My new internet obsession

For a while there, every time I turned on my computer, I couldn't resist looking at wedding gowns. Now that I've put down my hefty deposit on my gorgeous La Sposa, however, I've quit gown-surfing cold turkey. Instead, I have a new obsession: invitations.

I'm kind of a stationery addict. I absolutely adore Crane's, that grand old stationery store (I always hit up their sales for lovely thank-you cards), and when I was a kid I requested personalized stationery for Christmas or my birthday several times. I didn't have anyone to write to, but that wasn't the point. Eventually I printed my own on our crummy Canon inkjet, but it wasn't the same.

Now, finally, here's my chance to have my own gorgeous personalized bits of paper! I quickly informed Econo Boy that the invitations, like the gown, would be my domain. (He wanted to buy plain ecru cards and print them on our crummy HP inkjet. "It will convey the same information," he said. Econo Boy is always ruining my fun by being concerned with things like logic and functionality.) But a visit to Crane and Company killed my dream of ordering my invites there -- over $1000 for just invitations and RSVP cards, folks. Much as I love stationery I just couldn't justify spending that kind of money on an item that (let's be honest) will almost certainly end up being thrown away by most of my guests.

So I'm looking for something with a vintage vibe, preferably with a subtle floral design. I'd like to spend $4 or so a set (a set being an invitation, an RSVP card, and all necessary envelopes). And I'd like the color theme to be blue. So far, here are my candidates!

Two Econo Boy-approved favorites are from the amazing Wedding Paper Divas:
I also love the invitations at The White Aisle, including this one (which can be ordered in blue).


Finally, a Weddingbee reader alerted us to Glidewell Press, a printing company that does affordable letterpress invitations. (Letterpress is a printing technique that presses the ink into the cards for a very cool, old-fashioned look. Gorgeous but normally quite expensive. The rest of the invitations I've posted here are flat printing.) I'm a big fan of this design:


But I could probably only afford to have it done in the single-color option -- would this look OK if I did it in all navy or all sky blue?

Tell me which one's your favorite and why!

Sale of a favorite blog

One of my favorite wedding blogs, Weddingbee, is now absent from my blog list. The founder has sold the site to eHarmony.

That kind of bugs me, and I'm not the only one. A major reason many Weddingbee readers are uncomfortable with the new ownership is that eHarmony does not match same-sex couples – only heterosexual couples. That in itself is not so upsetting to me. My capitalist little heart says it’s a totally legit business strategy to go after one particular market (in this case, straight couples looking for long-term relationships), and I wouldn’t get mad about a dating site that catered only to same-sex couples.

What does bother the heck out of me is that eHarmony founder Dr. Neil Clark Warren has very close ties to Focus on the Family, to the extent that eHarmony once billed itself as “founded by Neil Clark Warren, author of Focus on the Family’s relationship books." As recently as 2005, eHarmony sent Focus on the Family-published literature to its new members. Also, there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence from the interwebs to suggest that eHarmony has been resistant to suggesting interracial matches, even when members indicated that they preferred dating people of other races.

Yikes. I won’t get in to my reasons for not liking FoF here – they’re pretty much what you might guess. (Short version: I’m a Methodist and I resent FoF founder James Dobson for giving a bad name to Christians, not to mention the state of Colorado.) What’s important is that I don’t really want to help generate revenue for a company that seems so buddy-buddy with an organization that stands against what I see as simple justice and equality. The whole "not matching same-sex couples" thing took on a new light when I read about the FoF connection.

Many of my favorite bloggers have chosen to stay, and I find their arguments for staying pretty compelling – if everyone who supports marriage equality left Weddingbee, it would go from a vibrant, diverse community to a much less diverse (and much less interesting, IMHO), place. And eHarmony would be able to justify its policies by telling itself “well, we’re still making money even though all those folks left, guess they’re not that important.” Maybe, just maybe, having an eHarmony-funded blog where gay and lesbian couples are celebrated would begin to change the company’s attitude. At the very least, it would be cool to see eHarmony’s money used to support a site where beautiful photos of gay and lesbian weddings are pinned up for the world to see and admire.

But I am still on the fence about whether I’ll be reading Weddingbee regularly from now on. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the blog, I love the bloggers, and I love the boards where brides can get help and advice from others who are in the middle of this stressful planning process. And if some of my favorite bloggers will continue to post about marriage equality and show off gorgeous photos of gay weddings, I want to support them. But I don’t know if I can live with the thought of Neil Clark Warren making money off my web surfing addiction, even though I know that my clicks generate only about 1/100 of a penny in ad revenue for the site. And had I been one of those bloggers, I really don’t think I could have agreed to volunteer my time to make money for eHarmony and its founder (the Bees aren’t paid as far as I know).

So I’m undecided about my future as a Weddingbee reader. I've removed Weddingbee from my blog roll and instead added the personal blogs of some of my favorite Bees. But mostly I’m just bummed that such a cool site was bought by such a sketchy organization.

This post was edited to remove earlier factual errors.

Yes, I'm engaged. No, I am not a lunatic.

I've noticed a funny phenomenon since becoming engaged: some people assume I'm a nut.

By "people," I mostly mean vendors. I've noticed that when I call to check up on something wedding-related (e.g. the venue contract that was five, count 'em, five weeks late), I get a little chuckle and an assurance that everything's fine, delivered in a soothing voice, as though the vendor is talking to a stroke victim.

By contrast, if Econo Boy calls, the reaction is "I'll take care of that right away."

I am beginning to suspect that by virtue of being a) engaged and b) female, I am being put into the dreaded "Bridezilla" box. If I call to ask a question, or express a concern, I *must* be overreacting or worrying my pretty little Bridezilla head. I am engaged and female, and therefore not to be taken seriously. Econo Boy, however, is gifted with masculine rationality and perspective, so if he thinks something's amiss and calls to check up, it must be a real issue (as opposed to one of my silly girl issues).

I thought of this today as I was reading a Weddingbee post by a recently married blogger: When Bad Things Happen. The blogger, who goes by the pseudonym "Mrs. Cream Puff," hired two day-of coordinators to set up the ceremony area, organize the hired trolley from the ceremony to the reception, and manage the reception so that things ran smoothly. Well, the coordinators messed up the ceremony setup that they'd been given weeks in advance. The trolleys got most of the guests (and the bride and groom) to the reception after the cocktail hour due to poor organization. And during the reception, the coordinators decided to hit the bar.

Now, these sound like pretty legitimate complaints to me. The bride and groom hired these people to perform certain services. They either didn't perform those services or did them badly. And since it was part of her wedding, and she's a wedding blogger, the bride blogged about it (without ever mentioning the names of her coordinators, I should add) -- and a couple of commenters called her "anal" or said she was overreacting and whining.

I can't help thinking those comments were a result of the same mentality that any woman who is getting married is by definition a high-maintenance bitch, and that therefore her complaints aren't valid. And frankly it's a sexist attitude and it bugs the shit out of me. Yes, there are some of the legendary "Bridezillas" out there, but I doubt there are enough of them to justify this blanket assumption that any woman planning her wedding is automatically a lunatic.

I am now making a pledge to myself: I will not give money to anyone who treats me as though I must, as an engaged female, be missing 75 IQ points and any sense of perspective.

The "Anti-Wedding"?

I just read a very interesting article in the Washington Post about two friends' attempts to plan the "anti-wedding." You can read it here: The Anti-Wedding.

In a nutshell, Caitlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel, two frequent bridesmaids who were fed up with the insanity of the typical modern wedding, decided to offer their services to plan an "anti-wedding," one that would buck all of the conventions of the Big Bad Wedding Industrial Complex. They solicited submissions from couples willing to let them plan their wedding, and ended up organizing an event where their clients/guinea pigs were married on public property while the guests protested against the Big Bad Wedding Industrial Complex.

The article shone an interesting light on the assumptions our society holds about “weddings” – for one thing, it’s kind of disturbing to know that the Washington DC city government considers a wedding more disruptive than a protest!

But ultimately, I think Gibson & Manteuffel’s attempt to plan an “anti-wedding” was a resounding failure. A wedding ceremony held during a protest against the wedding industry is definitely unusual. But Gibson and Manteuffel's “anti-wedding” seems just as much shaped by the Big Bad Wedding-Industrial Complex (BBWIC) as the mega-celebrations featured in Martha Stewart Weddings. Their version of the “anti-wedding” seems to consist of saying “no” to anything that even hints at the BBWIC. You think it would be fun to get married in a botanical garden? Nope, sorry. Flowers are part of the BBWIC. Oh, you want to send out invitations so people know the time and place? But that’s so BBWIC! Let’s make them do a lengthy scavenger hunt in the rain instead! Frankly I’m surprised they let their bride purchase any kind of new dress at all (a new dress being part of the BBWIC) – from the tone of the article I half expected them to have both bride and groom say their vows while wearing old, stretched-out swimsuits and/or garbage bags.

In my opinion, if you’re structuring your entire wedding around saying “no” to what the latest issue of Modern Bride suggests, you are just as controlled by the BBWIC as the bride who thinks she has to copy those suggestions to the letter. Either way you’re letting other people define what you will and will not do instead of just going with the things that matter to you, whether or not they’re typical.

Furthermore, the Gibson & Manteuffel “anti-wedding” seems to have involved just as much stress, frustration, and detailed planning as a smallish “traditional” wedding in someone’s backyard. They investigated multiple "anti-wedding" locations only to be told that they needed permits or that weddings were forbidden on that particular property. To be honest, it sounds like they spent way more time finding a place to have their anti-wedding than Econo Boy and I did finding our venue! How is arguing with half a dozen city officials supposed to free us from wedding-planning madness?

I think a much more interesting, fun, and moving anti-wedding is this one that Manolo for the Brides blogged about last week: "It's a Nice Day for a Wet Wedding?" An Oregon couple said their vows underwater while scuba-diving. They planned the whole thing in 5 days. It centered around a favorite shared activity. It was small, intimate, free-spirited, and probably just what the couple wanted. Now that is an anti-wedding! (Even if the bride wore a veil.)

Shopping for other people is hard

Now that I have my dress, I can start on the next wedding day clothes project: bridesmaid's dresses! (You might say the next project is what the groom wears, but that's his department!) I want them to be navy (I have visions of brightly colored bouquets standing out against the navy dresses), and I want them to be roughly the same level of formality as my gown. Aside from that I'm not terribly picky.

And yet, the search for a nice bridesmaid's dress is proving even more puzzling than the search for my own gown. I would love to find a line of dresses where each bridesmaid can choose a different neckline, but this is trickier than I thought. For example, I went to a bridesmaids' salon in Denver and loved Amsale's line of tissue taffeta gowns -- they are elegant and modern, and come in a gorgeous navy blue.



I'm strongly considering telling my bridesmaids to just pick any Amsale tissue taffeta gown they like. But one of my 'maids is well-endowed and has never found a comfortable strapless bra. Although she has promised to resume the search for a strapless bra should I choose a dress that needs one, I'd really prefer to find a gown that gives her the option of wearing a normal bra. And unfortunately, the only Amsale that has actual straps is this bubble-hemmed monstrosity:


I tried this dress on. In mango (think shiny pinky-orange). It was, without question, the ugliest garment I have ever worn. It made me look like I was wearing a pink potato sack over the world's most enormous butt. AND there was a giant bow in the back. No! Bad designer! Bad!

Another potential option seems to be Aria Bridesmaids, which lets the bride choose the fabric and length but lets each bridesmaid choose the neckline and silhouette she likes best. That's great for my bridesmaid who'd like to wear a good supportive bra -- she loves boatneck dresses like this one.


They also come in a great midnight (aka navy) silk shantung. I've ordered a dress to try on (they have a try-on program, you pay $15 to have a dress shipped to you and you're responsible for shipping it back within a week), and I'm eager to see what I think in person.

The problem here: the dresses are GIGANTIC. According to their size chart, I'm a 0, which I find sort of amazing. My closet is filled with 4s, 6s, and the occasional 8 -- but no 0s. I have never been a 0 in my life. And that's their smallest size, and one of my bridesmaids is definitely smaller than I am. I don't want to saddle her with a gigantic alterations bill.

At the suggestion of pretty much everyone in the whole entire world, I also checked out the website for the wildly popular J Crew bridesmaids collection -- and let me tell you, I almost passed out from shock when I saw the prices. $350?! Holy crap! I tried on a Vera Wang that was $250! But I did like this silk V-neck number (which is fortunately "only" $195):


No neckline options here, though. Hmmm ...

I did it ... I bought a dress!

Phew! After a whole bunch of searching and back-and-forth, I did it: I picked a dress!

It came down to two gowns. One was the one I showed in my last post -- delicate, feminine, light as a feather. The other was one I found in New Jersey -- also lace, also sparkly, also a strapless A-line.


Are we seeing a pattern here? :-)

I had a hard time choosing between the two, mostly because they were so darn similar. But I ended up choosing the one in this post, for the following reasons:
1. It has more of a shape to it -- the fabric is a bit thicker and more luxurious, and it sucked me in and smoothed me down without making me feel like I was wearing a corset. The other gown was lightweight and I loved how the skirt swung around me, but it wasn't quite as flattering.
2. It has pearls in the embroidery. I ::heart:: pearls.
3. It has a shorter train -- I could have gotten the other gown with a sweep train, but the change would have cost me extra and likely put that gown out of my price range.

After all my back-and-forth on which dress I wanted, I thought I'd second-guess myself once I finally made a decision. But I haven't. I love this dress and I'm so thrilled to have chosen one at last!

Next post: my top choices for bridesmaids' dresses.

We'll start with the bad and move on to the good

This wedding planning stuff is seeming much more real every day -- and that's not always a good thing. Sure, it's tons of fun imagining myself in pretty gowns and picturing the flowers and the delicious food we'll serve. But when that gorgeous dress from the magazine makes you look stumpy and the coordinator from the venue you want won't call you back and you're suddenly worrying about how you'll afford all of this -- that's real, but also annoying.

Bad:
* We wildly underestimated catering costs, mostly because we didn't realize that caterers' listed meal prices did not include staff wages. Because of our venue, I'd really like to do a plated meal and not a buffet. Space will already be a bit tight, and devoting space to a buffet would make it even tighter -- and regardless, we'd only have room for one buffet table, which every caterer has said is not enough for 150 guests.

But bringing the dinners to the guests means more staff, which means more money. And Econo Boy, who insisted on the most expensive day of the week (Saturday) and the most expensive time (evening) and the most expensive season (summer), is now insisting that we should go with the cheaper option, guest comfort be darned. He says the buffet would be "fine" and that people won't mind waiting over an hour to get through the line. (Personally, I would mind. Would I get mad and hate the hosts forever? No. But I'd be hungry and bored.)

* Another budget issue: photography. I would really have loved to get a custom-designed album from our photographer, but at $1000 that's just not possible. So we're going to design our own ... which I guess is fine, but wow, you should have seen these professional albums. So pretty.

* Dress shopping was fun, but picking a dress has turned out to be harder than I thought. The "OMG this dress is PERFECT" moment doesn't happen for everyone, I know, and since I'm not the kind of bride who's dreamed about her dress since childhood, I pretty much had no idea what I wanted going in. All I knew is that I didn't want to be another bride in a strapless a-line gown.

And now, my front-runner dress is ... a strapless a-line gown.

Granted, it's not entirely plain. It's a lace gown, with a pleated blush sash and buttons down the back. I feel lovely in it, and it's so light and comfortable. But I don't entirely trust my own fashion sense and I'm worried I will look boring and frumpy as yet another strapless a-line bride, especially one with very little boobage to speak of.


Note: The gown I have on in this picture is all blush, but I would order it in ivory with a blush sash, which I think will make it a bit brighter and more interesting. Also, my gown would be custom-ordered and fitted, which is to say not held together by giant orange clips in the back (check out the mirror).

Good:
* Our venue, a lovely historic mansion in Denver, is now booked -- July 25, 2009!! We're just waiting for the site contract before it becomes truly official. I know it doesn't look like much up against all of the frustrations I just listed, but having a date makes everything seem so much more concrete. Also, even though we couldn't afford an album, I really like our photographer and I think he'll do a great job.

* I have taken advantage of Apple's current "free iPod with new Mac" promo and purchased a new iMac desktop, with a free iPod touch. No, this is not wedding-related, but I think it will be much comfier writing my dissertation on a desktop instead of hunched over a laptop screen. Also, the iPod touch? So awesome. Not quite iPhone awesome, but still pretty dang cool.