What Is Important at a Wedding?

This is wedding season, and there's so much advertising directed at people to spend money on their party. I usually hate other people's weddings (sorry for being an apathetic guest), and try to duck out of the reception as soon as it's considered not rude to leave.

Yes, that cake is on the floor.
Opera Catering Service in Kuwait, by Chef Omar Addihaoui

I've come to realize most of my resentment comes from the show of too much. A wedding can be a time and money sink, depending on the couple.  At the end of the day, the little bubbles favors in the shapes of cakes, the cake with a live trapezist, awkward toasts, the rituals, the rentals, and the showers... it's just too much. There's nothing inherently interesting or beautiful about any of that. However, times have changed, and the only thing keeping up are the companies trying to sell you M&Ms with your engagement pictures printed on them.

No M&Ms?! Photo credit: weddingdjpros.com

My wedding is almost a month away, and I've managed to keep my budget of $5000 fairly well, although there were some radical changes in the last six months. Keep in mind that this wedding is family only, and I invited 24 people - Less than 20 have committed, including us.

I won't list all of my expenses, but the top five that made up the bulk of the budget:
Food: $700 I'm getting Tommy Bahamas to cater with heavy appetizers since the event is 6 pm - midnight. I could have probably gone cheaper, but I know the food will taste better than the meat-like balls I've tried at some other places.

Photo credit: mcpeepants.com

Hotel: $800 Since the event is small and out of town for almost everyone, I'm covering one night of the stay for everyone. I figured this would be a better than favors, spa packages, etc.
Dress: $295 I got something online, and it fits perfectly. Plus it's more beautiful than anything I've seen in the stores around here. The only catch was that I didn't do my internet store research - the website is no longer available, so I assume neither is the company.

Everything else was relatively inexpensive to obtain. The venue, which is a cabana right on the beach front, was $40 for the day. A 9" round, butter cream frosting marble cake was $70. I expect beer and wine and decorations to be about $200 each. Accessories and salon trips will be less than $100.

How in the world did I do this?? I figured out the top three things that are worth buying for a wedding.  I wanted a dress, a cake, and the family. Everything else could be reused from somewhere, DIY, or ignored completely. We decided that since this is a night event, lighting would be more important than flowers for example. I ignored these other things:

• Cake topper - Seriously? $30 for a bling monogram? Great scam.
• Tuxedos - We are going to be at the beach - self explanatory.
• Photographer - although I might get a bridal portrait after I come back from the honeymoon. This is one of the most expensive items you can get for your wedding. I will also say that some of the photographers are quite the rip off because they take below average pictures. Good for them for successfully marketing their crappy skills.
• Redoing my invitations after the initial venue bumped me. 
• The "wedding" part. I am technically already married, as we signed the papers at the courthouse back in February. It doesn't change anything except referring to Jason as "my husband," and now we're wearing rings. I might change my name after coming back from Europe... No rush.
• A bridal party for the wedding. I have my sister helping me out, so she's technically my matron of honor.
• Bridal shower party. 
• A registry. People are very confused by this, but we don't need anything. 

After a heck of a lot of research, I've seen a lot of different wedding types. Having a good time is independent of how much money is spent during that time. Jason warned me not to be so cheap that I would end up wanting a second wedding to make up for lack of the first. The result is usually these types of weddings, hence the dress and the cake requirement (because sometimes the dress isn't enough as you can clearly see).

No one touches Wonder Woman's man. Photo credit: widbox.com

Scam-Wow!

Growing up, I had a severe aversion to being taken advantage of - I'm not sure where this came from except that I was extremely nice and there were people who were not nice. These days I'm wiser, and am glad to spot a scam so I don't get in a shituation. The most blatant scams would be emails from South Africa asking to wire money, publishing clearing houses, and vans with Free Candy on the side.

Photo credit: punditonline.wordpress.com

There is a subtler level of scams though, and these are most interesting, because they are disguised as legit transactions. Of course, I define a scam as someone paying significantly more for something thats not worth the money. Here we go:

Latex balloons. I was going to send balloons instead of Get Well flowers because I wasn't sure about the recipient's allergies. Also, conceivably balloons would be cheaper than flowers - since that's how it is in the store. Both convey the same message, and I wouldn't have to commit to something like $60 worth of mums. Online, I found a pack of six balloons (3 mylar and 3 latex) for $60. What's more is that the site listed how long the balloons would last. I consider latex balloons filled with helium that lasts less than 10 hours (that costs $10/each) to be a real scam. Needless to say, flowers were sent, as it takes work to plant and grow flowers.

Designer sandals. Designer anything has a markup, but sandals take the cake because of lack of materials and coverage. There's also no guarantee that they'll feel good, and shoes especially need to be comfortable.

Pizza. Just how much does it take to pair dough with cheap tomato sauce? Don't get me wrong, it tastes delicious, no matter how fake the ingredients are. For some reason, college pizza places can sell their pizza for $5 a pie, so besides the extra helping of grease that requires two rounds with the toothbrush, what is the difference?

Photo credit: ehow.co.uk

Anything "wedding". Even things like white prom dresses are more expensive than other colors. Jerks.

The local wine tasting event. If you like wine tasting, then the annual event at Bull Run in Chantilly has something like 100 vendors. They sell things like wine-glass lanyards, in case you can't be bothered to hold your own glass. The local wine event however, has less than 10 vendors, which means you have to walk the length of a parking lot (in the sun) to get to the next vendor. There are no frivolities like free cracker samples, much less necklaces that house your alcoholic beverage. In summary, I think the event was cheap, but there was not enough samples to justify the price.

Finally, plain popped popcorn. There was a time frame when we received a giant tub of popcorn for the holidays. Out of the three types, the caramel and the cheese were gone in a matter of days. The regular popcorn? Well it just doesn't make sense to eat cold popcorn when you can whip up a fresh batch in less than five minutes. And the fresh popcorn smell permeates so much better! The verdict? Don't waste your calories.

Photo credit: anutinanutshell.com

So what's the worst scam? I know if the recession really takes hold then I'll go into balloons myself...

Skin Deep

Last November I got a pimple. My fight with acne has been pretty intense since I started graduate school, and the zits seemed to have doubled their efforts with my double class load.  Anyway, with two classes, I can fight the good fight with Neutrogena's Anti-Wrinkle, Anti-Blemish cream.

But then one whitehead turned into another... and another... and soon my skin was unable to heal from the first bout. By December, I was looking up how to properly extract pimples without scarring and trying to find a dermatologist - note that I wasn't looking for anyone decent - just A Single Dermo.  Fredericksburg has this strange lack of dermatologists. The receptionist said she could book me in mid-February. That's right, 2.5 months of hydra zits (where two pop up where the one used to be) before any relief.

Photo credit: Quarterplay.blogspot.com

When things bother me, I do the one thing someone with a technical background does: research.  The makeup blog I like featured the Dermalogica buffer, plus plenty of nonparaben lotions and washes without sodium lauryl sulfate.  I also found a site that indicated that diet was really 80% of clear skin. Over the next week, Amazon got approximately $50 from me in products, and I started a health kick of no bread, refined sugars, alcohol, and popcorn.  From someone who likes malbec and drinks black coffee, a green smoothie is not for the squeamish.  I added ginger, apples, romaine lettuce, and water to a blender in hopes of undermining this zit factory called my face.  I got a humidifier to counteract the Sahara dryness of the heater. I took fish oil supplements because that would help my skin retain more moisture in theory.

By January, my chin was somewhere between Freddy Krueger and Two Face with the bottom half being the worst.  February was just too far away, so I made an appointment in Fairfax with a dermo I researched online. When I got to the waiting room, all of the receptionists had immaculate skin, which was a good sign.

The doctor said, "I can see your pores are clogged."  Validation!! I was sure that my skin was just doing non-skin things like freaking out on me, which in turn freaked me out.  She gave me some meds and I went home and had a peanut butter sandwich with a beer. It was the most divine combination of foodstuffs you could get. The fact that I was "living a little" lowered my stress, and I could see a few pimples riding off into the sunset, as it were.

I will say that the humidifier and some of the products I got were not wasteful, however, I laughed when the doc gave me Cetaphil products, which contain parabens and sodium lauryl sulfate.  Looking back on it, eating more veggies was a good thing, but it only counted for about 5% of skin awesomeness.  I couldn't believe I was taking skin advice from a makeup blog. She can just hide it better, right?

So what was the issue? Most likely, taking two classes with a full time job while planning a wedding. Before this dermo appointment, I hadn't strung together all of those activities in my mind. Also, using olive oil on your face is NOT a good idea, despite what any blog tells you.

Ah! The Old Days, Not.

Here is an article I wrote on January 15, 2008 - almost three years ago, to the day!

Here Comes the Bride

Photo credit: Tina Fey and Steve Carrel in Date Night, courtesy of houstonpress.com

I was discussing marriage with my girlfriend the other week, and was wondering she wanted to really be engaged.

No one has really given me a good reason why I should get married, except to have kids. I did a little research with from other girls my age, and here are some reasons why they want/wanted to get married:

• It's a status symbol. I don't quite understand this, but there was a comment thrown around about how “girlfriend sounds so high school.” Mind you, this isn't from someone who is married, but I never thought about the connotation of the title “girlfriend” as being so negative. There is also the classic “Look at the ring he gave me!” crap that is so stereotypical 80s it makes me want to puke.
• “I want to move in with him.” I'm not sure how getting a ring will allow you to move in with a guy. Most girls I know lived with the guy before they married him – usually because it is too damn expensive to live around here in the first place. I suppose it's kind of like a driver's license, which allows you to drive a vehicle, but you can clearly drive the car if you don't have one. It surprises me that it's 2008 and some people have such a conservative point of view still. Personally, I am an adult and can live where (and with whom) I want, but I feel twinges whenever I think about telling mom that I want to live with Stew (we're not married if you can tell).
• Loneliness.
• Probably the biggest reason that people (women especially) want to get engaged/married is so they can establish themselves as separate from their parents. I think this reason ties into the first couple that I mentioned. As a status symbol, a married woman seems older and more mature. As people are living with their parents until they are 25 these days, women might see it as a way out of that situation by getting married. I also think that women might not want to come home for all of the holidays and use in-laws as an excuse for only seeing their parents once a year.

The second to last reason really bothers me, because although parents can be overbearing or heartless, this isn't a good reason to get married. MARRIAGE IS NOT ESCAPE. I never thought bringing someone else into a complicated situation would make it better.

Then there is this article from Psychology Today that states that getting married doesn't make you happier. I would argue that for a while it makes you more unhappy. There is a lot of expectation for a wedding to be a huge party (with a huge price tag), which also includes a huge amount of planning. No thank you, I have a social life.

Anyway, I will be waiting for a while.

--------------------------

A while = more than six years. I shouldn't get cocky though. 

May 2011.

-L

Engagement BS

So there will probably be more on this, but weddings and their respective BS was a bigger part of this three-day weekend (or four-day work week, whichever you prefer) than planned. I figured I could get engagement pictures AND invitations done this weekend without too much drama. 

First, while the pictures came out wonderfully, it was a serious time sink of approximately seven hours. I didn't have to eat at TWO sit-down establishments, but steaks are warranted after starving in the 40 degree weather. I felt like a model, who maybe smiled more and not as many changes of clothes. Based on the last 15 times I've had my picture snapshot taken, I calculated professional picture-taking to only last about five minutes. I would have still earned some steaks and returned to looking at and judging others' photography online.

I mentioned I ate at two restaurants. The first was a delicious sushi-steak place with background euro-trance music. Those kinds of places are the best to eat during the day when there's no one to fight for the waiter's short attention span. You'd think a short attention span would be fantastic in the food industry, but I think I'm confusing attention and apathy.

Anyway, I'll continue with the invitations tomorrow.

-L

"Are you a hypnotist?"