Pocket Sized Pastor*

Bird Cage Veil

Bird Cage Veils are huge right now. It seems that every DIY Wedding blog right now loves talking about Bird Cage Veils and the “vintage” look for weddings. I don’t know if DIY means your wedding has to look vintage or if brides who are into the DIY social economic spectrum just love the vintage look. My fiancee bought one in Florida at an antiques store for $10 (she bought another, larger, non-bird cage veil for our wedding which she received last week and she wears around her apartment). When she brought it home to show her family, her grandparents told her that those veils were worn by women a half a century ago when they were attending bible studies and they wanted a fashionable way to have their “hair covered” (according to St Paul). I don’t think the current trend of women wanting these veils have that same reasoning in mind.

Bridal Spring 2010

Project Rungay does Spring 2010 bridal fashions and sleeves might be in next year. This is me hoping that’s true. And why, as a guy, am I fixated on bridal dresses? Did you not realize that 95% of all ads for wedding stuff are just about dresses? Dresses and weddings are one and the same. You can’t look at weddings and not get smacked upside the head with a dress. It’s the rolled up newspaper of the Wedding Industry and I’m the dog who jumped on the couch with muddy feet.

E-vites for Men

E-vites for men. I’ve said it once and I will say it 1000 times; when it comes to weddings, social gatherings, and anything that consists of taste and culture, we men tend to sell ourselves short. In fact, we encourage ourselves to sell ourselves short. When being well dressed is a crime against manliness, there’s something wrong with how we carry ourselves and these manvites are in that vein. Let’s not focus on e-vites to tell our friends to come over and play videogames or look at boobs. We don’t need those. Let’s focus on the important things which is humor, plain text mailing lists, and calling each other on the phone and leaving voice mails on each other’s phone. If you can’t say it with some e cards, you probably shouldn’t be saying it in the first place.

AM New York (one of the free daily subway papers here in New York), reported about couples trying to get around the standard cake cutting fee while the New York Post countered with a report that Manhattan ladies are no longer getting diamonds to wear at their weddings. It seems that the Wedding Industry is now struggling and the main stream media is beginning to take notice!
A high end jeweler claims that budgets for diamonds use to be $65,000 dollars but now is around $10,000 and brides are not happy about it. Of course they aren’t. Over the last five years, as Americans turned to their homes to fake an economic recovery from the dot com era (our income as dropped during this period but our spending skyrocketed), weddings, like the 7th car, the 3rd house, and the McMansions, just got bigger and better. If you watch old episodes of Bridezilla, you’ll notice that the budgets were huge for incredibly boring and tacky and cheesy weddings. Now, when you turn on the show, the budgets are only high in respect to the fact that the women on the show are usually lower income and/or white trash. But they still want a wedding that feels expensive and that matches the extravagance they saw in the past five years. Weddings are not only about fulfilling your fantasies but also about keeping up with your friend who forced you to buy that godawful lemon and lime bridesmaid dress four years ago.

I wonder if someone in the Wedding Industry is hoping that someone in Washington DC will notice their plight and they’ll get a bailout.

I don’t agree that the Bridezilla era is over. I’m just hoping that the era of refinancing your house/maxing your credit cards part of weddings are over. It’s not but that’s what I hope. My fiancee and I approached our wedding with that goal in mind. We simply are paying for the best wedding that we can afford. Will it be showcased on Platinum Weddings? No. But will it be as spectacular extravaganza that will be talked about for years to come? Oh I hope so. But there’s only so many DIY hanging decorations I can make by hand before I want to give up and instead use the tissue paper to make a hat for my cat so we shall see. We shall see.

Is it wrong to have an engagement party in your own home?

Technically, my fiancee and I weren’t the host. The party was held in my fiancee’s home because, well, my apartment isn’t big enough. It was intimate, 10-12 people, on the Saturday of Easter weekend, and it was well catered by my roommate (who was the official host) and Costco. Oh. And 5 liters of champagne. We didn’t finish all the food but we did finish the champagne.

And my fiancee went to the Easter Vigil with a hang over.

The party started around 1. We put out bagels, lox, chicken salad, fruit, melon wrapped with prosciutto, clementines, cream cheese, and other such deliciousness. OJ, kool aid, and special mixes were for the champagne. Good talk, lots of drinking, and not enough eating. I’ll be eating chicken and bagels for months.

Watermelon, Lemon, Lime

Obama keeps watch.

Twinkie was the center of the party of course

We received several lovely gifts, cards, and best wishes from a bunch of wonderful friends. It was a delight.

Now, I’ve heard plenty of stories and rules that you can’t throw your own engagement party. And that rule makes sense. However, how involved are you allowed to be in the planning and execution of said party? My fiancee and I shopped, planned, made the guest list, help finance it, and did everything short of officially be the “host” of the big event. And isn’t this how most of these shin digs happen anyways especially if the couple is doing the primary planning and paying of their own wedding? We have no family within 1500 miles. We live in small apartments. We own our lives. I consider it totally acceptable to take an active and engaged part of any event planning of this sort as long as I didn’t initiate the process. Someone wanted to throw us a party. The fact that I took the ball and ran with it is an entirely separate thing. And the fact that it’s for me and my fiancee, involves great times with my friends, and involves pigging out on delicious delicious foods, is just an added bonus.