Weddings are for dancing
I love to dance. I love going to weddings at which we know a lot of people so M and I can get out on the dance floor and have some fun. I love wedding dances especially because they pull out the slow songs: you can’t sway slowly back and forth and look meaningfully into someone’s eyes to Rhianna’s latest while being jostled from all sides in a club.
So, naturally, when M and I got engaged, I just assumed there would be a dance.
- Dancing at D and B’s stag and doe.
But then, we started talking about it. My family doesn’t dance much, at least, not to my knowledge. M has some cousins who dance, but for the most part, his family is quite a bit older and also doesn’t dance. Of our friends, I think most of mine dance and most of M’s will if everyone else is. But our guest list is made up of mostly family because M’s is so big, so our friends really are in the minority. Beside that, my future MIL expressed some dislike of dances at weddings.
I started picturing an empty dance floor. A confused DJ. Wasted money.
So, we tried to think of something else. I don’t want just a dinner and some speeches and a mass exodus of guests as soon as the cake was cut. I want a good party, good food, good conversation, good fun. We tossed around ideas about dance instructors, comedians, magicians, some other kind of entertainment.
You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach when things aren’t working out? The disappointment that clues you in to the fact that you aren’t getting what you want, even if you like the other options? I recognized it. I acknowledged it.
And I put my foot down.
I don’t care if no one dances. I will. And my best friend has promised me she’ll get out there on the dance floor too. My future MIL won’t be bored because, hey, her son just got married.
So, I’ve booked a DJ. He’s incredibly friendly over email. I hope whoever he sends from his team is able to draw reluctant people onto the dance floor. But I’ve stopped worrying about it. It will be a party and it will be amazing.
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Tags: dancing, vendors, wedding plans
Resisting Bridal Pressures
Mostly, brides of the blogosphere are more quirky than me. They want short wedding dresses or vintage wedding dresses that their grandmother wore and tiny ceremonies in apple orchards and every little detail done DIY and for pennies. They go against everything the bridal industry tells them that they should want.
Except that they’ve created a problem. They’re doing exactly what the bridal industry is doing. In trashing the bridal industry and fighting against it, they’re telling other brides that they shouldn’t want what the bridal industry has and instead, what they have. It’s a catch-22, see. In freeing people from the pressures of the bridal industry, they’ve put a new pressure on them to reject the bridal industry all together, even if there’s something in it that might be good.
I’m not defending the bridal industry. It’s already made me cry once or twice. But I hesitate about suggesting there’s another way to do it. There isn’t. There’s only your way. Whether you want an expensive wedding using all the luxuries (and following the prescriptions) the bridal industry has to offer or you go counter culturally against it, it will be the way you want it.
I’ve stopped reading a lot of wedding blogs. I still glance through them on occasion, mostly for the pretty pictures. But honestly, they apply the pressure by going counter cultural just as much as the wedding magazines Sears gave me when we registered did.
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Tags: blogs, bridal pressures, wedding blogs
Engagement Party #1
As a follow-up to my last post, I thought I’d share what those photos were used for.
My MIL-to-be wanted them to include with the invitation to the engagement party she and my FIL-to-be are throwing for us. Last weekend, she handed me the card and I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were.
Apologies for the amateur name and location removing…
She sent out approximately as many of these beautiful cards as we’ll be sending out for the wedding. And every single detail is handmade. She pressed the card, punched tiny holes for the silver string, glued I don’t know how many layers of paper and the rhinestones. She said she had a lot of fun with it, that she hasn’t had a reason to get crafty in a long time.
I’m kind of blown away by it, really.
(We’re going curling for this engagement party! No, I’ve never been curling before! It should be a lot of fun.)
(For my family and friends in my area: don’t worry, we aren’t leaving you out of the festivities! The purpose of this party is to introduce me to M’s large extended family, but there will be an opportunity for me to properly introduce M to you too!)
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Tags: engagement party, invitation
Unofficial engagement pictures
A few weeks ago, my MIL-to-be asked if she could take some pictures of M and I. She’s throwing us an engagement party in his home town (which is 4 hours from mine) and wanted a picture to include in the invitation. She borrowed M’s brother’s good camera, pulled out some engagement pictures of M’s cousin for inspiration and trouped us all around their beautiful Eastern Ontarian property.
I helped myself to copies after she put them on their computer. Here’s my favourite:
M’s mom isn’t so great with technology. She refused to touch the settings of the digital camera for worry she’d mess something up on a piece of equipment she knew very little about. But despite all that, I think she’s got a pretty decent eye. These turned out pretty good and I know I’m happy with them. If we ever find time, we’ll still get some official ones done, I think. But until then, these will work.
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Tags: engagement photos, Photography
The lull in planning
While wedding planning takes up a lot of my mental capacity, there isn’t often enough to discuss here, especially when I’m still working hard to get my degree finished.
Speaking of.
A few times, when I’ve mentioned to a prof or another student that I’m getting married, I sense their eyes rolling in the back of their heads. I can’t blame them. The notoriety of an MRS degree makes it something that I can’t imagine anyone aspiring to. And yet, I sometimes feel like people think there is no other reason to get married except to get the MRS degree and successfully never have to be an independent, self-supporting person again.
(Note, I’m not getting an MRS degree. I am and will continue to be a Ms. Also, deBoer. Won’t change. Post on that someday maybe?)
Personally, I plan to always be an independent, if not self-supporting person. (I do acknowledge that my degree doesn’t leave me the most employable person in the world. Fingers crossed I can find a job…) I don’t appreciate my five-year sentence of essays, evaluation, criticism, and lost creativity being dismissed on the merit of my choice to get married.
On the other hand, I’ve had people dismiss my choice to get married as unimportant as well. In explaining to a prof why I switched out of his class at the beginning of this semester, I made the mistake of mentioning the stress wedding planning was going to put on me on top of everything else. He didn’t even bother to hide the eye roll as he dismissed it and continued to try to convince me to stay in a class I was mostly just uninterested in.
I identify myself as a student. But I also identify myself as a fiancee. School is my job, a job I happen to enjoy, most of the time. And M is a huge part of my future. I’m working on balance. I will achieve it.
When I am married, I will still love to read, I will still love to learn. I will still be as good a friend I can be. I will still shop at Value Village, I will still love my cat. I will still love to sing loudly in church. I will still play piano, cook shepherd’s pie, and write snippets of bad poetry in the margins of paper.
But I’ll be married. And things will be wonderfully different.
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Tags: fiancee, getting married, identity, name, student
Bridesmaids and their dresses
I’ve been told bridesmaids dresses should be ordered 3-6 months ahead of time. Sounds like I have lots of time, I guess. Except that my sister lives in Edmonton and my best friend has a crazy Christmas time work schedule, which is the only time we’ll be able to go shopping.
No big deal. They’re both of very different body shapes, so I didn’t want them in the same dress anyway. They don’t need to be together to pick out their dresses.
So, this should be an easy decision (ie, not mine!) except for one small thing.
I keep waffling on the colour.
Originally, after our engagement weekend, M and I had thought about doing a bright blue.
But the more I thought about it, and the more I looked, I realized I couldn’t find the blue that I wanted. Yeah, that picture isn’t the blue I want. Then I wondered if maybe that was because there isn’t a blue that could really make me happy because maybe I don’t really want blue?
See, almost three years ago, my sister got married. She had a very small wedding and I was her maid of honour and her only attendant. She let me pick the dress. Any dress. In any colour. So, I picked my favourite colour. Red. A beautiful deep red. The big problem is that I wasn’t thinking ahead.
I’ve had trouble with being a copycat in the past. A lot of the things I did in elementary school and (less so, but still) high school was because my sister did them. I’ve been fighting that unsuccessfully every since. I went to the same school, lived with her for a semester, ended up in some of the same clubs she had (even though she had graduated). And now, I want the same wedding colour she had. And feel like I can’t. Even though I picked it out.
I’ve decided that I’m being childish and silly and that my sister won’t care and all the family who might remember what I wore to her wedding will… Well. They probably won’t even notice.
So, then I fixed on red for a while. Approximately this red.
And then. One of M’s cousins posted her wedding pictures on Facebook. Her bridesmaids wore black! But, it wasn’t a black and white wedding. Everything was accented in blue. It was an option I hadn’t really considered. I had thought of black, but I had thought of it in terms of my wedding colour being black and honestly… I don’t want my wedding colour to be the colour you wear to a funeral. But with red accents?
Black would make it ridiculously easy to find dresses. And I could bring out the red in their jewellry, the flowers (the tulips here are wonderful!), their shoes. And then, I’m not copying my sister’s wedding, but still staying true to what I really want.
Hmm. I may have hit on something here.
(Pictures courtesy The Knot.)
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Tags: black, blue, bridesmaids dresses, red, wedding colours
Shoes!
Now that I’ve picked out my wedding dress, I have 5-9 weeks to find the perfect pair of shoes. This doesn’t faze me nearly as much as the dress did. Is this because shoes aren’t hundreds of dollars? Because they’re hidden most of the time? Or, maybe because I love shoes so much it’s more of an exciting prospect than a daunting one?
From my experience with the shoes I’ve seen at bridal shops, I’ve decided ‘bridal’ shoes really don’t appeal to me. In fact, strappy sandals, ie, typical bridal fare, in general don’t really appeal to me. Neither does white. (That said, I love the strappy, white sandals I bought for my cousin’s wedding.)
So, what is my aesthetic?
High. With a splash of colour.
I know, getting something too high would be a really bad idea. I mean, I’m going to be on my feet all day and despite loving high heels, my feet are not impervious to pain. But honestly, shoes, and heels in particular, go a long way to making me feel beautiful. I could be wearing the most beautiful, perfectly fitting dress, but without a pair of heels it won’t feel quite complete.
And the splash of colour. I’m thinking red. Bold. But hidden most of the time. A little surprise of bright colour.
To find it. Just watch: I’ll end up with something strappy and white now that I’ve outlined so clearly what I want!
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Tags: wedding shoes
Adventures in registering
M and I did our registries this weekend.
We started at Sears and quickly exhausted their Bed and Bath, Kitchen, and Decor sections. I left feeling exhausted and disappointed that I couldn’t find a soap dispenser and toothbrush holder that I liked to go with our brown and cream towels. M doesn’t get exhausted, so we continued on to Home Outfitters.
Totally different story. That place is wonderful for registries. For anything actually. I mean, the whole place is dedicated to, well, outfitting your bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. They don’t suddenly have TVs thrown among curtains and dishwashers next to towels. The organization of the store made sense. Also, circular. Really helps.
Suddenly, it was fun again. We stepped into a section and began to put together what we want our future home to look like. Stainless steel or black in the kitchen? I’ve got a red coffee maker. How about a few red accents? Chocolate brown in the bathroom and… ooh, these purple patterned accents are so pretty! Bedroom. Four pillows on the bed. Cream and, of course, red. But, we might be in an apartment and don’t really want to paint… hang red curtains behind the bed? Yes! We can use them for a key window if we do paint. Cutlery… you pick two, I’ll pick two, point at the same time…
It was amazing (or perhaps not so amazing? We did pick each other, after all.) how often M and I were on the same wave length. There was another couple registering at Home Outfitters. They had just finished as we did and did not seem particularly happy. We speculated they maybe hadn’t had such an easy time figuring out what kind of frying pan to register for. (Though, that was something we didn’t agree on… M likes stainless steel. I prefer other metal-friendly options that are also stick free. We registered for both!)
There were a couple times when we looked at each other and said, “Wow. We’re shopping for bath towels. For our bathroom. And sheets. For our bedroom. We’re looking at stuff for our house. That we’re going to live in together. This is going to be amazing.”
The other thing we were thinking about? “Yard sale!”
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Tags: Home Outfitters, registery, Sears, wedding gifts
What it’s really all about
I love reading wedding blogs, wedding websites and (yes, I’ll admit it) wedding magazines. The weekend M proposed, I signed up for The Knot. I bought a magazine the following weekend (not worth the $15, trust me) at the prompting of my similarly wedding enthused best friend and bridesmaid. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t stick ‘wedding’ into the Google Blog search.
But, as much as I love reading about other people’s weddings, I know they haven’t been great for my mental health. They’ve given me some great ideas and will likely continue to be an inspiration as the planning continues. But the images of $30 000 weddings with impeccable details and happy smiling people everywhere holding champagne glasses kind of freaks me out.
But every so often, I come across a blog post that reminds me my wedding doesn’t have to be like that. It’s allowed to be an absolute mess. The church could be plain and the flowers wilted. The caterer could forget the date leaving us to order in pizza for everyone. The dance could be a huge flop and the party over at 11:00. As long as we get married with our friends and family around us and God watching over it all, I will be happier than I can at this moment imagine.
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Tags: ceremony, God, wedding mess, wedding planning
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