Nice Stems

I was going to share with you some awesome photos from my weekend, including lol-inducing (I apologize, it just slipped out) shots from the housewarming fiesta we threw on Saturday, and mouth-watering shots of chorizo-stuffed-bacon-wrapped dates from Primitivo (oh the grease! smokey smokey grease!), but then the evil USB stick I put them on sucked my memories into the black hole of dead computer files and lost socks.  I don't want to talk about it.  So you're just going to have to trust me.  They were awesome.

In lieu of my awesome weekend photos, you'll just have to settle for these pretties of the garden scene in my 'hood.

{jasmines = my fave}

Not such a bad substitute, right?  Oh, you really wanted to see the self-pic of Sharz grasping my $-sign imprinted throw pillow with crazy eyes?  Or the one of our rarely used yet essential margarita machine in action?  Yeah, me too.

Feeling Old Timey

And roses hit the vintage spot.

I think I've been watching too much Bewitched.

Cinemagraphs

Have you ever clicked on the link to Jamie Beck's blog, From Me to You, over there on the right under my blog crushes?  If you haven't, what are you waiting for??  Jamie Beck is my absolute favorite fashion photographer, and she's famous for her cinemagraphs (like this one).  What's a cinemagraph?  A picture that moves -- well, only part of it moves, which makes it even more amazing!

I came upon this article the other day that posts a bunch of Jamie's cinemagraphs and give a bit of an explanation as to how they are made.  I'm so in awe!  Seriously, click.

Look Up

"Kids take over your life, then destroy it."

Last week, I went to go see God of Carnage with Brian and his parents.  When this play was first suggested, I was like wtf?  Why would I want to go see a play about gory violence and a god who approves of it?  With my in-laws?

But then my way-cooler-and-more-informed friends explained to me that God of Carnage, in fact, is neither a play about people massacring each other savagely in the name of God, nor is it a play about a god who approves of gory massacres.  It is, instead, a Tony Award winning masterpiece (Tony award nominations for all four actors/actresses, and three actual Tony awards -- best play, best director, and best actress for Marcia Gay Harden).  Quite deservingly a "hot ticket."  So hot, in fact, that Brad and Angie caught the opening night.  Of course, once I heard that it was approved by Brangelina a Tony Award winner, I was totally in.  We planned to grab a super fancy dinner at Patina (on my LA list!), and then head to the show.  The whole week in BarBri, I looked forward to this night celebrating the finer things in life.

And then everyone in L.A. and their mothers decided to drive east on Olympic exactly at 4:00pm.  I had 7 miles to go from my apartment to pick Brian up at his office in Beverly Hills, and guess how long it took me.  Just guess.  40 minutes?  An hour?  I mean, how bad could it really be, right?  ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-THREE MINUTES.  93 minutes.  That's an average of 4.5 MILES PER HOUR.  I would not joke about something so upsetting as this.  (I will skip the parts where I almost had a nervous breakdown/claustrophobia attack in my car.)

So dinner was cancelled.

BUT.  We did meet at the Edison instead for a drink and snacks, and it was quite nice, although no Patina.  I'd been to the Edison before and liked it, and I still liked it this time.  For those of you who are not familiar, it's a 1920's-themed bar that's built inside an old power plant.  It's huge, with big tall ceilings (as I guess you could imagine from the power plant thing), but it also has all these hidden-away rooms and tables that makes it feel intimate.  It's always kind of dark, and there's lots of red velvet involved, but not in a why-am-I-in-a-brothel type of way.  The drinks are good, the food is OK (they got rid of the bacon wrapped bleu cheese dates, sadly), and the waitresses are pretty and wear black sparkly dresses.  It makes you feel kind of fancy.

{The Edison; The Ahmanson}

After our short snack, we headed to the Ahmanson.  This was my first time at the theater, and the first thing I noticed was how clean it, and the surrounding area was.  In SF, theaters are invariably located in the worst, most dangerous, and most odorous areas of the city.  But the Ahmanson was clean and nice and didn't even smell like urine.  So I liked it.

The show was...intense.  I had heard it was funny, hilarious, even.  The posters advertising it showed the actors and actresses smiling half-laugh smiles.  This is the description of the play on the Ahmanson website itself:

“God of Carnage" is set in a gentrified section of Brooklyn where two married couples meet to sort out a playground fight between their sons. At first, niceties are observed but as the evening progresses and the rum flows, the gloves come off and the night becomes a side-splitting free-for-all."

Side-splitting, eh?  Humor, I figured, was a reasonable assumption.  But I was still skeptical because, really, when was the last time you heard the critics of the dramatic arts get all excited about something funny?  Doesn't it take at least a war story, or a bitter divorce, or the death of a child, or some form of insanity to get them excited?  I shoulda known.

{Apparently there are plays that go on inside this round building that is next to the Ahmanson - how awesome is that?}

{nighttime reflections}

I shoulda known that after the first few minutes of comfortable laughter, the plotline would veer from a funny commentary on parents who take themselves too seriously and litigiousness taken to the extreme, to a cynical and depressing portrayal of the futility of marriage and inevitable dysfunctionality of family life in modern society.  I should have expected it.  It was like the time I went to see The Village by M. Night Shayamalan thinking it would be a mindless horror movie.



But don't take that to be any kind of a negative commentary on the quality of the play itself because I thought the play was brilliant.  The acting was outstanding, the writing was smart, and I was enthralled the whole time, even though it took place entirely in one scene, without an intermission.  (So that means it was really good.)  But I'm just saying, "side-splitting" is not the word I would choose to describe a play that brings up issues of alcoholism, depression, workaholism, immoral practices of pharmaceutical companies, the frustration of dealing with aging parents, spousal infidelity, [insert depressing symptom of our declining society here].  In fact, the two lines that resonate in my mind most are decidedly UN-funny: "Kids take over your life, then destroy it," and "We're all alone."

{fountains and City Hall in the background}

So basically, it was a hard play to watch for a newly married couple who still believes that their love is different, that they can have it all without losing each other, and that children are pretty accessories for grown ups to carry around.

But you should still see it.  Maybe not on a first (or 10th) date.

(P.S. if you've seen "God of Carnage" and you totally disagree with everything I just said about the play, you're probably right.  I claim no expertise whatsoever in dramatic-arts analysis.  Or any form of analysis, really.  Please feel free to leave a comment calling out my continuing ignorance.)

Unsolicited Advice for Your Engagement: Part II

(Or How to Actually Pull This Thing Off)

{fingerprint wedding bands by Fabuluster via Etsy; engagement ring passed down from Brian's grandmother and mother}

Today I've got Part II of my wedding manifesto for you (here's Part I)!  This is where I will bestow on you any and all lessons I learned about the actual planning of a wedding -- the technical getting stuff done and budgeting parts that really suck.  For the most part, these are simple thoughts that might be obvious or totally irrelevant to many of you, but they are the things that I wish I had known from the beginning.  So just in case any of you out there are as clueless as I was, here's what I've got.

How to Get it Done (with a limited budget, limited time, and limited patience)

Forget about the colors.  You absolutely do not have to have wedding "colors" or a wedding "theme."  This is not a sorority semi.  A wedding is supposed to be a celebration of your relationship and your beginning a new life together, and what in the world does that have to do with colors and themes?  If you are the party-planning type, then go for it.  If you're not, then chill.  It will be fine if your invitations don't match your shoes or whatever.  If you like fried chicken but you're having an art gallery wedding, have fried chicken (we did).  If you like more than two colors in the world and they just don't all match, welcome to the club.  The pieces don't have to fit together like a puzzle -- that would be quite boring, wouldn't it?

{"Visions of Love" holographic glasses clearly don't match with anything}

Look for a venue that doesn't need much decorating, or a place that has no decorations at all.  If you find a place like an art gallery, or a shnazzy restaurant, there's only so much that you need to add to it.  On the other hand, you could also find a big industrial space that is super cheap and then spend the money to rent cool furniture and set up a lot of decorations to transform the place into your own personalized vision.  This will obviously take more time (but maybe not more money if the space is a great deal because it's empty!), but if you've got it, use it!  

One thing to ask about for an indoor space is candle usage -- the venue we used didn't allow us to use real candles because of the fire risk.  I'm not that into candles, so I was OK with it, but if you're planning a candle-lit ceremony, you'd better ask first!

Also, I think we need to talk about outdoor spaces.  The problem is that they can be deceptively expensive.  I assumed that gardens and parks would be way cheaper alternatives to the indoor spaces I toured, but it turns out, you almost always have to put up a tent, and bathrooms, and provide kitchen equipment, and possibly heaters, and it all just snowballs.  So if you want to have an outdoor wedding, make sure you ask about all the add-ons before getting too attached.

{our ceremony at Terra}

Other things to ask about at any venue:

- Alcohol.  Can you buy and bring your own?  If not, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg (trust me, it did).

- Parking.  Some places don't even have spots for your vendors to park in!  Maybe that's just in SF?  Anyway, it was insanity.

- Insurance.  Do you have to get this?  How?  How much will it cost?

- Does the facility rental price include an "event manager" and if so, what exactly does that mean.  This was a source of a lot of confusion for me.  The venue we rented included an "event manager" in the price, and I thought that meant like a wedding planner.  But apparently, your caterer is supposed to do all the set up and take down and all that stuff, so an event manager is kind of useless, frankly.  If you don't have to pay for one, then don't.

- Are there weird laws that require you to hire a security guard?  These laws exists in San Francisco for events >150 guests.  It costs $30/hour.

- Children.  Is there like a playroom or something?  I'm not sure what children require, but I think you should ask the venue people about them.

Find a venue with a max capacity that matches your ideal-sized wedding.  You will thank me for this when you never have to fight about inviting so-and-so at the last minute because the guest list has already reached the max capacity of the venue.

A wedding is made up of two distinct parts (obvi).  As obvious as this may seem, it helped me a lot when I started treating the ceremony and reception as two different events to plan, the first for me and for Brian, and the second for our guests.  The ceremony is yours – hold on to that as tightly as you can (graciously, of course) and do not give in to other people’s unsolicited advice and opinions about what ought to be said or not said during that time (except for mine because I'm telling you to do what you want).  It may be a little different if you are having a religious ceremony, but within the boundaries of whatever religion you celebrate, do only what you want and everything you want.  The very point of having a wedding is to feel the simultaneous weight and lightness of vowing your love and life to another person.  So do it in whatever way makes you feel that in all of its hugeness.  It will knock you off your feet more than you ever imagined (and that's the point).  

The reception (if you're having a medium or large wedding) is your gift to your guests.  It is probably going to be fun, but it's probably not going to be romantic (and that's OK because you'll probably need an emotional break after the whirlwind of your ceremony).  It is about celebrating you, but what will make people think you had an awesome wedding has nothing to do with you at that reception.  It's about the food, the drinks, the music.  That's what people love about a good wedding, and hate about a bad one.  And that leads me to my next point....

Spend money on your reception, not on your ceremony.  There is no reason to spend $200 on a gilded, custom-imprinted ring dish.  There will be a picture of it that you will look at once and never print out, and then you won’t know where to put the stupid thing after the wedding.  Just say no.  You will be so consumed by your own emotions and thoughts by the time you get to the ceremony that you won’t notice a thing around you.

{Easy peasy DIY ceremony decor.  On the right: CB2 hanging whirly candle holders with orchids}

Don't serve people food or alcohol that you wouldn't order at a nice restaurant, even if it means you can't afford fancy napkins.  This is like etiquette 101, but just like you wouldn't invite people to your house and serve them frozen TV dinners (if you would, I think you need to re-evaluate your lifestyle), don't invite people to your wedding and serve them a sub-par meal.  The reception is a gift to your guests, remember?  (Plus, do you really want to eat a sub-par meal at your own wedding?)  But you should know that this usually means that the food and alcohol is going to be EXPENSIVE.  Especially if you're like me, and you generally order things that are organic/all natural, and you hate cheap tequila.  The result for us was that we spent half of our budget on food and alcohol alone, and that is maybe the only decision that I feel 100% comfortable with.  (If you're looking for an absolutely fabulous caterer in the Bay Area that does organic food of any type - even organic Southern food! - and will really try to stick to your budget, check out Back to Earth Catering - the people who do Gather restaurant in Berkeley).  So feed your guests as you would want to be fed, even if it means you can't afford fancy napkins (new Golden Rule?).

Don’t rent fancy napkins (or tablecloths).  You are not hosting a party for royalty (unless you are Will or Kate - and if you are, *internet curtsy*).  No one will know except you that your tablecloths are polyester and not Egyptian cotton.  Although I will say that a nice table runner will go a long way.  (I was convinced that I would sew some of these for my own wedding...DIY delusion).

Fancy chairs are optional.  See above.

{un-fancy linens, un-fancy chairs, and DIY centerpieces made by me + family + bridesmaids}

Paper is EXPENSIVE.  I am convinced that once a woman is bestowed with the title "bride to be," some hormonal shift occurs that makes all paper goods and pretty fonts seem absolutely irresistible.  Yes, the sight of an "invitation suite" with cut-outs and fold-outs and letter-press and ties and textured fibrous paper will suddenly have an unnatural ability to pull at your heart strings.  Even if you've never sent a letter via snail mail before, the mailbox will unexpectedly seem swoonfully romantic.  This is a symptom of the wedding crazies.  You must remember that paper goods are ephemeral and inconsequential to all but maybe 5 of the people who will attend your wedding.

I know the paper spell is hard to break, so let's try logic.  A normal price for a cute invitation is anywhere between $4-7/person.  For a wedding of 150 people, that’s AT LEAST $600 + envelopes and postage, so like $850-1300 for JUST the invitations (no RSVP cards for the fancily-inclined were included in that calculation).  Seriously.  And let's not even talk about the trees (who am I?).  I would recommend doing the print-it-yourself option via Etsy, and/or only sending real paper invitations to the people you know will keep it, and then doing paperless post for the rest.  Here are the wedding invitations I "bought" on Etsy (I paid $50 for the personalized pdf) and then printed myself:

{it's this invitation and monogram design at Kim's Custom Gifts via Etsy and printed by me; save-the-date designed by me}

Other paper things that will eat up your budget: place card holders, signs, thank you cards.  These are all so easy to DIY!  For place card holders and signs, you can download pretty fonts on your computer and print them at home (or at Kinko's) on pretty paper (that you hopefully find on discount).  For thank you cards, do as I did: get a wedding picture printed as a postcard via an online site that will give you a "100 free postcards" promotion (and then unsubscribe before the deadline).  There were two pictures I picked out for the postcards, both from our day after session:

{by Leonel Medrano}

{taken by my mom}

Now do you feel better about foregoing the letterpress?  (P.S. you can easily make a blackboard from a piece of wood/old mirror/old IKEA furniture piece in my case - I'm not even kidding you - and some blackboard paint from the craft store.)

Throw money at technicality-type problems like transportation.  No one wants to figure out how to transport a whole bunch of people without paying a lot of money for it.  It's not worth your time - just pay it forward.

{scoff all you want at my cliche white limo, but riddle me this: how the heck else do you transport 10 people 20 miles without having to worry about parking or where to put the champagne glasses?}

Flowers are a good DIY project, in theory.  I decided to DIY all the flowers for our wedding, and it ended up costing me around $400, which I considered to be a great deal.  I ordered all the flowers at the SF Flower Mart in advance and then went to pick them up the day before the wedding.  All of this story ends well, but part of it is something you should avoid.

This is the good part.  The afternoon before the wedding, my bridesmaids and my family and I went over to the venue and put together all the flowers for the centerpieces, and the big birch logs and orchid stems for the ceremony.  It was quite a chaotic scene, all of us splashing water everywhere and frantically shoving stems into spray-painted wine bottles, but it is also one of my favorite wedding memories.  I know nothing about flowers or flower arranging (nor did I have time to become a flower expert in the 9 months of my engagement), but the whole experience made me care a whole lot less about how the flowers came out than about having my friends there with me, making things for my wedding.  And it was affordable and awesome.

{photo taken by my friend/bridesmaid, Sogol; note that the six sqaure flower arrangements were put together in the bridal room seconds before the ceremony with flowers that arrived as a surprise delivery from my family in Turkey who couldn't make it to the wedding -- thanks to Sogol for being an on-the-spot DIY queen!}

{imperfect DIY flowers; photo taken by my friend Aditi}

What a lovely DIY success story, right?  Well.  Let me tell you, the bouquet-making on the day of the wedding was a different story my friends.  This time, when I woke up, none of the purple flowers I had ordered for the bridesmaids bouquets had opened up like the merchant said they would.  (Note to self: never again believe a flower seller when he tells you that the flowers are supposed to look like that.)  So I had no bridesmaids flowers.  What would they do with their hands when they walked down the aisle?  You are probably staring at your screen thinking I am a crazy person for caring what my friends did with their hands when they walked twenty feet down an aisle, but these kinds of things matter to you on your wedding day.  So it was time to turn to Plan B.  What's Plan B, you ask?  The rehearsal dinner flowers!  Yes, I frantically pulled apart the centerpieces I had taken home from the rehearsal dinner, searching for multiples of flowers that would go with the mustard-yellow bridesmaid dresses.  Stems flying everywhere.  But it worked.  There were plenty of second-hand flowers to go around, and we all got together and made some pretty OK bouquets.

So the lesson is: ALWAYS take home the rehearsal dinner centerpieces just in case your bouquet-making aspirations are dashed by the lies of your flower merchant.  This one's important people.

{unexpected DIY; Tasha, making her bouquet from the rehearsal dinner remnants}

{good enough, eh?}

{they look pretty legit from far away}

{my bouquet - also DIY-ed for under $25, luckily without any flower mishaps}

Go broke before you go big (in terms of dress shopping strategy, that is).  Even if you've got the budget for a designer gown (I'm jealous), check out a discount designer place first (like the Glamour Closet, where I found my dress!), just like you would check out T.J. Maxx before going to Bloomingdale's (or is that just me...).  You never know what you'll find, and plus, it's always more of a rush when you find something you love without expecting to.  (And don't forget to invite me to go dress shopping with you.  I LOVE wedding dresses, and I'm good luck.  OK that might be a lie, or at least not based on any substantial facts, but still, invite me please.  K thanks.)

{my dear dress that now sits in a box}

Friends don't make friends buy dresses from a bridesmaid dress shop.  I love the different-but-coordinated bridemaid dresses trend, but it's pretty hard to pull off when your bridesmaids live all over the country and are very busy people.  Having all your girls wear the same thing is simpler, and less stressful, and thus (unsurprisingly), it's the route that I opted for.  However, that does not mean that you have to go the traditional bridesmaid store route.  There are a bazillion pretty dresses out there in the world, and a lot of them cost less than $150 (which is basically the low-end at a bridesmaid store).  Plus, who in the world has time to go to like 5 fittings for a dress she didn't even necessarily want in the first place?  I found my bridesmaid dresses for $40 (including shipping) on Lulus.com, a site that I order from for myself all the time.  That way, those who needed to get alterations could still afford them, and those who fit well enough in a S-M-L sizing scheme weren't forced into the rigid bridesmaid dress fitting routine.  Just because it's a wedding doesn't mean you have to use wedding vendors, especially for something so easy to find at retail, like a dress.

{pockets and bows}

No one else reads wedding blogs.  Just because you’ve seen it a million times doesn’t mean it’s over-done when your guests have probably never seen it before!  Mason-jars-as-vases?  Cork place card holders?  Totally novel ideas to everyone in the room who has not recently gotten married, and I promise you won't be infringing any copyrights by stealing a centerpiece idea from Style Me Pretty (don't quote me on that, I'm not a lawyer yet).  So don’t stress too much about making your wedding the coolest hipster-indie-modern-enchanted-forest-hollywood-glam wedding that has never been done before; just make it something you like.

Ask your fiance to be in charge of the things that make him/her most uncomfortable.  Weddings make some people uncomfortable (generally).  So minimize by giving them control to make the things they dread the most more comfortable for them.  For example, Brian is not so into the whole dancing in public thing (unless the "dancing" in question involves fist pumping), so I delegated the first song choosing duties to him.  That way, he picked something he liked and felt comfortable with, and I was comfortable because he was comfortable, so we could both enjoy the dance and not feel that awkward.  Success.

Don’t base your decision of whether to see your fiance before the ceremony or not on the potential for photographs.  Whether you want to see your fiance before the ceremony or not is a very personal decision, and I don’t think it should be based on practicality.  Yes, it is easier if you see your partner before the ceremony and take portraits and family pictures.  But if you have a grandma who sternly objects to doing something that is such bad luck (in her opinion), and if you have a fiance who sometimes grasps on to tradition with tooth and nail, then don’t push it.  Pictures are nice, but that’s not the point.  I don’t know what it would have been like if we had seen each other beforehand, but I can tell you that there is no picture that could possibly capture what I felt when I walked down the aisle and saw Brian standing up there, waiting.  It wasn’t worth the risk to me that I wouldn’t have that feeling, just to get some frame-able shots.  See East Side Bride.

{THIS moment}

Day after sessions rock (especially if you choose not to do portraits before the ceremony).  Frankly, I have no idea how women out there go do a wedding portrait session after the ceremony.  They must have super human abilities to look pretty amidst emotional tumult, and ridiculous patience.  I was way too overwhelmed after the ceremony to go take portraits where I somehow would look serene and "bridal," there was a high potential for 5-year-old face (have I told you about how I do that when I'm really really happy?  It's not pretty.), and after having taken all the family portraits I just wanted a drink (or 3).  Having a day after session also meant that I didn't have to worry about finding a venue that had easy access to good picture spots, or rushing to get portraits in before sunset.  Plus, I loved the fact that I got to go to my own cocktail hour.  Once the actual reception started, I barely got to talk to anyone, so that time turned out to be really important, and it also made the whole thing feel a bit less formal for me.  Try asking your photographers to come later (you really don't need 100 pictures of yourself putting on your make-up...so over-rated), or leave early like right after the first dance (you really don't need 100 professional pictures of your guests getting down at the reception -- funny but capable of being adequately captured by amateurs), and do a short day after session instead.

Here are a few from our day after session, just because sharing is caring:

OK, I'm done playing show-and-tell now.  Thanks for indulging me.

Wait!  One last tip: don’t eat scallops the night before your wedding.  Trust me, it's a bad idea.

The end.

Unsolicited Advice for your Engagement: Part I

{polaroids taken by my mom and Leonel Medrano and Iris Bai}

Remember what I said about not making this into a blog about my wedding (which has been over for 8 months -- clearly outside the zone of relevance)?  I still promise that.  But I am going to a take a little detour to talk about weddings in general today and tomorrow.  If you could care less about such things, please excuse me, and come back in a few days for another L.A. post!


The resurgence of wedding thoughts bopping around in my head is due to the fact that TWO of my best friends in the world, Melissa (in the pink dress/tourquoise necklace) and Tasha, both recently got engaged within a week of each other (YAYYY!), and it got me thinking about what advice I could give them for planning their weddings.  I've only planned one, so I'm clearly not an expert,* but a friend has a duty to warn, no?  And when I sat down to write this, I realized that I actually have a lot to say.  So much that it will be split into two parts -- the emotional stuff today, and the gritty business of planning stuff tomorrow.

First, let me explain to you where I'm coming from so that we're all on the same page.  I have a theory (one of many) that women in the world fall into two categories: those who are meant to be engaged, and those who find themselves engaged.  The first category of women seem naturally suited for the role of "bride to be."  For them, the engagement period is easy breezy.  They are just born with it.  If engagement were a survival skill, they'd be the last ones standing in the Darwinian race.  They happily and confidently pick out dresses and rings, colors and themes, and they not only know what to put on their wedding to-do list, they actually do those things and check them off.  They know the difference between a cushion cut and a princess cut diamond.  They probably have a wedding binder.

This was NOT me.  I am much more of a woman who found herself engaged, and while being very excited about the prospect of marriage, was decidedly unsuited to the role of "bride to be."  I am still not convinced that there isn't some fiancee gene that I'm lacking, but beyond genetic incompatibility, I blame these identifiable factors for my bride-to-be shortfalls:

- I had a case of wedding blankness.  I never played bride as a little girl, had banned myself from consuming any form of wedding porn before I was engaged for fear of becoming that girl, and I had only been to two weddings before my own.  I didn't have the slightest idea what was supposed to happen during an engagement, or at a wedding, let alone what I actually wanted to happen during/at mine.  Turns out "I don't know" is a disappointing and unsatisfactory answer when you are asked 50 times a day what your "colors" are (there are supposed to be colors?!).  The other problem with this is that when you feel like you're in unknown territory, all the "supposed to's" loom large, and you start believing them.

- I am uncomfortable with PDA, or mushy feelings.  I'm an open book about most things, but I keep the lovey-dovey relationship stuff to myself.  Unfortunately, it turns out that being a good engaged person involves living up to people's expectations that you act sickeningly in love at all times (in public!), and excitedly discuss all of the intricacies of planning your life together with anyone who is so nice as to ask (in public!).  Engagements are awkward for people like me.

- I am uncomfortable spending large amounts of money (on two levels).  I've been a student for 20 years (in a row), remember?  I get itchy and hot just thinking about a bill that has more than one zero at the end of it.  And the principle of spending unnecessary pennies upsets me.  (Things should cost what I'm willing to pay for them.  Eff all those other buyers out there with their inflated willingness-to-pay dots that skew the damn demand curve!)  This is a problem when other people around you think you should be excited about the tablecloths, and all you can think about is how stupid it is to spend money on tablecloths instead of buying them at TJ Maxx or making them yourself.

- I come from a place where you do things yourself.  I do most everything myself, and I come from a long line of DIY-ers who didn't even realize that there was another way (i.e. one time, my dad reconstructed my broken sandal with a piece of twine that he just had in his car on a family roadtrip).  I'm generally not into delegating; it makes me feel guilty and lazy for illogical reasons.  The problem is that you can't put together a wedding by yourself.  You end up on the day of the wedding without a cake because you didn't have time to bake it (yeah, that happened to me).

Clearly, I was not a good candidate for a bride-to-be, but somehow, I threw a wedding that was genuine and meaningful for me and Brian, and I think everyone else had a good time, too.  So if you share some of my bride-to-be deficiencies, let me assure you -- you, too, can do this.  And if it makes you feel better, I have a theory (another of many) that the worst engaged people end up being the best married people (I'm clearly a reliable source). In any case, here's the first part of my wedding manifesto, where I give you unsolicited but tried and tested advice on how to survive an engagement and a wedding without causing serious permanent injury to your bank account, your relationship, or your self-respect (with some random pictures thrown in just because I like them).**


Maintaining Your Sanity in the Midst of the Storm (aka how to deal with the wedding crazies)

Celebrate.  As often as possible.  This is one of the few excuses for celebration of love that you get in your life.  Seize it.  Throw parties with your friends; throw parties with your fiance; drink champagne on Wednesday nights with your parents.  Do it.  And take a few pictures so that you can put them in your family album (because you'll have one of those when you're married because you're family then - intense, I know). 

{celebrating at the "champagne-in-shackles" engagement party we threw for our friends - who says you have to wait for someone to throw you a party to celebrate?}

 {Me and Melissa, celebrating at my bachelorette in Vega$.  Please note that my tiara says "Bride To" because the "Be" fell off -- I find it quite fitting.}

{celebrating at our wedding}

Read a book about marriage.  A happy one that will make you excited to be married.  I read a Nora Roberts romance novel about a wedding planner who gets married (does it get any girlier?), and then I read Committed by former marriage skeptic Elizabeth Gilbert to balance it out.  This is maybe the only time in your life you will feel justified marching up to the Barnes & Noble cashier with a wedding book in hand, so read one now!  Oh wait, you have a kindle?  Well, you should still read one, electronically if you must.

Listen to people and make them feel appreciated, then do what you want.  I'm sure you've heard by now that "this is not just about you," and I'm sure you think you get that ("only bridezillas think a wedding is just about them, and surely I am not a bridezilla...").  I thought I did, too.  But when people start offering their unsolicited advice (kind of like how I am right now), it's hard not to react (snappily, probably) like it is all about you.  This is another symptom of the wedding crazies.  If you are having this problem, try to think about it this way -- if you've been thinking about this moment for a few years, your mother/father/grandmother/aunt (+ the in-laws) have been thinking about this since you were born.  The people who love you want things to happen just how they imagined they would.  And they have a right to, arguably.  So listen to them, make their ideas feel needed and helpful, make them feel loved and appreciated.  But the secret is to keep doing what you’re doing on the DL.  What you will probably spend most of your time worrying about is which traditions or non-traditions to include in your wedding, and how many people will be upset by your decision to do X.  But in the end, it's not about what you include or disregard, it's about how you handle the people around you in making those decisions.  The more respectful you are, the more likely you are going to be able to do whatever you want in the end (like make your guests wear crazy visions of love glasses), and still please those who matter.

{walking down cement stairs in 3" heels and a long floofy wedding dress is another kind of leap of faith}

Talk to your fiance about how you're feeling, but not always.  Something about being engaged makes us think that we not only have the license, but the duty to tell our significant others everything we are thinking.  Every feeling, every thought, every doubt is suddenly valid, of pressing importance, and must be communicated, aired and discussed.  This is part of the common affliction of the wedding crazies.  Don't let it get to you.  You will be forced into an emotional hurricane - by your friends and family, by the WIC (wedding industrial complex), by yourself - and your sanity will falter.  You will be overwhelmed - sometimes by sadness, anger, frustration, and other times by love, hope, excitement.  Not all of these feelings will be based in reality, and not all of them are worthy of validation through communication.  So pick your battles (or your sob sessions, or your pity parties).

{This is one of those times when you should talk to your fiance.  Please note my huge piece of computer paper.  Oops.}

Your wedding will happen even if there are things left unresolved.  A wedding is not a deadline to get all of your emotional and familial ducks in a row.  For some people who just have their sh*t together, a year or however long your engagement lasts, might be enough time to really make the transition, but for some people, and for me, it was not.  Sometimes a wedding has to happen to actually put some issues to rest.  Sometimes, there is just not enough time to work through the complications that come along with blending two families and making a third before the wedding date stubbornly arrives.  And that is OK.  After a wedding, people's opinions change and tensions dissipate.  You don’t have to be in this perfect peaceful place to get married; you just have to know that you want the person you're marrying to be standing next to you tomorrow, and when you get a job, and when you buy a house, and when you become a mother (or decide not to), and when you are faced with grief and loss.  The rest of the debris can be dealt with after the wedding.

You are not on “America’s Next Top Wedding Planner.”  This is not your livelihood, and you are not expected to be a professional.  I was supposed to have a photobooth, but the DJ ended up taking up all the plugs and there was nowhere to plug in the lights for it.  There were supposed to be bubbles to blow and flower petals to toss, but those things somehow never made it from the caterer to the guests.  I was supposed to bake a cake (whoops), and my bridesmaids were supposed to have purple bouquets (that story's coming tomorrow), but neither of those things happened.  You will not be able to do everything you think you will (unless you quit your job or something), and you will hire people to do things, and they will not perform perfectly.  But in the end, you will not have let your guests down by not throwing the most amazing party ever of the world -- no one goes to a wedding expecting that it's going to be the best party they've ever been to except the bride and groom.  So just let the mistakes happen, and know that it’s not your fault, and no one expects anything from you except to look pretty and say “I do.”

{this is the face of a bride with no cake and no bridesmaids bouquets, but a pretty dress and a whole lot of champagne}

You cannot control what other people do at your wedding.  As the host of this big event, you will probably feel pressure to make sure that everyone has a fantastic time (see above).  But the problem is that you are not the boss of the world.  People will probably misbehave at your reception (hopefully not at your ceremony), depending on whether or not you have an open bar (JK...kind of), and other people will probably not be happy about it.  Hopefully this misbehavior does not go beyond someone making out with the DJ, or ranting in outrage when the bartender refuses to serve said blatantly inebriated guest any more tequila shots.  These are the stories that make a night memorable, and that you'll laugh about later.  But if there is further misbehavior and offense, don't let it upset you that night, and don't feel like you have to apologize for other people's bad behavior.  You cannot control other people, and while it would be wonderful if all of your guests clear-headedly decided to act extra respectfully since it is your wedding and all, that doesn't always happen.  So let it go.

Get over the cheesiness.  If you are anything like me, you will absolutely dread the showy parts that come with the wedding territory.  The idea of dancing real dances (twice) in front of people, being "announced" into the reception, and speaking the most private of love thoughts in front of a room of 150 people sounded like completely unnecessary humiliation bordering on torture to my PDA-opposed self.  Frankly, the whole thing made me want to run to city hall and elope.  (If you're thinking about eloping, I mean really thinking about it, then go here for some advice).  If despite this intimidation, you are actually committed to the idea of having a wedding, then you have to remember that a wedding is a ceremony, as in "a formal act or set of acts performed as prescribed by ritual or custom."  Which means that as a ceremony, a wedding requires unnecessary and silly things for no other reason than tradition.  And if you embrace this inevitability, then some of those embarrassing traditions will become the memories that you'll look back on with the most happiness.  I am not a very tradition-minded person, but even I thought that in the end, it was all the silly customs and embarrassingly weddingy aspects of our wedding that made it feel special -- that made it feel like a wedding.  You only get to experience the wedding feeling once, so instead of dreading it, face it, look forward to it, and when you feel it, remember to remember it.  Embrace the day for what it is - the one day you have a license to be openly, shamelessly in love for everyone to see, cheesiness and all.

{wedding-day cheese for you}

Let your wedding day feel like what it feels like.  Your wedding day may not feel like the glitz and glamour you see plastered all over the wedding blogosphere, and you are going to have to be OK with that.  The reality is that if you plan your own wedding, you will not magically wake up and turn into a princess who everyone fusses over.  There will still be a to-do list, you will still have to remember to bring the music and call the caterer, etc.  Your friends and your family will treat you the same as they always do, not like "a bride" (whatever that means), and you will probably still have moments of stress (like when you realize that your vows are in someone's car and you have to reproduce them verbatim on a piece of computer paper from memory.  Yeah.).  But you will probably also have moments of incredible joy, and just plain old happiness.  

The real point is that your wedding day is not about being a bride; it's about becoming a wife.  And that means something different to everyone, and I'm certain that it feels different for everyone.  But I'm also certain that you will feel something transformative, and that is what's important.  So adjust your expectations, keep yourself open, and be honest with yourself about the whole experience.  

For me, it felt kind of like this:

{note my 5-year-old-smile face}

{this one and the next were taken by my friend, Aditi}

{taken by my friend, Dana}

Whew, if you made it through all that, congratulations!  You've won another day of wedding manifesto talk coming up tomorrow!

*Disclaimer: please note that there are many book writers, blog writers, and just people in general who are more qualified to speak on this topic than me, and this is by no means a novel list of considerations or advice.  I would direct you to APW for some real guidance if you haven't been there already.  I mean, the woman's got a whole book coming out about these things!

**All wedding photos taken by Iris Bay and Leonel Medrano (family friends and photography students) unless otherwise noted.