Chart the wedding

Ooo, cool new ways to visualize the physical and social space of the wedding!*


This wedding mapper tool is a great way to give a visual overview of where everything is happening. One more link on the wedding website, and one less piece of paper to send to everyone.

And this wedding genealogy is such a cool way to show how everyone is interconnected - think Facebook social history, calligrafied.



So wishing I had the mad design skills of some of the bride2B's out there! I wonder if we could do this in PowerPoint or Word. It would be fun to visualize how everyone is connected.

*hmmm... my inability to actually escape from my dissertation, even when I am ostensibly thinking about something else, rears its ugly head. Task for the weekend: finish a chapter on perceptions of physical and social space.

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!

Going Bridal!

I'm starting this blog to deal with my increasing - and rather unwelcome obsession - with all things bridal.

I am most definitely NOT one of those girls who has dreamed her whole life about the one perfect day: the perfect dress, the location, the guy, the cake, the ceremony, the centerpieces. In fact, until about a year ago, I had no interest in getting married. That was a hard-won stance. Most of my friends got married about a decade ago, just as we all turned 30. At that time, I was eager to find a long-term boyfriend and settle down. However, things didn't go that way, and instead, I developed an amazing career that took me all over the world, meeting fascinating people. During my travels, I dated some amazing men, but all those relationships were clearly short-term. Both parties knew that I would soon be leaving, and often the cultural differences seemed too large to surmount over the long-term.

By 35, I had come to the conclusion that I would not get married, and set about building a happy and fulfilling single life. I had work I loved, many warm and wonderful friends around the world, and even young people in my life, thanks to those friends who had gotten married and procreated. I became a contentedly single gal, with my singleness very much part of my identity.

Cut to two years ago, when I met a brilliant and articulate young professor at a start-of-the-semester party. Though I didn't think much of it at the time, because I was involved with yet another unavailable man, who had just moved 3000 miles away from my and I was desperately trying to make the long distance relationship work, this professor would ask me out six months later, travel to the ends of the earth to visit me during my fieldwork, and eventually ask me to marry him.

Now, as I contemplate our wedding, the girl who was never gonna get married has become obsessed with all things bridal. I stay up late at night, surfing the internet, collecting ideas, reading etiquette columns, searching for dresses.

Though I had never imagined my wedding in detail, there's are a few key elements that I had always imagined would be part of it if I ever did get married: we'd be on a bluff over-looking the ocean, we'd be outside, and we'd be barefoot.

Enter One Barefoot Bride.