weddingrisk

Ever-expanding is a slight overstatement. But still, there are a few additions to the [ahem] 10 bridesmaids, two of whom are our sisters, who will be standing right next to each of us as Maid of Honor / Best Woman, and four Chuppa holders (still TBD). My three little cousins, a girl and two boys: currently 11, 8, and 5, are part of the wedding party (D and I were part of our uncle and aunt’s German nuptials many years ago) and I need to figure out what they’ll do. Right now, the plan is for each — Very Supervised — boy to have a ring bowl that he will walk down the aisle with and then present to me or B at the appropriate moment. “Jo”, the girl, will function as a kind of junior bridesmaid and stand…somewhere? What should she wear? Does she need an activity? I visited my old job on Thursday and subjected everyone to a white board diagram of my…er, design plan. They were bemused.

Or bowl as the case may be. This seems like an interesting, chic alternative to the more typical pillows/little birds’ nests. Bonus: The text can be customized.

Because I found my wedding dress so quickly, I didn’t get to try on very many. Some might consider this a good thing, but I like party dresses and so, with the pressure completely off, KCB and I decided to visit one of our area’s most posh “bridal salons”. This is the place that sells dresses that cost as much as new cars and specializes in Vera Wang.

Here too, we were assigned a bridal consultant who gave us wine. They were “out of” champagne, which I find suspect, but perhaps they reserve their stock for people who are closer to buying than I told them I was. “I’m in the initial stage,” I said, “that’s why I’m here with a friend instead of my mother.” We were seated on a white kidney bean shaped settee and I was asked to detail my (wedding) taste while my bridal consultant took notes. “Slightly-rustic elegance” I kept saying, “Vintage inspired.”

We were led into our private fitting chamber, a medium sized room with tasteful lighting, white walls, white carpet, white furniture (this is how they seduce brides and their families, I suspect: isolate them, give them alcohol, put them in lush dresses). Here the bridal consultant puts the dresses on you, which I didn’t mind but did feel slightly infantilizing (though, honestly, there’s no possible way I could have gotten into some of them myself). The room was closed in with heavy white curtains, with white clothespins clipped along one edge. Their function soon became apparent as I was quite literally clipped into the first gown I tried on. It was an amusing juxtaposition, perfect from the front, paper doll + sewing project from the back.

I tried on many, many dresses and while it was great fun, I didn’t like any as much as the dress I found at the far more humble DB (see post regarding the virtues of functional fixedness). Dear readers, I will note that Vera Wang is no joke. Her dresses are exquisite and sumptuous. But to me, they felt and looked like costumes. I couldn’t imagine actually wearing one in my life. Maybe (er, definitely) for a picture or two, but not in any real context.

With this in mind, I give you my very favorite of all the dresses I tried. It’s Marie Antoinette as a sea creature meets art deco statue, and wearing it was magnificent. But only in the posh, white dressing room of a bridal boutique. Or for some kind of lunar red carpet. Not for my wedding, though. No way.

Clearly, that’s not me in the picture - they didn’t allow photography in the store.

A brief preface: My parents got married in Friendly Park in Greensboro, North Carolina (they had intended to have a sunset ceremony but the bus got lost) and had their reception at the original Durham Arts Council (which is now a private school). In lieu of a wedding cake, they had wheels of cheese that my dad’s mom brought from Wisconsin, and the main event was a rock band (”they…played using a couple of different names” says my dad. “We don’t really know what they were calling themselves,” adds my mom). 1970s North Carolina anecdote: The cops showed up because there were interracial couples dancing (horrifying, isn’t it?). As the story goes, my parents enlisted a friend with a posh Southern accent to deal with them and the party continued unhindered. My mother’s wedding dress was a long hippie 70s number (she and my dad both had waist length hair when they married).

It was in the spirit of bucking the big white dress that mom and I went on what we were calling a “fact finding mission” to David’s Bridal, which is conveniently located in a strip mall in Durham. We were chatting on the way over about how I would probably end up with a vintage dress, or a dress that’s not specifically intended for weddings, or getting a dress made, but that it would be productive to get an idea of what styles looked good and what various terminology meant.

When we walked into the store, we were immediately greeted by a perky woman seated behind a long table that effectively blocked us from entering the rest of the store. “Hi!” she trilled, “how can we help you?” When we told her that I was interesting to looking at wedding dresses she said, “do you have an appointment?” (Note: For David’s Bridal? Why?) when we said that we did not, she looked slightly furrowed but told us that they’d try to work us in. “Here’s our catalog, feel free to look around, but please don’t touch the dresses.” After we paged through the look book, we wandered up and down aisles of white dresses entombed in bulky plastic garment bags.

“Tacky!” I kept mouthing at my mother.

“Gross,” she agreed.

But we decided to stick it out, nonetheless.

After about half an hour, a petite and tan girl strode up to me and announced that she was my bridal consultant. I gave her my measurements and was summarily led over to a Wall O’ Dye-able Shoes. “Pick your style,” she prompted. I took a pair of vintage looking heels. “Wow” came the response. “That was fast!”

Next I was led into a small dressing room containing a slip, a ridiculous bustier (nothankyou), and a crinoline fit for a Disney princess.

“Here’s your first dress,” said my bridal consultant, “let me know if you need any help.”

Briefly, the set up for this place is like a slightly more private communal dressing room. There’s a tiny private stall where you wiggle into your dress, but you have step out to a centralized seating area with little rounds (for twirling on, one presumes) and full length mirrors in order to see what the dress actually looks like on. Since I was pretty much raised in Loehmann’s, I didn’t mind this set up. It felt rather democratic. When we were there, a beleaguered father of a bride-to-be had tucked into a chair next to my mother and was snoring fervently. This chagrined the DB staff, but made the experience that much more amusing for us.

Trying on the dresses led to a series of revelations:

1. Wedding dresses are best appraised and better appreciated one at a time, separated from the billowing herd.

2. DB wedding consultants are actually able to engage with a wide range of tastes and aesthetics. Mine was totally wonderful, provided great suggestions (including offering up The Dress for me to try on), did not smother, and kept thanking me for being so fun and easy to work with

3. I was wrong about everything except for the color (I’m far too pale to swath myself in bright white, this we all knew for sure)

It was actually a lot of fun to get feedback from other future brides and their families.

I tried on maybe five dresses and we all (me, my mom, the bridal consultant, other people in the store) fell in love with one of them. No one is more surprised than I (except maybe my mom) that I found my wedding dress in couple of hours at David’s Bridal.

Additionally surprising, there is a veil and a sash involved; I had previously eschewed both.

Bonus: Everything was on sale (my most favorite way to shop!).

The dress and it’s accouterments are at my parents’ house where they have been modeled for teary fathers (and grandfathers) and grinning friends. It is lovely.

My mom and I went to a big ol’ hotel bridal expo at the local Sheraton this past Sunday. It was actually lots of fun, though I’m not sure how ultimately useful. I got to try lots of slivers of wedding cake (Verdict: Far too sweet) and get a bit more information about various “wedding staples” (is a videographer a staple? These folks seem to think so). Again, I think the trick to enjoying yourself in the face of the Wedding Industrial Complex is to internalize a couple of main philosophies:

1. Whatever everyone else wants to do is fine by me. I mean, really, if some bride-to-be (or her mom) simply must have a baby picture montage playing on a projection screen at her reception (this was very earnestly pitched to me. What would be far more elucidating is showing what B and I looked like at various key years, since when I was a baby, he was a bona fide school-ager. I did not bring this up.) that doesn’t, and shouldn’t, affect me one way or the other.

2. Be nice.

Another treat was running into the mother of a friend of mine, who runs Southern Bride and Groom. It was lovely to chat with her, and really made the whole experience for both of us.

At the sign-in desk, each of us future brides was given a bright pink circle with our wedding month written in swirled cursive, a sticker to wear so that “vendors don’t have to keep asking you when you’re getting married.” It’s a reasonable idea, though they might have suggested I write-in the year, as I kept getting comments from [male] vendor representatives. “It’s not this October, is it?” one tux representative lobbed at me, much to the giggly amusement of his peers.

Date: 10/31/2009
Halloween doesn’t hold any particular significance to either of us, but we fell a little in love with a venue and that’s the date they had available, so the 31st it is.

Venue: Check

Dress: Yup
Story to come.

Attendants (Bridesmaids): 10
Some have expressed concern about the large number, but the more the merrier I say.

Chuppa Holders: In progress

Bridesmaids’ dresses: In progress
I have - like - 12 dresses enroute to my house, a fact which probably has my credit card company amused, especially since I think for the past two billing cycles, all I’ve charged is an Arby’s roast beef sandwich (what? I like those…I’m in grad school…shut up!).

Flowers: Partial
JLQ’s mom has offered to plant us some rows of zinnias - lovely gesture, lovely flower

Up next: Photographer
Added to the issue of trying to stay within our budget, and finding someone with good aesthetics (no boobs+bouquets shots, please), it seems that the date might be an issue as well. Just got an email from a potential nicely informing me that many photographers like to spend Halloween with their families.

LRB was joking that at the rate we’re going, there’s not going to be anything left to plan next year. I think we’re doing well, but there’s tons left to figure out, some fun, (cakes!) some not so fun (tents). Interestingly, I’m not someone who has been planning her wedding since childhood. I’ve only started thinking about weddings recently, mostly because my friends have started getting married. So I didn’t plan this all out ahead of time. I have noticed that I’m pretty definite about the plans we’ve made. Once we decided, on the venue, for example, I felt like all other options were summarily erased. That’s also how I felt about my dress. This is good because it has basically eliminated second guessing and obsessing (is that a collective sigh of relief I hear, dear friends?) but it also has caused some M+B squabbles, as I get too attached to various brainstorms and become…intractable. Do not feel too sorry for B, however, he can hold his own.

So far, so good on the dress front. I got a lovely call from a certain JLQ who informed me that she had found the attendant dresses pictured below in a local mall and that not only were they very flattering, they were also on mega-sale. I rushed to the mall (and got heinously lost in Raleigh - somehow while trying to get to Crabtree, I ended up by Peace College) to have a look. The picture doesn’t really do these justice. They have a really nice raw-silk nub to them and as MHB so nicely put it, “they’re really well constructed.” I put all the ones I could find in the store on hold and sent around the following survey to gauge the collective reaction of my (uh, many) attendants:*

Potential Dress Survey
Select one answer and give your rationale, if necessary (IE if you are unenthusiastic, please explain).
1. Yay!
2. Yikes!
3. Sigh…fine.
4. The economy is tanking and you’re emailing me about dresses for your wedding in a year?!

The reaction was all positive, (particularly since both dresses are in the running - I don’t care so much about uniform style as uniform color) so last night I placed a big ole online order for the locals. Non locals ordered online as well. The only brief moment of drama came when one of the sizes I needed was sold out online (these are disappearing, hence the quick action). Rather than throw a tantrum, I used an online feature to help me locate the dress in a store. The only place in the country that still has the size, color, and style in-stock was in…Santa Monica, CA. I called at around 11:45pm east coast time and am having the dress sent here. “You’re like McGiver,” said ERM. A Bridezilla McGiver, maybe.

* “You better not start calling them your girls,” yelled my sister.

From here