Secret Dress Language

I’m visiting with family for my soon-to-be-cousin-in-law’s bridal shower. [Have I ever mentioned that I freakin’ love my family?  It is true.]

While wrapping presents, my aunt and I got to talking about how hard it can be to find a dress to wear to a wedding.  The rules we follow¹ are:

1. No black. (Not a funeral)

2. No white. (You are not the bride)

3. Don’t match or clash with the bridesmaids (this can be tricky for weddings of people you don’t know as well, but it helps to wear a dress that can’t be mistaken as a bridesmaid dress).

4. Nothing too revealing.

And then item 5 brought about a controversy.  My aunt said, “no fire engine red.”  I said, “Oh crap. I wore red to Karrie’s (cousin) wedding, orange to Jamie’s (cousin) wedding, and red again to Matt and Carrie’s (finlaws) wedding.”

My aunt Chris, having been to two out of three and having seen pictures from the third, said, “All those dresses were fine. It’s a particular shade of bright red that I think belongs in a club, not at a wedding.”

Then I remembered that at Matt and Carrie’s wedding, someone told me that wearing a red dress signifies having slept with the groom.  Has anyone else heard of that?²

Anyway, the fact that Chris follows a no-red rule, and I do not, makes me worry that I’m too old-fashioned in sticking to ruling out black dresses for weddings.  I just can’t get over the feeling that black dresses are funereal; not fitting with the celebration and joy of weddings. 

This is not to say you can’t celebrate in a black dress, look at New Year’s Eve.  But you know what else you are doing on New Year’s? Marking the end of another year gone.  Singing “Auld Lang Syne,” which is an effing depressing song.  Staring into the face of mortality, now that Dick Clark is finally aging. Black fits NYE.  It doesn’t fit weddings.

Anyone else in my anti-black boat?  Or do I need to hip to the new world order?

¹Note I said “we follow.” I am not saying you are a bad person if you’ve violated any of these rules.
²To answer the begged question… MIND YOUR OWN BIZ MARKIE.

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July, She Will Fly

Last weekend we found out that the date we’d put on hold at our venue doesn’t work for Collin’s brother and sister-in-law (they are both in their residencies and need more notice to secure time off).   We need to get married no earlier than July 1, 2011.  This made me cry like a kid whose ice cream scoop just fell on the dirt, mainly because I kept thinking, “I thought I was going to be married in a year, and I’m not.”

And I worried about my elderly and sick relatives dying in the interim, because I worry more than is healthy about that sort of thing.  Then I realized that even if we got married next weekend I couldn’t control for that, which made me cry more, but still helped me move on.

And I worried that our venue wouldn’t have any availability in July, but right now every Saturday is open.  Which is a huge relief and I think has closed the book on me mourning a May wedding.

Now I have to think about the bright side of being married in July.  Which includes thinking about the bad things about our old date that now are irrelevant.

• I don’t have to worry about “rueing the day.”  Although I just looked it up and the same poem implies marrying in July will make us poor.  Stupid poem!
• The day after our old date was Mother’s Day, so we won’t inconvenience people who want to spend that weekend with their moms.
• The weather really sucked this last May.  July is sunnier, right?  [If you are a meteorologist and want to tell me I am wrong, thank you, but I’d rather stay ignorant about this for now.]  And there’s also the fact that it is pretty uniformly hot in July, and my friends, while I love them very much, are a bunch of whiners when it comes to heat.  Maybe weather isn’t an awesome selling point.
• I don’t have to worry about combination birthday and anniversary gifts from Collin. I never did worry about that, but, well, I need bullets here, people.
• I have more time to plan the wedding and work on converting, which also means I can focus more on the Bar Exam now.

We still have to pick which weekend in July.  First, I will learn from my old mistake, and do my due diligence to find out which dates don’t work for all essential parties (except for maybe my sister and brother-in-law, who are running around in Spain… but they are programmers, not doctors, and can probably show up for any weekend I demand).

July 2nd is part of a three-day weekend.  Some people think getting married on a holiday weekend is terribly rude because you’re monopolizing your guests’ holiday/imposing greater travel costs, other people think it is awesome because the extra day off adds convenience for your traveling guests.  I don’t think I need to worry too much about which side of this debate is correct because  July 3rd if one of my best friend’s birthdays, and another best friend throws a huge party every July 4, and I don’t really want to pile my wedding on top of those events.

July 9th has a sort of cute date: 07.09.11.  It is two days before another friend’s birthday, but I think that is a little less problematic because she won’t have to worry about being hungover from our open bar on her birthday.  The only disadvantage I can think of now is that proximity to the Fourth of July might make guests grumpy about traveling, or make me miss one of my favorite holidays due to a panicked haze of “OMG I’m getting married in six days.”

July 16th is the day after a full moon, which could result in a fantastic photograph.  But the wedding is inside so this isn’t that significant.

This is hard.  When we were planning a May wedding, we came to the date by process of elimination: avoiding friends’ birthdays and Collin’s parents’ unavailability left me with one date exactly, my birthday, which I thought was awesome.  Now I feel like I am making an epic decision with no helpful guidelines.

I’m so glad I won’t have to pick the specific dates my kids are born.

Disturbing Trend

I realize it takes three events to establish a pattern, but it only takes two to make me nervous.

Back during the pre-engagement, Collin ordered a set of plastic sizing rings to figure out my ring size.  They ended up stuck at the post office with insufficient postage, and we had to trudge over in the snow and hand over some pocket change to get them.

Now our venue contract got sent short 17 cents postage, and is being held hostage at the post office.  Should I be holding this against the venue as an unacceptable breach of professionalism?  (I don’t want to!)

One thing is for damn sure: I will be triple double super checking the postage on all our invite-related mail.

Faster, Pussycat! Marry! Marry!

Apparently, September is the new June: the month everyone wants to get married.  Which means less flexibility in contracts, less availability of vendors, more guests having to choose between attending our wedding and another.  So we’re re-targeting our date from Fall 2011 to Spring 2011.

Collin is all about getting married sooner.  He’d probably be totally cool with getting married next month if we could swing it.

I think I’m less likely to get completely sick of weddings if we cut the engagement down by four months.

There’s also the fact that my birthday, May 7, is on a Saturday in 2011.  Is it totally lame that I think it would be AWESOME to get married on my birthday?  [And for anyone concerned about me getting a combination birthday/anniversary present for the rest of my life, I assure you that Collin will probably only buy me a gift once every ten years or so anyway, and I’ve already accepted that about him.]

My biggest reservation about the switch is based in superstition.  I am embarrassed to admit it, but for a reasonable, logical woman I am really quite superstitious.  Collin, a scientist, finds this even more pathetic than I do.  But I read that May is unlucky for weddings: “Marry in May and you’ll live to rue the day.”

I know it is lame, and the “reasons” for the superstition given on the website I linked to all sound lame to me, but I will still think about that rhyme a lot if we choose a May wedding date.

Well, there’s always April!