J&E's Wedding

I found an incredibly beautiful dress, it’s everything I wanted: Grecian, fitted, long train coming off each shoulder. sigh

So what’s the problem? It’s pricey. Too pricey for my sensibilities. Wear it once, put it in a box—not much use for something that cost more than the rent on my loft or the value of my car. It’s wasteful.

So here’s the thing: after the big day, I’m going to auction it off for earthquake relief. Or maybe just a general Red Cross donation. Or Kiva. I have a soft spot for Kiva.

My mom is going to flip

Another bride just signed on the reception location for our date. Which I’m beginning to think might be a good thing.

See wedding planning is just like any other kind of shopping. You get this thrill that goes along with looking at something expensive. You think about the ways it could change your life. How good you’ll look with it. It’s sort of a nervous, guilty thrill; a tingle in your tummy. Sometimes you’ll realize you can’t afford it and you leave feeling depressed and inadequate. Sometimes you buy it and only realize later on what a stupid idea it was. What do you get? Anxiety.

Well that’s what wedding planning is like. Highs and lows, wants and letting gos. Each dip can be catastrophic or it can be an opportunity to re-examine why the heck you’re doing it in the first place.

So this past weekend I went shopping for a dress for the first time.

Correction: I tried to go wedding dress shopping for the first time.

It was a big deal! My mom and dad were in town, my little sister was coming over, we were all ready to meet up and get froufy.

Well, we walk into this place, gaggles… I think that’s what groups of young women are called… anyway gaggles of them are huddled around the front desk, traveling in clusters around the store. The weirdest part was all of them looked so *stressed*. So I wander up to the front desk where another gaggle of unhappy women were working, and ask what’s up. Apparently we need an appointment. But feel free to walk through the store!

By now I’m getting edgy. I don’t know if it’s one of those things like where you can have too much oxygen— that too much estrogen can make you a little wiggy too, but I was fast moving into bitchy mode. So we’re wandering around and there’s a blonde oompa-loompa colored bride to be sulkily trying on more dresses for her mother as we looked at the poofy gowns hung tightly together in racks all around the store.

I came back out front to my family, declaring the whole thing pointless. My dad (ever the optimist) decided he wanted to go through the store again.

So we got to a particularly gaudy rack and started pretending we were the Queen of England. Because we’re just that classy. I don’t think the unhappy ladies thought it was as funny as we did. Nor my sister, who had just driven from Chicago for the whole debacle.

Oh well. Let that be a lesson: make an appointment to be unhappy and dressed like a bedazzled marshmallow!

Truth is, I’m actually doing this. For the processional? So far Muse’s Twilight and *cough* Coldplay’s Clocks *cough*

Not the originals, I’m transposing them for string quartets. That’s why the sort of odd selection. They’re all pieces whose vocal line intertwines with an interesting accompaniment, making them less odd candidates for transposition.

Besides, can you imagine a cello shredding that low guitar line?

wananaNUH wananaNUH wanananana waNUH waNUH

NO MORRRREEEEE!!

(other blog-followers please forgive the double-post)

Bam.

So we’d kinda been spinning our wheels on signing off on a venue (not that signing off on anything over 1k is anything you should do flippantly), and the parents kinda wanted to see it first. Their money so, whatever. Also I am bad at making big decisions like that on my own anyway. Especially when the site has so much… Character.

The point is!

I emailed yesterday after two weeks of noncommunication and they haven’t written back yet! What if the day is booked?! What if they just don’t like me?! I mean, all my other bookings and things are pretty well riding on this going through and WILL SOMEONE HAND ME A PAPER BAG I’M HYPERVENTILLATING!

Hoo. Okay. I’m doing that thing, aren’t I? That bride thing. You know, it’s totally not like me to stress about stuff but somehow here we are. Especially with venues. First come, first serve. It like that running of the brides for dresses thing but you can’t see your opponents. It’s just you and your paranoia.

So it turns out the majority of people who do this whole wedding think like this mythical technology called the phone. They do this thing where you actually talk with them about booking dates and food and things. Which means I have to gather all of my crap before actually communicating with them because otherwise there’s a lot of ums and repeat phone calls. For example, I’ve called the city of Des Moines twice already and have yet to actually book a ceremony venue. Slick, huh?

At any rate, at long last we are actually booking stuff. Attempting to book stuff. I am, anyway. So I guess that means we’re going to get married this year!