Scenes from a Bridal Magazine #1

Quote from a wedding dress designer: "Large blooming accents, flowers and petals helped create extravagant and romantic wedding gowns". No...they helped to create this:


And what blushing bride doesn't want to look like they're wearing adult diapers on their wedding day?

But wait, ladies! There's more! This same designer came out with this gem:



You know what this dress says to me? If you happen to have an old comforter lying around, you too can become a wedding dress designer!

And just when I thought nothing could top those two dresses, I turned the page and found this:



Because nothing says haute couture like wearing a feather duster on your ass.

You'd think that would be enough for one magazine article....but you'd be wrong:



It's nice to have Kleenex so very handy on such an emotional day.

Freeze Frame

I was fairly lucky when it came to finding our wedding photographers. I stumbled upon an amazing team of wedding photographers through a post on the fabulous OffBeat Bride website (where being different is celebrated and not used as ratings fodder by TLC) and fell in love. But a nagging little voice in my head kept telling me to at least peruse a few other photographers before making a final decision. So I did…and boy oh boy was it an eye opener. All the sites looked the same and they all had the same flaws. This got me thinking. How exactly did so many websites across so many states and locations end up looking so very similar? Then it hit me. There must be some sort of wedding photographers’ website code of standards! I imagine at a wedding photographers convention somewhere this occurred:

Convention Chair: Now that this internet thing has gotten popular, we all need to decide on a set of standards for wedding photographer websites. The more annoying and useless, the better. Suggestions?

Convention Attendee #1: Everyone loves sappy love songs! Let’s have them running ad nauseam on all of our sites! And make it difficult for visitors to turn it off!

Convention Attendee #2: I happen to have a cassette single of Jeffrey Osborne’s “On the Wings of Love” in my car!

Convention Attendee #3: I have Air Supply’s greatest hits! And Pat Boone’s Songs of Seduction! Those are bound to make all our visitors want to hire us!

Convention Attendee #4: Might I suggest this new thing called Flash to showcase our awesomely repetitive wedding poses? And make sure each individual picture is hard to click on because Flash is moving too quickly? I want to make sure potential customers can’t get a good look at the quality of our work.

Convention Attendee #5: I think it’s crucial we also have a section that prattles on about how unique we are when we’re really just like everyone else. And we should throw out the term “photojournalism” even though we don’t really know what that means.

Convention Chair: All great suggestions! How about pricing information?

Convention Attendee #6: Good lord, no! Were you raised in a barn??? We can’t offer that kind of information on our sites! Just make a vague statement about the importance of quality and artistic expression. That'll make them feel guilty about even thinking of such trivialities.

Convention Attendee #7: I agree wholeheartedly with #6 (I assume they’d know each other’s names, but I’m not creative enough to come up with clever ones before I’ve had my morning tea). And if they care at all about how their wedding will be perceived, they won’t have a budget. And I think we all agree we wouldn’t want to work with someone concerned about their budget.

Convention Attendee #8: Man, I’m pumped about Jeffrey Osborne! Whatever happened to him?

Convention Attendee #2: I know, right? I mean have you listened to the lyrics of that song? “On the wings of love! Only the two of us, together flying high!” Pure poetic genius!! In your face, William Shakespeare!

Convention Chair: #8 and #2, I think we’re getting a little off the subject here. Although I do agree that some of Jeffrey’s best work was overlooked. Now, as for information about the areas we service. Might I suggest we put that under a tab labeled something entirely different from “location”? That way visitors will fall in love with our work only to discover almost too late that we don’t travel to their city?

Convention Attendee #9: And they’ll be so desperate to hire us, they’ll be willing to pay for our travel expenses to and from the wedding! Excellent, excellent idea, Convention Chair! #3 was so wrong when he said you have the leadership skills of a drunken chorus girl.

Convention Chair: He said what now??

At that point, I’m thinking names were called and some sort of dance battle occurred to settle the disputes between the convention chair and #2. But the results of the convention were undeniable: websites with crappy love songs blaring in the background as a visitor clicked endlessly trying to find a shred of useful information. Or as I like to call it, domestic torture.

And So It Begins...

I got engaged to my wonderful fiancé, The Boy, back in November. I’ll admit, I have had a bit of a rocky relationship past, so this wasn’t my first, ahem, time being a fiancée. However, this was the first time I was affianced as a mature, strong woman. In my previous go rounds at wedding planning (there may have been more than one broken engagement in my past…don’t judge), I was into the puffy ball gowns, the minute details of napkins coordinating with other linens and all the other trappings that befall the typical bride. But this time, I’d gotten it right. I’d found my soul mate (feel free to say “ahhhhh” at this time) and all I really wanted to do was celebrate.

With that in mind, the Boy and I found a venue in record time, settled the important matter of food and booze and nailed down a wedding photographer. And I pretty much left planning alone as the holiday season approached. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I picked back up my planning cap. We’d scheduled a date for our engagement photo shoot, so it seemed only natural that I started thinking wedding again.

This was also about the time I stumbled upon Say Yes to the Dress, or as I like to call it, Crazy Bitches Let Loose in a Store. Some of these brides were downright crazy cakes (I can’t take credit for that fabulous turn of phrase…my friend Mazzie coined it). From the bride who insisted the store be kept open so she could try on more gowns to the wacko who didn’t recognize the wedding dress she bought months ago. Or my personal favorite, the bride who stole her fiancé from her…wait for it…best friend. Who does this shit??? And why is a dress you’re only going to wear ONCE causing this much drama ? It’s a dress, people!

It was only a matter of time before my slippery slope of bridal television landed on Four Weddings, an open call for people to judge and mock other people’s weddings (classy). Where I saw cute and clever ways to celebrate a couple’s love, at least one bride saw “tacky” or “soo not wedding material”. The bride who had her wedding in Central Park and wore an adorable short wedding dress with fantastic red shoes was called cheap by the bride who blew almost $200,000 on her wedding. Forget the fact that the bride and groom were obviously in love and beaming from ear to ear. Or the fact that the wedding reflected BOTH of their personalities. Nope. Because this bride had the nerve to buck tradition, she was ridiculed and mocked…on national television. And what about that $200,000 wedding? The bride was angry the entire night because little things weren’t perfect and the groom looked like he was going to his execution. Which, considering his bride, it may have well been the end of his sanity.

The more I watched these shows, the more I realized I wasn’t at all like any of these women. I actually wanted my fiancé’s input in our wedding and we were (shockingly) making decisions together about it. I want our wedding to reflect us – quirky, silly, geeky people who happen to love each other to pieces. And most of the wedding resources out there seem to cater to the Barbie approach to weddings (if I see one more wedding shot of the bride and groom's newly ringed hands over her bridal bouquet, I’m going to hurl). I won’t mention names (one may rhyme with Snot), but a vast majority of wedding websites all assume I’m a brain dead debutante trying to relive my prom.

The final straw came when I broke down and bought a bridal magazine to get ideas for my wedding gown. After wading through a mountain of ads and perfume samples, I came upon the magazine’s first article…about losing weight. Seriously???? While it does happen that I’m on Weight Watchers, it’s not because of my wedding (I’m not getting married until December 12, 2012…12/12/12…yeah, we’re number geeks), it’s because I have a family history of diabetes and high blood pressure and my weight was effecting my health. I’m not trying to lose weight to fit into a dress or some societal norms. And neither should any other blushing bride. My outrage continued as I flipped the pages and saw nothing that reflected me (read: no brides of color…no interracial couples…nobody with taste) or what we wanted our wedding day to be like. And then I stumbled upon the article entitled, “Ethnic Weddings”. Oh you read that right: ETHNIC WEDDINGS!! Said article included gems like this: "Weddings for people of color often incorporate traditions from their culture to personalize the experience for guests." Because I'm now the ambassador of my culture for all my wedding guests.

I took to Twitter and voiced my outrage at this magazine and what it represents: a billion dollar wedding industry that cranks out Stepford Wives at an alarming rate. And that’s when I decided this industry needs to be called out for its actions. For making so many brides feel like their wedding HAS to mirror what they see in the media or else it’s a failure. For making the weddings about the bride and not about the actual MARRIAGE. For making the grooms only minor players in a day that should celebrate your love and your guests. For making women feel inadequate for being a certain size or wanting their day to reflect them. And with that germ of an idea in mind, this blog was born. These are the tales of a sane bride trying to make sense of an insane industry. There will be whiskey…and there will be open mocking.