime against manliness, there’s something wrong with how we carry ourselves and these manvites are in that vein. Let’s not focus on e-vites to tell our friends to come over and play videogames or look at boobs. We don’t need those. Let’s focus on the important things which is humor, plain text mailing lists, and calling each other on the phone and leaving voice mails on each other’s phone. If you can’t say it with some e cards, you probably shouldn’t be saying it in the first place.
AM New York (one of the free daily subway papers here in New York), reported about couples trying to get around the standard cake cutting fee while the New York Post countered with a report that Manhattan ladies are no longer getting diamonds to wear at their weddings. It seems that the Wedding Industry is now struggling and the main stream media is beginning to take notice!
A high end jeweler claims that budgets for diamonds use to be $65,000 dollars but now is around $10,000 and brides are not happy about it. Of course they aren’t. Over the last five years, as Americans turned to their homes to fake an economic recovery from the dot com era (our income as dropped during this period but our spending skyrocketed), weddings, like the 7th car, the 3rd house, and the McMansions, just got bigger and better. If you watch old episodes of Bridezilla, you’ll notice that the budgets were huge for incredibly boring and tacky and cheesy weddings. Now, when you turn on the show, the budgets are only high in respect to the fact that the women on the show are usually lower income and/or white trash. But they still want a wedding that feels expensive and that matches the extravagance they saw in the past five years. Weddings are not only about fulfilling your fantasies but also about keeping up with your friend who forced you to buy that godawful lemon and lime bridesmaid dress four years ago.
I wonder if someone in the Wedding Industry is hoping that someone in Washington DC will notice their plight and they’ll get a bailout.
I don’t agree that the Bridezilla era is over. I’m just hoping that the era of refinancing your house/maxing your credit cards part of weddings are over. It’s not but that’s what I hope. My fiancee and I approached our wedding with that goal in mind. We simply are paying for the best wedding that we can afford. Will it be showcased on Platinum Weddings? No. But will it be as spectacular extravaganza that will be talked about for years to come? Oh I hope so. But there’s only so many DIY hanging decorations I can make by hand before I want to give up and instead use the tissue paper to make a hat for my cat so we shall see. We shall see.
Is it wrong to have an engagement party in your own home?
Technically, my fiancee and I weren’t the host. The party was held in my fiancee’s home because, well, my apartment isn’t big enough. It was intimate, 10-12 people, on the Saturday of Easter weekend, and it was well catered by my roommate (who was the official host) and Costco. Oh. And 5 liters of champagne. We didn’t finish all the food but we did finish the champagne.
And my fiancee went to the Easter Vigil with a hang over.
The party started around 1. We put out bagels, lox, chicken salad, fruit, melon wrapped with prosciutto, clementines, cream cheese, and other such deliciousness. OJ, kool aid, and special mixes were for the champagne. Good talk, lots of drinking, and not enough eating. I’ll be eating chicken and bagels for months.
We received several lovely gifts, cards, and best wishes from a bunch of wonderful friends. It was a delight.
Now, I’ve heard plenty of stories and rules that you can’t throw your own engagement party. And that rule makes sense. However, how involved are you allowed to be in the planning and execution of said party? My fiancee and I shopped, planned, made the guest list, help finance it, and did everything short of officially be the “host” of the big event. And isn’t this how most of these shin digs happen anyways especially if the couple is doing the primary planning and paying of their own wedding? We have no family within 1500 miles. We live in small apartments. We own our lives. I consider it totally acceptable to take an active and engaged part of any event planning of this sort as long as I didn’t initiate the process. Someone wanted to throw us a party. The fact that I took the ball and ran with it is an entirely separate thing. And the fact that it’s for me and my fiancee, involves great times with my friends, and involves pigging out on delicious delicious foods, is just an added bonus.
I’m totally down with a pink peep cosmo as a specialty wedding drink. In fact, it being easter and all, I’d also love a s’meep (smore + peep), a shirt that said “I’m hangin’ with my peeps”, and a larger than life peep. We might need these at our wedding.
If your first anniversary is paper, what’s your -1 anniversary?
I’m gonna say it should be a paperclip.
It’s 11 am in the morning here in New York City. One year from now, I’ll be busy at my church organizing the reception setup for my wedding that should start at around 1 pm. T minus 365 to the big day! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Though, honestly, several large parts of our wedding planning are already done. We have 1 year till our wedding and we’ve already nailed the ceremony and reception venue, the wedding bands, her dress, our photographer, and we already know what kind of food we’re going to have. The big things are already lined up. All that’s left is the little details like decorations, what kind of socks I’ll wear, the invitations, how I’ll be sneaking Chula (my cat) and Twinkie (her dog) into the wedding reception, gifts for the bride and groom, book the honeymoon and setup any pre-arranged ransom payments so we won’t be kidnapped by drug lords or mad scientists (since my fiancee is a superhero), and all that jazz. It should be fun. I’m actually excited about the cake toppers. They won’t be the bird ones, they’ll be slightly different but I’m excited. Now we just need to get around to ordering them.
We’re not doing STDs.
I wonder if I’m the only one that has a really hard time seeing STD, STDs, STD on wedding boards and blogs and not automatically go back to 10th grade health class. Do you remember your STD lecture? I remember my STD lecture. And the slides. Those lovely lovely slides. They were very vivid and disgusting. I had that class right after lunch. Good times good times.
My fiancee and I decided to not do save the dates as a way to save money and also as a way to avoid waste and over exposing our friends to our wedding. As much as we are now “one of those couples that talk about their wedding all the time”, we try to avoid being like that too much. Sure, it’s a big part of our life right now but it’s not the only thing. We also have our cats, dogs, my job, uh….stuff we read on the internet, stuff we read on the news, my love for two ply tissue…um… Ok. I’ll think of some more stuff to talk about then.
Plus, most of our friends and family are on the internet. After telling our close friends and family about our engagement, we announced it on facebook. Everyone we’re going to invite is on facebook or knows someone who is. And if we’re not in normal communication with these people regularly, we decided to not invite them to our wedding. What’s the point in inviting your cousins that you haven’t spoken to in a dozen years to your big day only to ignore them again for another dozen years? That isn’t my style.
I understand the point of Save the Dates. I tend to book my flights and vacations many months in advance but if you need an extravagantly designed of cardboard to remind you that I’m getting married, booking a flight 3 months ahead of my wedding probably isn’t your style. You’ll still get the invitation six to eight weeks ahead of time which will probably work out just fine. And if not, then why don’t you log into your facebook and look at your news feed every once in awhile? We’ve only been talking about this on our wall for a year!
And yes, I know, blaming them is not the polite or smart thing to do and is also something I, and everyone else, wouldn’t try to do in real life but this goes back to my understanding of who should get invited to weddings. People should not be invited “just because”; that’s the easiest way to go completely broke while planning your wedding. Guests should consist of the active people in your life. Active, of course, is subjective and consist of the people you see every day or the people you think about every day but don’t see for years at a time. But, where cutting Save the Dates are a good way to save money, keeping your guest list trimmed this way is even better. That’s how I looked at my guest list even though my fiancee will then bring up the fact that I want to invite the Pope, the Queen, and the Obamas but, come on, they might come. You never know where they’ll be on a Saturday in April 2010.