Pocket Sized Pastor*

Ladies, stop defaulting to strapless dresses.

Alita Graham strapless available in plus size?. Oh please no.

Okay, that might sound harsh and, coming from a guy, it might be considered in bad taste and a reinforcement of the male patriarchy but, please, just stop it. Armpits are not as sexy as you think they are. Flabby and giant biceps are not attractive. Looking like a little boy in a dress is not sexy. Looking like a squat little cupcake is not elongating. Having your boobs for the whole entire world to see is not something I want to see at a wedding. Please, for all that is right in the world, think about a dress with sleeves, or a nice v cut, or ANYTHING ELSE. I’m begging you, I’m on my knees here. Don’t do what everyone else does. Don’t buy into the fantasy that just because a model is a size 0 and an A cup means that a size 10 D cup can look just as good. Or even if you are a size 0 and an A cup, can you really pull off something that gives you no shape whatsoever? Open your mind, your eyes, and your hearts to the possibility that sleeves can be good and are not relics from the ugly scary wedding dress era of the 80s.

You won’t be able to stand like this in your Henry Roth dress during your entire wedding faking a curve that you don’t have.

I’m not the only person in the world who watches Say Yes to the Dress but I must be the only one who believes that strapless wedding gowns are an unhealthy blight that is infecting our wedding culture. 90% of all dresses at Kleinfeld’s are strapless. Go onto any website and the vast majority of brides, no matter how they look, their size, or their sense of style, they end up picking a strapless dress. For some reason, they’re under the misguided opinion that strapless dresses are attractive on all body types. I’m sorry, but if you believe that, you’re delusional.

There is roughly only one body type where a strapless dress works and that is if you’re a rail. If you’re not, then strapless dress will cause problems. Of course the dresses look pretty on models because they’re MODELS. They’re tall, thin, and built to be walking clothes hangers. A woman who isn’t built that way cannot just assume that she’ll look good wearing the same dress. However, I do realize that “white” and “wedding dress like” are pretty much the only thing a lot of women go think about going into the wedding dress process. I personally think too many people go into the process seeing models dressed in wedding dresses and really wanting to look like the model and not really care enough about the dress and how it looks on them. And even if you bring your friends with you, they’re going to be primarily focused on what THEY want to look at on THEIR wedding day. So not only do you end up going dress shopping under false pretensions, you also get bad advice. That is just a recipe for all sorts of fail.

Oh Ian Stuart, why are you are you making ladies lie to themselves and thing that shoelaces up the back won’t turn their backs into little butt shaped things?

I’m not a person who believes in the body positive movement, ideology, or whatnot. I’m a guy, I stare at myself in the mirror at night and wish my stomach was flatter, my biceps a little bigger, and lie to myself and say that I’m going to the gym tomorrow. And I think that just because people are getting larger nowadays doesn’t necessarily mean I have to support their behavior and respect it (it doesn’t mean I can’t treat them as human beings however). I’ve struggled with weight, I know how hard it can be, but I also don’t think it’s healthy for our population to default to fat, greasy, and large portions. But, like Stacey and Clinton say, I do believe in dressing smart and dressing the body that you have and working with it. You don’t have to love it, you don’t have to like it, but you should at least learn how to dress it and work with it. Tim Gunn says “Make it work” and I believe that.

So ladies, when you stand at David’s bridal or open Modern Bride, stop falling for the trick that the model on the page is how you should look on your wedding day because, guess what? You shouldn’t. You’re not a size 0, you’re not an A cup, you’re not 6 feet tall. You are whatever you are and you should look your BEST on your wedding day. That means a strapless dress probably won’t work for you. That means cover up your arms. That means v necks are going to make you taller. And stop lying and claiming that you’re “curvy” if you’re not. It’s okay to just say you’re fat. But it’s not okay to wear a strapless dress where your boobs are falling out and it looks like you’re wearing a barrel around your waist. And as an advocate that every engaged groom should look impeccably clean, streamlined, and classy on his wedding day, shouldn’t I hold you brides to the same level? Best doesn’t necessarily mean fantasy, dream, or long hoped for desire. It means looking great, fabulous, and making all the women watching you as you walk down the aisle silently wish they had looked as good as you on their wedding day. Envy, my friends, is sometimes not a bad thing to strive for.

A 2000 dollar wedding means only 3 people are allowed to attend the reception. Just kidding.

Receptions are the bulk of the wedding expenses and, with 13 months to go till my own wedding day, it’s what I think about the most. I’ve talked about desserts, my love of black and white cookies, and…okay, so far, I’ve only really focused on the food. I must be a fat man trapped in a small man’s body.

A reception is easily 40% of a wedding budget. You invite a lot of guests to your party, asking them to attend and bless your wedding with their presence, and then get them drunk and have your videographer capture when your Uncle Harry drunkenly hit on a 17 year old and your Aunt Maria accidentally fell into the wedding cake. Joy for the whole family. So, when most wedding planners look on ways to squeeze the most blood from stones, they talk about the reception. DIY is the king at reception. Make your own decorations, your own food, your own cake stands, your own cake topper, etc etc. Invitations might be the most talked about DIY project but receptions are where DIY can save you the most money.

And one of the most DIY projects around is to take your guest list away from your mother and family and squish it. No business partners, no coworkers, no extended family. Make the reception small which means less mouths to feed and more time for your Uncle Harry to embarrass himself on your wedding video. Not necessarily a win-win but the money saved might be worth it.

But what happens if you’re not going to do that?

My fiancee has decided that whoever assumes that they’re invited to our wedding can come. We’re giving an open call invitation to our church. I told my mom to invite anyone from my extended family that she wants to (just give me a heads up before hand so I can send an invitation). And why? Because I don’t think our wedding should be merely restricted to something intimate. I have a lot of friends, a lot of communities I’m apart of, and I’ve always been the type of person who likes to stand up in the middle of the room and declare publicly where I stand, what I believe, and why. It doesn’t matter how coherent I am – what matters is that I’m going to stand up and accept the good and the bad of whatever I want to say and do. Don’t hide, don’t scurry into the corner, change your facebook status – let the world know. Big and bold, that’s me.

And what isn’t saying I want to marry this woman and spend my life with her than doing it front of every single person I know? I’m not bragging (though it’s hard not too – she really is that pretty), I’m just affirming to everyone that this is what I’m trying to do, for better or worse, and for all time. Not only God but my family and friends will be in on the ceremony. And if I’m unwilling to pledge my love and commitment in front of everyone, then something would be wrong and it would be a sign, to me, that what I wanted wasn’t what it should be. I’m not that man in De Beer’s commercial yelling about his love, in front of strangers and pigeons, saying that I want to spend my life with this woman. I’m saying it in front of my biggest critics, supporters, my family, friends, and the entire body of Christ. That, to me, is a statement that I need to make.

So, since that’s important to me (and my brother agrees that I need a big wedding), how do you handle it? It means making the reception less food and drink focused and more people focused. It means me not eating, thanking everyone for attending, posing for pictures, high fiving my friends, giving them some cake, some champagne, and having the ceremony in the middle of the afternoon, before dinner and after lunch. And it also means that since I live in the greatest playground on earth, New York City, that my reception doesn’t need to compete with what’s around me. I can show all my guests a good time outside and once I get them inside, I can stand and say I do and actually smile with teeth which is something I rarely ever do.

If you open up any wedding guide, the general rule is that you should sacrifice in two areas: 1) food and 2) photography. Go to theknot.com, use their budget calculator, and they’ll claim that you should only spend 600 on photography. For weddings under $5000, $400 for photography is reasonable. Disposable cameras, bugging your friends who have nice cameras, or assembling a collection of photos from your countless friends and relatives at your wedding, are all ideas that are pushed. For some reason, resolution, compasition, skill, and everything else is pushed to the way side. It seems that have a couple of 8x10s that are okay and a stack of 4x6s is all you need to remember your wedding (or to use in your scrapbook later). I think, in general, that’s a boneheaded idea because the film cost for disposable camera development would be huge and trying to track down everyone who took pictures and have them all upload online so you can have access to them is like herding cats. But besides that, I have another problem with being cheap, and lazy, on photography.

I went to a wake last Sunday night. The wake was for a woman. She was 75. She sang in the choir, was married, and had one son. The only stories I remember about her is that she loved talking about her ailments in graphic gory detail but wouldn’t want to see a naked person on screen. She died after an illness and looked like she was sleeping at the wake. While there, I noticed the very few pictures the couple had of her. They were taken on her wedding day.

They were all small 4×6 in frames. She was smiling and happy. She and her husband were probably married for forty or fifty years so the pictures showed a young couple from the 50s/early 60s. Big glasses, big hair on the woman, crew cut for the guy. The pictures weren’t great. They were washed out a bit (probably from the sun). They were thin, the grays and whites weren’t very sharp, and the poses were typical and nothing interesting. But they did show the now deceased smiling, young, and on what I can assume to be one of the happiest days in her life.

When you’re finally in that casket, after a long marriage (hopefully), and the pictures are put up on display of you as a memorial, wouldn’t you like to have at least one decent large picture of you on your wedding day? And would you really just leave it to luck and chance that maybe a cheap disposable camera will work or maybe your Uncle Earl managed to get the perfect of shot during your 1st dance? Some might. I wouldn’t.

Good wedding photography doesn’t need to be expensive. There is one photographer I’m looking at for a base rate of 1k, which is very low end and I’m not expecting magic to happen, but I do know that for a little more money, I’ll actually be able to get at least 1 picture that’ll look great hanging over my casket. Or on the facebook memorial page. Or maybe projected onto the screens in Times Square when the greatest thing the world has ever seen finally dies. Women will beat their breasts, men will lament, and the groans will be heard for generations to come! Worlds will move! Civilizations will fall from the sorrow they feel! Or maybe it’ll just remind my special lady of one happy experience before I’m pushed into the incinerator. Or the vat of lye. Or maybe frozen in carbonite and then launched into space aboard a spacecraft. That would be neat.

Hey, alright now
Alright now fellas, (YEAH!)
Now what’s cooler than bein’ cool?
(ICE COLD!) I can’t hear ya’
I say what’s cooler than bein’ cool?
(ICE COLD!) whooo…

You know what’s not ice cold fellas? Wearing chucks at your wedding.

I know I like to pick on the brides quite a bit but today I’m taking on the fellows because there is a trend among groomsmen and grooms that really needs to stop. If your bride wants to wear chucks, fine. Considering how obsessive they are told they need to be about their shoes, if they want to wear an overpriced pair of rubber, let them go for it. But you fellows out there with your stereotypical aloofness, 5 o’clock shadow, and with your only requirement to actually show up on the wedding day at the right time? You, yes you, are not allowed to wear chucks at your wedding.

Wait. That’s a little harsh. In theory, I’m not against wearing chucks at your wedding. If, say, you’re getting married by Elvis in Vegas, then chucks work. Or if you’re marrying in a nudist colony and want something to protect your feet against the hot asphalt, chucks would work well in that semi-casual environment. But how many of you guys actually fit these requirements? Zero so why, over the last few years (which, I know, does mean that this trend is probably dying off) feel the need to wear chucks with their tuxes and suits? What’s wrong with you?

There is nothing hip or cool about wearing a pair of chucks. It’s not rebellious. It’s not interesting. And it does not look as good on you as you think it does.

To use the old self-defeating defense, I’ll admit that I love chucks – I’m wearing a pair right now actually. And I’d rather wear chucks than a lot of other pairs of shoes. But on my wedding day? No freakin way. Besides the obvious fact that Chucks are only great the more their worn (and beaten in), my black low tops and red high tops are spending that day in the closet. I know a lot about the history of chucks – their evolution into high schools in the 50s, their graduation adoption by punks and “edgy” kids in the 70s and 80s (because they were the only cheap shoe around), and their explosion among hipsterdom in the 2000s. There are now 70 different varieties of chucks, designer chucks, and they now cost up to 30 times what they did in the mid 80s. And why? Because American culture is a sponge for whatever is considered different and loves taking what’s outside, dumbing it down for the masses, and spitting it out to a new younger generation. And as the second and third generation punks and burnouts finally get old, along with their 2nd wave hardcore punk friends, the pop punk kids of the mid 90s and their distant relatives from the emo of the 2000s, and they big to marry, everyone seems to think that wearing chucks at your wedding is a good idea. For some reason, people find it edgy, cool, hip, trendy, and a modern twist on an otherwise traditional ceremony. It’s a way to put your “personality” into the wedding right? Make it more unique and different! Some guys even claim that chucks are more “comfortable” than other shoes (which is a total lie). Why, oh why, are you guys falling for this nonsense? Wearing chucks with your tux or suit at a wedding doesn’t show you being unique and different and making the wedding your own. What it shows is that you’re too lazy to actually take the time and energy necessary to really make the wedding different and to focus on those things that really make a man stand out. Details, and not chucks, are what makes a wedding known. No one is going to remember your wedding later and think that you wearing chucks is “cool” and made your wedding “more real”. And no one will look at you and say you looked really put together, that you looked great, that you knocked their socks off and impressed them. This is the opportunity to make your future mother in law actually excited that you’re marrying their daughter. Everyone loves a sharp dressed man so why not actually dress like one?

Every woman knows that accessories can make an outfit work or die. What every guy needs to know is that the same theory applies to them but in different ways. Your details are not as outlandish as a bag or a 5 inch heel. Your idea is to be Ice Cold. Your accessories are designed to form the illusions of clean lines, sophistication, class, and pop. The crispness of your shirt, the fit of your suit, the width of your tie – all of these are more telling than what you wear on your feet. And there are many ways to “rebel” without resorting to the boring and overused concept of chucks. Wear a skinny tie with a suit that’s a northern European cut. Add a slight pattern to your shirt. Wear skull and bones silver cuff links. Don’t wear a watch on your wrist but instead use a small necklace, money clip, or other piece of metal to reflect the line. Rather than wear a solid suit color, wear one with a light pattern that looks solid from a distance but the pattern is obvious up close. Invest in a bright and colorful pocket square. Get an awesome haircut. Get a facial, manicure, and take care of your face to remove sunspots or any redness. Pluck your eyebrows.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? Clean lines, color, and class are what a groom should bring on his wedding day. The idea of your wedding should not just to be your same boring self (and chucks/sneakers/whatever is just an extension of your every day self and if its not, trying to wear chucks on your wedding day is just labeling you as a giant poser and how is that bringing your personality to your big day?). You should go big by being sophisticated and bring your style to what’s traditional and expected. Change your label, get a jacket with a different pocket type, wear dark shoes with a tiny dash of color, wear a dull metallic tie. Wear argyle socks. Keep yourself focused on being clean.

And why clean? Because your bride is going to notice everything – from how you smell, how you look, and when she’s close to you during your first dance, she’ll get it. And shouldn’t you impress her on your wedding day as much as she’s going to impress her?