The Doctor is In

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After nine long years of grad school (five in my current program; three on the east coast; one doing fieldwork), I am Phinally Done, having the requirements for a doctorate in my field by submitting my dissertation (all 429 pages of it, chock full o' fifty-cent words like soteriological, neoliberal, and epistemology!) last Friday.

So, after years of work at this august institution, what do you get?
(Besides a diploma, I mean, which won't be available until next spring...)

Just like going to the dentist, you get a lollipop!







I was dancing on air when I left the graduate degrees office, clutching the most expensive and coveted lollipop in history last Friday!

Mr. Barefoot and I spent the rest of the day enjoying our sunny back deck with friends I hadn't seen in months, since I'd been buried up to my neck in books.

We had cake from the spectacular La Farine...

and bubbly,
and plenty of G&Ts...

and a surprise viewing of the ringbearer outfit
for a nephew in Doc Water and Doc Bee's wedding...

How cute is that???

But, wait, it gets better...

Yes, it definitely needed a chapeau!

I believe that adorable yumminess is from here.

And that, dear and patient readers (thanks to those of you who stuck around!), is why this blog has been short on wedding planning goodness in recent weeks.

But fear not!

With Doc Water and Doc Bee's wedding just around the corner, Dr. Cowgirl's wedding to recap, a post about handmade wedding rings, and news about the dress, the invites, the flowers, and the DJ conundrum, and more to share, I'll get back in touch with my Inner Bride, and have my Wed Head back in no time.

Plus, Shoegate continues... I didn't fall for the sexy Chie Miharas, but neither did I find that ideal hip, funky, professional shoe.

And tomorrow is New Faculty Orientation.

Will I be Barefoot?

Not *just* a bride

Reading Sara Cotner's thoughtful response to Hortense's tirade about becoming an Officially Engaged Person inspired me to come out of the closet as an Ambivalent Bride. Don't get me wrong: I am thrilled to be marrying the spectacular Mr. Barefoot who is as fun and talented and fascinating as they come. But the whole bride thing has had me tied up in knots for weeks. It's good to know that others share my distaste for the Wedding Industrial Complex, as well as the societal message that this is the Most Important Thing You've Ever Done.

Sara said it so perfectly, I just have to quote her verbatim:

It's sad to me that a person can do all sorts of meaningful and important things with their lives and yet getting engaged seems to trump them all.... . Over the years, I've announced amazing job offers, my decision to go on a self-subsidized sabbatical and travel for a year, awards I've won, etc. When I announced that I was getting married, I received more responses than I ever had before.

I had the same experience. By the responses I got, getting engaged seemed to top all my other professional accomplishments, which include winning prizes, research grants and awards, and being invited to present at international conferences. In the societal eye, these matter little next to Hooking the Guy. Whatever comes next will no doubt be better, now that I have someone to share it with, but I hate the society discounts our single life, implying all that was preliminary to finding the Right Guy. My single life was just as important to me as my newly coupled life, and entirely gratifying in different ways. Maybe I was able to accomplish all that I did because I was single, pouring my focus and attention into my work and personal pursuits.

I can certainly see the converse: now that I'm engaged, my attention is split between my professional work and planning a big blowout party. Which I am very excited about, but neither the party, wedding or ring is the be all and end all. The much more significant and meaningful moment was that one that was just the two of us on the beach when we decided to get married.

Bridesmaids, old maid

The amazing thing about planning a wedding is the endless number of details for my monkey mind to fuss with. I thought after the date/ location/ caterer/ dress decisions were made that I would clear my head and return to my regularly-scheduled dissertation writing. But now I'm thinking about bridesmaids: whether to have them, what they should wear, how coordinated it should be.

My two closest friends from college, along with my two brothers, are obvious choices to stand with me while I'm getting married. I was "Best Woman" for each of those friends. Each of them got married a decade ago, and now they have small children. It feels almost unseemly to dictate what my fully grown up friends would wear at my wedding. The practical trend is for brides to ask their friends to choose a color, and all wear dresses in that color - ideally black, because everyone has a great black dress.

The problem is, I don't really want people wearing black - I love color! And, I bought pastel-colored dresses for my friends weddings. Matching - or at least coordinated - bridesmaids look pretty in photographs. Despite everyone's conviction that those dresses were 'so wearable,' I never wore them again (well, formally. One of them did become my Halloween 'forest sprite' costume. Actually, I got quite a lot of mileage out of it as a costume.)

I've been scoping out bridesmaid's dresses, looking for a cut/ feel that is similar in style to my dress, in a brighter color. I'm loving Amsale's bridesmaids dresses. These options echo the v-neck and ruffle of my dress, and I love the bright colors. They look sophisticated enough to *actually* be worn again. Now, if I could just figure out where they're sold, and how much they cost (I don't want to ask my friends to spend big bucks, when they'll also be traveling). It appears that all the boutiques that carry them are in SoCal.

This LuluKate dress is adorable, too, but maybe tricky to get, since it would have to be ordered online, and there's no way to try it on first and make sure that it's flattering.

Decisions, decisions...

All this points to the general conundrum at the center of my wedding planning: do I keep it simple, low-key, practical as I do with much of the rest of my life, and as the books and blogs tell me is appropriate for a Grown-up Bride (gak! they'd put me is a simple yet elegant suit in front of a judge at the courthouse!), or do I indulge the whims and fancies of the Inner Bride who has waited a helluva long time for this event, and wants it to be a total blowout celebration?

These two positions are not mutually exclusive, of course, and much of what we will do at the ceremony and reception reflects the practical, socially- and ecologically-conscious perspective. We don't want to have an enormous ecological footprint with this event, and we want it to reflect our values, so no random geegaws that the Wedding Industrial Complex says we have to have (see bunting, Unity Candle, aisle runner, favors that are not edible or useful). At the same time, aesthetics and fashion are important to me, and I want it to look, feel, and most of all, be, great fun!

A weekend of wedding planning

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Calla lilies are bursting out all over our backyard right now. I think they'd make an awesome bouquet - apparently very trendy right now. Just one of the many ideas floating around my mind...

Since Friday, my brain has been occupied by all things wedding, all the time. Friday night, after a day of dress shopping, I dreamed of wedding dresses all night. I kid you not! A slideshow of poufy white dresses danced in front of my head all night, making it very hard to sleep. It was like those drawings that accompany "The Night Before Christmas" in which kids are dreaming of sugar plums... visions of wedding dresses danced through my head.

I guess it was some sort of strange catharsis after buying my dress. My poor tired brain had to release all the images that it had been analyzing and storing for so many weeks. It turns out that what they say about finding YOUR dress and knowing that it is YOUR dress is true. I'd been stalking this dress on line for a while. Independently, my fabulously stylish Spanish sister-in-law pointed out the dress to me online. Though there are only a few bridal salons that carry Pronovias dresses in the San Francisco area, one of them had a trunk show last week. I walked in with the style name, tried on the dress and saw that it was indeed the one. It was even within range of my budget (which I feared would not accommodate the style of dress I was seeking.)

I am thrilled with this dress: it's sophisticated, dramatic, and yet light and flowy enough to look great outdoors, at the beach where the ceremony will be.

However, I do have a bit of angst about the extravagant use of resources and (most likely) poor labor conditions that go into creating a dress like this. I was hoping to find a second-hand or sample dress to minimize the amount of additional labor and resources going into our wedding. We're trying to be as environmentally and socially conscious as possible, since both of us work on such issues professionally. To my mind, the one use wedding dress is one of the most extravagant use of resources at the wedding. Most of the other things are consumed (food, alcohol) or can be re-used (chairs, sound equipment, etc.) Decorations and invitations can be made of recycled materials. But the dress.... all new materials, worn once! I'm planning to donate it to Brides Against Breast Cancer afterward, so they can use it in their fund-raising efforts. At least it can have second life that way. And I will post some of my other green wedding ideas in an effort to decrease consumption and increase sustainability....

The dress is dramatic enough that it doesn't need a veil or even much jewelry - which is perfect, since I don't own much jewelry. I'm thinking a white flower/ feather would look suitable sophisticated.

Something like this













Or this















Or this

So many fun things to shop for...

And, so many things to check off the list:

• Dress ordered - CHECK
• Shoes - CHECK
• Save the Date list - CHECK
• Mailing addresses - CHECK
• Location - CHECK
• Caterer - CHECK
• Decision about attendants - CHECK
• Reserved hair stylist - CHECK

Making progress on:

• Photographer
• Music

Now maybe I can focus on writing my dissertation...

Mystery solved

Late last night, I finally got up the gumption to open the Mystery Box, and...

{.....drum roll, please........}

discovered that the dress that looked so cute and casual and carefree online (and was just over $100 on eBay) is not the one for me.

It seems that, much to my chagrin, I am leaning toward more expensive and poufy concoctions. Surprising, when I thought I was just a simple, barefoot girl.

But not so surprising: my best friend went through the exact same thing. Bought a simple, straight, white bridesmaid's dress to wear at her wedding, and thought she was done. Proclaimed she wanted to keep things simple and poufy was not her style. Two months later, she got in touch with her Inner Bride, and headed down to some Giant Bridal Warehouse to get a properly poufy bridey dress.

Having been through this before, she has agreed to accompany me to the Pronovias trunk show at Novella Bridal in SF this Friday. I feel it... my dress is out there!