Mysteries of Shittsburgh

OK, so my pal in bloggydom, Bewildered Housewife, tagged me for a meme. I think all I have to do is post about 6 quirks that I have that are personal to me. Um, I’d love to do that and all, but I really should keep this blog about my wedding. So, prepare to look behind the curtain into the 6 as-yet-unknown quirks about my wedding!

But you know, a lot of the non-traditional aspects of my wedding have already been revealed here. There’s not much more to tell, except maybe that I’m effing tired of planning this thing. Srsly. It feels like I’m single-handedly running a little town. If that town were a real place, I’d call it “Shittsburgh.” Not because planning a wedding is really that shitty (um, but it kind of is), but because I love how Sienna Miller famously insulted the city of Pittsburgh by labeling it thusly.

It was such a career-suicide move, but GOD was that some delicious faux pas. Sometimes when the beautiful people fuck up, it’s just dreadful and infuriating (Tom Cruise and every TV appearance he’s done in the last 3 years). But other times, it’s really humanizing. “Shittsburgh” is funny in the way that one of my friends could have said something like that to a PA resident by accident and caught the same case of foot-in-mouth disease. I love it. I’d totally have a beer with Sienna Miller. Anyway, onward:

Oh! You Pretty Things!

Don’t you know you’re driving the modest-budgeted brides insane? (Yes, I’m trying to invoke Bowie, and I’m pretty sure I’m failing.) Anyway, it really is torture that I can’t afford 90% of what follows in this post, but that’s life.

When doing a post about wedding gowns I love, It’s hard to know where to begin. Because, contrary to my acidic tone on this blog, I actually like a lot of stuff.  I mean, just look at Dorothy Dandridge up there in her Oscar de la Renta gown. I’ve pretty much spent my life wishing to have occasion (and funds) to wear such a dress. Unforch, my wedding is not such an occasion. But whatever. Let’s look at the pretty things after the jump.

(WARNING! This post is very long, b/c I felt like if I edited the images down any, I’d be cheating you guys. Who doesn’t love pretty dresses? Prepare to glut yourselves on the gorgeousness.)

Monsoon Wedding

I’m kind of obsessed with Indian weddings right now. Pretty much every episode of Whose Wedding is it Anyway? so far this season has been an Indian wedding, which just adds to my fervor over these gorgeous, colorful events. Also, I know I’m really, really behind the times on this one- it came out in 2001 but I saw a fabulous film about Punjabi weddings a few weeks ago. Monsoon Wedding follows a modern Delhi family in the days leading up to a traditional marriage celebration.

If you haven’t seen this one, I highly recommend it. I could talk your ear off about how much I love this movie, but I’ll spare you b/c the film pretty much speaks for itself once you’ve seen it. Video teasers after the jump!

Pretty: Ur Doin It Wrong

I honestly find it shocking how often people need to be told what looks good and what doesn’t. I’m talking, of course, about the most alarming trend in the bridal world this side of baby’s breath: the Used Kleenex Dress.

Loves Me Not

That was pirate-speak, did you get it? Hoh-hoh! Have you noticed? The news is very gay lately. I don’t understand how the AFA can even stand it!

First, put on your bullshit goggles, because this is kind of priceless:

My White Whale: Call Me Ishmael, Yo.

  Ask any bride what she went through in order to find her dress, and the answer you’ll never hear is, “I walked into a store. I saw a dress. I liked it. I bought it.” Ohhh noooo. That is not the way of it. The buying of the Dress of Your Life is never such a simple, pedestrian affair. Nay, the arrangement of one dressmaker making, one store selling, and one consumer consuming belies the epic, Melvillian odyssey that is the quest for the One. The stalking and procuring of the garment encompasses every plot conflict in the literary world: Man vs. Man (have you ever been to a bridal shop? Claws at the ready, people), Man vs. Nature (while dress hunting, it’s as if the whole world- the flora and fauna, the atmosphere, the very firmament of heaven all conspire against you), and -most assuredly, Man Vs. Himself. Or, as Disney chose to put it:

Please to be getting your sea legs on, for after the jump, we board the Good Ship Nuptualus and decend into a madness as deep as the fathoms of the Sea.

It’s All About the Benjamins, Baby

Now tell me:

What y’all wanna do? Wanna be ballers? Shot-callers? Brawlers?
Who be dippin’ in the Benz with the spoilers?

(Look, I know that ‘Benjamins’ Is a Puff Daddy song, but I couldn’t find any good 90s-nostalgia-trip pics of Puffy. But mostly, I just really love this pic if Fiddy, and I’d be loath to do a post about money and *not* use this spectacular image. Please take a moment to really observe the look on this man’s face. He’s got a fistfulof dollars and is trying to look hard, but he’s just not pulling it off. I haven’t seen a more benign visage since Alan Thicke as the patriarch of the Seaver clan on Growing Pains. Really, it looks like Fiddy is giving his son a scolding. “Now boy, I may have a panty on my head, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to listen to what I say.” )

The average American wedding costs $25,000. Think about that for a second. My entire college career cost, like, 10 thousand less than that. Over the course of five years (shut up, OK?), whereas the average couple blows all that cash on ONE DAY. It’s kind of a mindfuck, isn’t it?

And then think, pop culture offers up shows like Rich Bride, Poor Bride, Platinum Weddings, and My Big, Fat Fabulous Wedding as a kind of consumer porn spending-orgy. Uh, needless to say, I’ve seen pretty much every episode of these shows. Yeeeeeah. I like to think these shows keep me grounded and stop me from spending insane sums on bullshit like hologram-monograms and cinematic lighting concepts. But the fact remains, until today, I had no idea how much I was actually spending on this wedding…

Back-Alley Bride

(This is the first post by TheNot guest-writer Skinny Bones Jones!!)

Recently, the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on gay marriage, and in a few short weeks gay and lesbian couples all over the US can lawfully wed one another in our beautiful golden state. A few weeks after that, we will see whether or not the conservative Christian right has collected enough signatures on petitions which would introduce an initiative on November’s ballot that could, once again, rip the foundation of equality from under us, like so many SF weddings undone in 2004.

In celebration, hope and as a testament to my amazing loverbird and our unprecedented love, I’ve written a funny little story about the time she proposed to me three years ago.

The Bridal Blogosphere Hive-Mind

 Sonofabitch. The internet is a small fucking world. So, earlier this week one of my fave commenters on Jezebel, Jessicalovejoy, posts a pic of the Hostess/Twinkie/Lil’ Debbie wedding cake in the comments 5 minutes after I published the CoD: Insanity Interlude post. And now, since yesterday when I posted the wedding theme post, I’m seeing my theme ideas freaking everywhere.

 

One of my favorite touches from my Blush and Bashful post was the floral arrangements in tea tins thing from an old copy of Martha Stewart Weddings:

“My Colors are Blush and Bashful.”

 

“Her colors are pink and pink.” (Fucking, seriously? There are no pics of the Steel Magnolias wedding online? Fuck you, internet! I’m’a put up a hot Vespa wedding instead. Get yer shit together, man.)

   Sooooo, due to my name-dropping my wedding theme in Cake or Death II, I’m sure a lot of you are going, “Her wedding theme is what now?” or “What the hell gave her that idea?” I know, it’s a little bit… esoteric. My wedding theme is Mid-Century Chinoiserie. I really don’t want to have to explain what Chinoiserie is, so here’s the wiki. Just trust that this style of decorating is currently experiencing a revival. You know those little birds that folks are painting or screenprinting or designing onto just about everything these days? Yeah. The combination of birds, branches, and blooms are Chinoiserie themes.

   Anyway, I could say that I chose this idea because Chinoiserie style reflects my heritage in that it’s sort of pan-European, with an emphasis on the French, and the oriental traits represent Mr. Panda. But that wouldn’t be entirely true, and it would call to mind some of the icky colonialist undertones involved with historical culture cross-pollenation. We can all agree that it’s just pretty, right? But that’s not the whole of it, either. This style has been around since the 17th century, but it was particularly popular in America in the 50s and 60s. Which brings me to the actual source of my inspiration: