Pocket Sized Pastor*

I’m not going to lie, I find inspiration boards interesting. The concept behind them is easy – it’s merely a collection of images to match your wedding scheme. If you have a color and a season, you have all you need. But, even with my professional background, I’m a complete fail when it comes to these. The idea of trying to put together a complete collage of inspirational wedding pictures is daunting. I haven’t even been able to organize the magazine articles and ads I clip from men fashion magazines – there’s no way I could throw an inspiration board together quickly.

But she can.

Here’s the board she made for my fiancee. She told her that our color was white and it would be in the Spring.

Neat, no?

The idea behind them is not to look for perfection and find every nicknack that is going to be in your reception hall. The idea is to merely try to quickly get an overall sense of what you’re going for with the overall look and feel of the wedding. And sometimes the best person to do that is a complete stranger on the internet.

As an amateur photographer, I understand the appeal of playing with the RAW settings on your digital images and increasing the brightness/exposure to the point where the whites are really white, bright, and dazzling. In fact, if you whites aren’t as white as Joe Biden’s teeth, most people feel you’re doing your photography wrong. But what I refuse to tolerate is wedding photography where brown skin is white washed into oblivion.

Prune Prune Prune

I’m Mexican-American, my skin is brown. I like it, enjoy it, and like that even in the dead of winter, I’m not pale. Well, that’s not true. I do become pale – just my version of pale which is a light milk chocolate. Not only do I enjoy my skin, I’m pretty proud of it and what it represents: my ancestry, my family, and where I come from. I enjoy the history of it.

But God help the wedding photographer who does to me and my lovely fiancee what they did to that couple I linked above.

The guy is Asian, his fiancee is white. By increasing the white wash factor, the woman of the couple fades into Casper land and the Asian guy skin tone ends up matching his future wife’s. The distinct individualities of the people in the couple disappear and they become merely some gelatinous blob of over exposed ridiculousness. In fact, her facial features seem to vanish into the background and where she starts and ends isn’t distinct. The photographer might have been trying to be artistic or trying to symbolically show that the couple is now “one flesh” but, come on, this is an unflattering and ugly way to do it. Or it’s possible that the young woman, who admits to being photographed, preferred the photographer to render her in a fantasy/un-realistic way but, ugh. This is not an appealing way to photograph someone.

I realize that at the more wedding photography I look at, my standards and wants are getting stricter. I’m starting to realize how big of a team I’d like, the equipment I’d want them to use, and the style I’d like them to use. I want a photographer who, when I look at their pictures, I can learn from them. I know I’m not that good but, from my first glance at wedding photographers in my area, maybe I’m expecting too much. We’ll see.

I’m a snob – I’ll admit it. I consider myself to be a person with taste, sophistication, and I’m rather opinionated. If I see something I dislike, I’m going to say I don’t like it. If I find something “beneath me”, I’m gonna say it. I might be semi-tactful about it but I’m not going to lie and pretend that something is wonderful when I don’t think it is. And I’m not going to take out my own frustrations with my own view of self, my own personal failure at matching my own personal level of taste and sophistication, by making backstabbing complements about other people and their opinions. My wedding might not have the napkin rings I want but I’m not going to post a fake compliment about yours and how “rustic” or “handy” they seem. Your napkin rings stand on their own and should stand on their own. I’m not going to be THAT person.

But it seems other people don’t share my views.

The poster, Miss D’orsay, wrote a blog post about budget weddings. Well, that’s at least how it originally appears but, after a quick read, it’s obvious that she’s not talking about budget weddings. What she’s trying to do is ask the world to pity her because, to keep within her budget, she’s not allowed to do the things she wants to do. I am, somehow, suppose to feel sorry that her budget doesn’t allow her to hire someone to do her makeup. And not only that, I’m also to tolerate her personal view that a $10,000 dollar wedding is considered ‘cheap’ and ‘a real budget wedding’. Backyard, restaurants, and other venues are ‘quaint’ and look at how lovely these poor people’s events turned out! Her post screams of snobbery but snobbery in its worse form. She laments not having the budget to be able to buy everything and she’s taking it out on others.

Some people will try to claim that this is her attempt to talk herself down, comfort herself, and to force herself to realize that a cheaper wedding can be quite beautiful. I don’t believe that. Her piss poor analogy on her jean size and finding a wedding that “fits” her is what does her in. A size 14 jean does not mean one is rich and opulent – in our society, a size 0 does. You can almost see the frustration in her writing and, if I’m allowed to read between the lines, a certain amount of depression that she’s not given the chance to have the expensive princess wedding of her dream. This isn’t fit and this isn’t an argument about needs or wants. This is just a post crying for pity.

And pity seeking snobs are the most pathetic snobs of them all.

It’s easy to look at those who are wealthier than you, to look at the pristine pictures in the magazines, and to someone feel that you’re not up to the task. Life isn’t a magazine – you’re not allowed to spend three weeks photoshopping your life, airbrushing your freckles, and stand on a box so that during the ceremony you can be taller than your bride. Being a snob isn’t striving for that level of perfection – being a snob is understanding taste, sophistication and how to work that into your life. And, amazingly enough, a lot of that isn’t bought off a rack – it’s tailored to you or you make it yourself. So if you want a wedding to match your snobbery, you need to have taste yourself. The problem is that a lot of people DON’T have taste but automatically assume they do. And if you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter what your budget is because whatever you do is going to fail. You will then spend your life lamenting the details and what didn’t go right at your wedding. I won’t be like that. I have taste, I have sophistication but I also understand what needs to happen to make my wedding sparkle. And money isn’t what’s going to do it.

Hopefully this is that Miss D’orsay and brides will eventually learn or else they’re going to renew their vows everything three years hoping to “get it right” but never, ever will.

And why? Because I have one from here sitting in my fiancee’s fridge waiting to be eaten. Eaten by me that is. This, of course, leads me to this wonderful creations : The cupcake tower.

Yes I am raiding MarthStewart.com.

It’s a good idea for a wedding cake. Cupcakes are small, cheap, and – depending on your guestlist – it’s entirely possible for everyone to get one and plan it so that very few leftovers are left. But this isn’t exactly a great idea for a wedding if you’re expecting over 250 people (and yes I am expecting that much – my fiancee and I are THOSE PEOPLE who have to select the final option on wedding size when it comes to online forms). And this won’t work for people who either can’t eat sugar or who aren’t cake people – which, sadly, is a large chunk of the people at our church who will be invited to the wedding. Which leads me to the idea of a dessert/cake buffet.

So what should the buffet have?

Doughnuts?

Meringues?

Mini Angel Food Cakes?

Mini Lemon Tarts?

Pies?

And then maybe display them like this.

Hmm. And since this is going to be a ‘light’ reception, and will consist mostly of standing-room only, by keeping the dishes to mini/hand held desserts, it’ll make it easy for people to not only eat, but also to keep it varied enough to accommodate all the different eating styles of people that will be in attendance. I had though, for awhile, that I would want a cake buffet but that’s not feasible because, if you don’t have chairs and tables, who’s going to be able to eat a piece of cake? But everyone will be able to ingest a small mini tart or cookie or the like.

Huh. I just came up with a pretty good idea. /me pats self on the back.

There’s two kinds of wedding photography: cheesy and uber-cheesy.

For some reason, everyone tends to be under the impression that their wedding celebration is the most unique thing since sliced bread. No one else in the world has ever been married before, or at least that’s the implication of their wedding planning. Even grooms and brides who try to totally “rebel” against the wedding industry with their weddings being at city hall and their reception consisting of a bucket of chicken are still playing into the uniqueness game. And this spills over into wedding photography. Every photographer has a look, a style, a desire to whitewash their subjects to the point where Casper looks more defined than they do. Every photographer also enjoys coming up with unique “poses” that they then inflict on every one of their clients. From hugging a tree, to showing off their garter, every photographer has the same general style of unique poses. It’s kinda obnoxious really and these poses are anything but unique. What we need is a revolution in wedding photography poses, where the idea of “different” really means different.

I’m glad McSweenys is starting to fight that good fight.

Bride and groom sitting in a makeshift raft. Both looking like scared Cubans defecting to America.

Groom as a used-car salesman and bride in the market for a fuel-efficient, reliable Japanese-made compact with decent trunk space. Groom is making the hard sell on a Suzuki SX4 Crossover. Bride is inspecting it, touching the instrument panel, showing interest. Groom explaining to bride features like the rear-glass demister, and making sure she knows that the heated outside mirrors are only available on the touring-package model.

Bride is crying. Groom is sitting at a table. In front of him on the table are lines of pure Columbian cocaine, a razorblade, and a tightly rolled $20 bill. Groom is wearing only an undershirt, boxer shorts, and socks, which have holes in them. Wedding rings are off‚Äîeverything was sold a long time ago to buy blow. (Stubble and lesions to be added via Photoshop.) Bride is a broken shell of a woman and is tugging on groom’s arm, begging him to stop.

Tall, dark, and handsome best man behind a bush with the bride, getting it on. Hands are all over each other. Bride’s expensive hairdo ruined by passionate foreplay. The two appear to have a history together, or pent-up desire for each other that could never be expressed because of the groom’s feelings. Groom peering angrily through bush with expression that says, “My new wife is cheating on me on our wedding day with my best man and I don’t care for it.”

I might have to do that Cuban one.

[Via Manolobrides.com]

Or at least everyone you think might actually pay attention to you.

It’s strange but this rather strange and vain filled post about shopping for an engagement ring made me realize that all of us males, for some strange reason, are bred with a specific competitiveness to not just keep up with the Jones – we want to blow them out of the water. It’s like we were never satified with merely beating our brother at Battleship – we had to do it without losing a ship and while robbing the Monopoly bank at the same time. Where that Wedding Bee poster talks about her fiancee’s connoisseurship, it’s really less about being a Or at least everyone you think might actually pay attention to you.

It’s strange but this rather strange and vain filled post about shopping for an engagement ring made me realize that all of us males, for some strange reason, are bred with a specific competitiveness to not just keep up with the Jones – we want to blow them out of the water. It’s like we were never satified with merely beating our brother at Battleship – we had to do it without losing a ship and while robbing the Monopoly bank at the same time. Where that Wedding Bee poster talks about her fiancee’s connoisseurship, it’s really less about being a connoisseur but more a competitive nature where even external praise is stiffled unless the ring passes some sort of bizzare internal scorecard that doesn’t reflect reality. It doesn’t matter if the ring is eye clean – what matters is that this fellow knows that under any specific otherworldly measurement, the ring passes with flying colors. I doubt they’ll ever run in the circles where that ring will be socially inspective at a party by a Jeweler but, in this guy’s mind, if that ever happened, if the jeweler ever hesitated in praise, this fiancee has failed. This is a perfectionism that lives in a faux world of confidence – and it’s one that, for some reason, all guys share. And if they don’t, they’re lying and merely living their life as a reaction against this quasi perfection. A guy living in sweatpants knows that he’s living in sweat pants and he might try to pretend that he doesn’t care about how he looks. But he knows, and he’s aware, and he knows when he’s somehow outclassed by another individual.

Which leads me to weddings and why, for some reason, the wedding culture in the US cares so much about this fake internal competitive scorecard rather than striving for an eye-clean wedding. Does stiving for perfection let vendors charge more? Yes. Does striving for “connoisseurship” lead to inflated egos? Yes. Is all of this, in general, rather bogus and unhealthy? Yes.

It’s hard to not look at wedding magazines, blogs, and communities and not realize that we all strive to rob the bank while playing Scrabble. We care less about the game that is being played and more about dominating every game that’s ever been played. It reminds me of a story about some villages where the laws were recently changed so that families would stop indebiting themselves to the point of ruin to throw a week long festival for the marriage of their sons and daughters. If they try to throw a huge party, they could go to jail. Even in places where the families lived on extremely low incomes, they had to one up their neighbors. The concept of eye-clean doesn’t exist. Go big or die trying. This works when you’re in a war but when you’re just getting married? Yeah, the logic doesn’t work so much.

So the trick is to stay eye-clean. It doesn’t mean you can’t aim for good – it means that you stop trying to aim for only perfection. And to do that, takes a certain amount of self-knowledge, research, and focus. The couple in that Wedding Bee post wasted months doing ineffective research in the search of “perfection”. She didn’t look at enough real diamonds to understand, until much later, what her choosen cut needs to be “perfect” and the fiancee let his connoisseurship blind himself to develop ineffective standards that damaged their definition of eye-clean. Did they end up with the right diamond for her? Yes. But could they have done it smarter and more effective? I think so. And my evidence for that is that if they had, she wouldn’t have admitted in “horror” of almost settling for a diamond “from a chain retail store”. Or blame her fiancee for having the audacity to have her help pick the ring.

And why does keeping things eye-clean matter to me when I already have the ring? Well, like that guy, I also consider myself a connoisseur of certain things – and that’s tasty cakes. And trying to figure out how to successfully feed 250 people on our budget while making the desserts spectacular even though I know I won’t get to taste any of them because I’ll be too busy walking the floor and saying hi to my guests, is probably the thing that’s taking up my mind at the moment. Honeymoon? Photographer? That means nothing to me until I get the food exactly right. But I gotta keep it eye clean. Eye clean, eye clean, eye clean. If I don’t, I’ll go mad. but more a competitive nature where even external praise is stiffled unless the ring passes some sort of bizzare internal scorecard that doesn’t reflect reality. It doesn’t matter if the ring is eye clean – what matters is that this fellow knows that under any specific otherworldly measurement, the ring passes with flying colors. I doubt they’ll ever run in the circles where that ring will be socially inspective at a party by a Jeweler but, in this guy’s mind, if that ever happened, if the jeweler ever hesitated in praise, this fiancee has failed. This is a perfectionism that lives in a faux world of confidence – and it’s one that, for some reason, all guys share. And if they don’t, they’re lying and merely living their life as a reaction against this quasi perfection. A guy living in sweatpants knows that he’s living in sweat pants and he might try to pretend that he doesn’t care about how he looks. But he knows, and he’s aware, and he knows when he’s somehow outclassed by another individual.

Which leads me to weddings and why, for some reason, the wedding culture in the US cares so much about this fake internal competitive scorecard rather than striving for an eye-clean wedding. Does stiving for perfection let vendors charge more? Yes. Does striving for “connoisseurship” lead to inflated egos? Yes. Is all of this, in general, rather bogus and unhealthy? Yes.

It’s hard to not look at wedding magazines, blogs, and communities and not realize that we all strive to rob the bank while playing Scrabble. We care less about the game that is being played and more about dominating every game that’s ever been played. It reminds me of a story about some villages where the laws were recently changed so that families would stop indebiting themselves to the point of ruin to throw a week long festival for the marriage of their sons and daughters. If they try to throw a huge party, they could go to jail. Even in places where the families lived on extremely low incomes, they had to one up their neighbors. The concept of eye-clean doesn’t exist. Go big or die trying. This works when you’re in a war but when you’re just getting married? Yeah, the logic doesn’t work so much.

So the trick is to stay eye-clean. It doesn’t mean you can’t aim for good – it means that you stop trying to aim for only perfection. And to do that, takes a certain amount of self-knowledge, research, and focus. The couple in that Wedding Bee post wasted months doing ineffective research in the search of “perfection”. She didn’t look at enough real diamonds to understand, until much later, what her choosen cut needs to be “perfect” and the fiancee let his connoisseurship blind himself to develop ineffective standards that damaged their definition of eye-clean. Did they end up with the right diamond for her? Yes. But could they have done it smarter and more effective? I think so. And my evidence for that is that if they had, she wouldn’t have admitted in “horror” of almost settling for a diamond “from a chain retail store”. Or blame her fiancee for having the audacity to have her help pick the ring.

And why does keeping things eye-clean matter to me when I already have the ring? Well, like that guy, I also consider myself a connoisseur of certain things – and that’s tasty cakes. And trying to figure out how to successfully feed 250 people on our budget while making the desserts spectacular even though I know I won’t get to taste any of them because I’ll be too busy walking the floor and saying hi to my guests, is probably the thing that’s taking up my mind at the moment. Honeymoon? Photographer? That means nothing to me until I get the food exactly right. But I gotta keep it eye clean. Eye clean, eye clean, eye clean. If I don’t, I’ll go mad.