Wedding Registry Prank

http://www.ok.co.uk/worldinaction/view/4267/40-toasters-for-the-happy-couple/

Very funny story!

Vanity or VIP for your wedding day?

Are you hiring a professional make up artist for your wedding day? Are you doing a trial run of your hair style with a professional to try out a lot of options? Are you getting a manicure and pedicure a few days before your wedding?

If you answered "yes", you are in the great majority. Indeed, at least some of the pampering above is so taken for granted that when I was talking with someone who is a high regarded marriage educator, who knows thousands of high powered people, talks to journalists all day long, she mocked, among other things, the bride who got a professional make up artist at the wedding she went to recently (she hadn't been to a wedding in many years.)

It brought me up short! I mean sure, I can argue the typical logic about how weddings are so expensive these days, it's such a waste, about how if "people only spent a tenth of the time on their marriage as they do on the wedding...." But, even I felt defensive for my decision to have a professional make up artist! I have written about whether you should splurge, and mention my own "need" for this type of splurge. My real weakness was not being disorganized, or procrastinating, or having troubles deciding vendors, it was FEAR OF LOOKING GOOD! I knew that having a professional "do their thing" would give me great confidence up to and through my wedding. (I was right.) My wedding nightmares were all about showing up in my 4th grade, dark brown prairie dress my mom made for our Oklahoma "boomers and sooners" mock land run.

I will try to dig up two photos that will shock you. One is the day after my wedding at the post-wedding brunch. The other is my wedding day. You would be shocked that my hair could do what it did and you'd be amazed how different I look. My dad kept saying, "this is a real plus for women like you who never wear make up! When you DO wear make up you look SO different and it really stands out!" I think many women who wear make up daily might argue they'd rather look good EVERY day, not just on their wedding day. ;-)

The first manicure and pedicure of my life was for my wedding. I could not stop staring at my glorious nails for the entire two week honeymoon! I was enraptured with how great my hands looked. I have since had quite a few and get one at least once a year for a big conference.

So the question is whether weddings bring out the dark, evil vanity of us, or are weddings becoming more and more of a VIP event where this is your one chance to shine with all your glory and there is nothing to hold you back. We have even gotten to the point where you'll even ask your bridesmaids to use Botox, as the New York Times wrote about this summer, instigating massive message board postings on whether it is appropriate or horryfing to ask others to alter their bodies for your big day.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

It is fine to want to enhance your appearance. Women do it every time they go to the hair salon to get a 'cut and style.' Women do it every time they either get a new prescription for contacts, or shop for new, stylish glasses. They do it when they buy make up, buy clothes, shoes, skin creams, eat right and excersize. But when does it cross the line to being a crazy bride?

Perhaps one way you have gone over the line is if you would not do ____ if you weren't having a wedding. Or if you have to spend a lot of time justifying the cost or procedure/product to yourself and your fiance. Or if you do the "ask 10 people on the street" test and you get a majority response of shock and horror at your idea. Or if you are afraid of telling a dear friend what you are planning on doing because you know they will disapprove of you. (Being afraid of their response shows a lack of confidence on your part, and demonstrates the respect you hold for that persons opinion.)

The two "wildest" things I did in response to my wedding vanity was to get contacts for the first time ever, and to get a facial and buy all the products to improve my skin for the wedding day. I could have done both without getting married and nobody would have thought twice. The contacts were ultimately justified as both wanting to be more timeless on my wedding day (glasses are always dating and I had this irrational desire to have a timeless wedding album) and because it seemed like most adults have contacts and why not give it a try. I hate being sweaty with glasses, and I couldn't be in the sun as easily because I didn't have RX sun glasses. Turns out I had fun with contacts on a daily basis - it inspired me to wear make up more because without glasses my eyes "popped more." I went back to glasses pretty quickly but still don't regret the contacts.

The skin products were great and produced a lovely inside joke with my husband about being a "planty lady", using the Aveda products. It really did clear up my skin and I spent a winter with soft facial skin and not feeling the normal itching, burning cracking of my skin in the winter. But, as usual with everything I try new I also stopped using it and went back to my normal, neglectful, non-vanity self.

So picture the worst case scenario - your groom ditches you or dies before the big day. Are your "vanity plans" well reasoned enough that you'd still pursue the...Botox, or plastic surgery, or other more extreme and costly procedures, even if the wedding wasn't going to happen?

Politics and your marriage

This election season has brought a whole new group of engaged and newly married couples into the wild world of their political opinions and the opinions, and actions, of their in-laws. Ah, the fun!

We have two wedding principles that apply well to politics. The first is, "when there is conflict, blood talks to blood." If your (future) in-law sends you crazy emails about the politican you are voting for, the best tactic is to make your fiance/spouse deal with them.

However, another wedding principle may also come into play: "your parents and inlaws are like the weather. Focus on the decisions to be made, not on their attitudes or feelings."

In other words, you have no control over anyone but yourself. You can try to control what comes into your INBOX, via your partner telling their parents (in person or by phone, please, not by email). Your fiance can even tell his parents that you will be ignoring all emails until after the election. If you must. But at some point, is it REALLY worth creating world war three in the family over who gets voted the next President of the United States??? Really? I didn't think so.

If you are really luck your in-laws are as in love with your candidate as you are and it can help bond your relationship!

Good luck! :-)

What is marriage, anyway?

I've been reflecting a lot as I dig more into the marriage counseling website affiliated with The First Dance, about what it takes to be married and if things get tough, what the solutions are.

There are so many "theories" on relationships, how and why they work and how to fix them when they break. I have never gone to a counselor myself, other than growing up with a counselor father and reaping the rewards of that father/daughter relationship. But I do wonder how we all see ourselves, our relationships and how we view the world as it relates to who we are and why we get married.

Whenever I get together with certain old friends, I always leave feeling a bit hollow inside in the way they talk about their marriages/husbands. Invariably I come home to my own husband and we process the way they talk about their spouses and how that makes me feel depressed inside! But then my husband and I talk about how we all come into a relationship with our own emotional baggage, our own notions of what a wife/husband is and what a marriage looks like. If your model is not a great marriage, or a selfish parent in a bad marriage, it's no wonder we can get confused as we grow up.

And from where I sit with The First Dance, I feel defensive for all of you who do not want to be talked down to, treated like you are clueless as you plan your wedding. If you want premarital help it's because you recognize that marriage is hard work and you'd appreciate some tips and tricks. It seems that our generation (Gen X and Gen Y) are in a completely different place than our parents generation when it comes to male-female relationships and to our own marriages.

Perhaps I'm just thinking about how complex life is, how complex marriage is, and what tools couples should have before entering into a marriage-bound relationship. Once you are engaged, my feeling is that you were smart enough to recognize in yourself and your partner that this was a match worth fighting for and worth spending the rest of your lives for. The question then, I guess, is if things get tough, as they always do, how do we as a society help support your marriage? How do we hold up your vulnerability and show you the strength underneath rather than tear your commitment down, devolving into "I just deserve to be happy" or, "life is too short" mentality.

My husband and I just celebrated our FIVE year wedding anniversary. If you would have said half of the things that have happened to us 5 years ago I would have been horrified, shocked, and scared to death. We have had extreme career changes, mental health issues, mortality issues (a few horrendous medical crisis'), two children, chronic health problems from a pregnancy... and that's just to name the biggies. I have experienced the lowest points of my entire live through all that and been on the brink of complete hopelessness.

I've experienced points where I could see the exit ramps that others might have chosen to take. Life is tough, stressful, and it seems like giving up is the easy way out. But when you stop and really think about it, you are not remotely perfect. You are annoying, you stress out your partner, bad things that happen to you also greatly impact your spouse, and yet she or he sticks by your side. You may resent something that happens to you or to your spouse or to your lives together. But it should be a humbling reminder that if you can share in "this sucks", whatever "this" is, then you have accomplished a huge task of married life - commitment. Wouldn't you rather ride the next roller coaster with a comforting, familiar face? With the person who has said in words or actions, through the good and bad, I'm by your side?

I feel the tension in our society between me saying "divorce is not an option for me" and the "oh, Elizabeth, you are SO naive." It's as if by saying you are in this forever, you are denying that "people change and grow apart", or denying that you may have married "the wrong person." While there are certaintly relationships that come to a shocking, unilateral end, for the vast majority of us it's never that simple. The longer I am married, the more I am in awe, humble awe, that each of us is very imperfect and by recognizing that, we can see our spouses in a new, respectful light. We can see our parents marriages in a new light. We can see our friends who seem to have high conflict "bad marriages" in a new light. It's the dance back and forth in a marriage that takes work - compromise, communication, humility, that ultimately pays off with intense security, happiness, contentment, and a stability that no matter WHAT is slung your way next (massive car accident, disability, heart attack, job loss), you are with the person who will be at your side.

It's a pretty funny thing to try to plan the PERFECT wedding when entering a completely imperfect relationship, called marriage. As if in "real life" you ever have to agree on a color theme, or ever have to spend hours upon hours figuring out which flowers best respresent your couplehood, or what invitations best fit the "tone" of your relationship. Those can be fun excersizes, but more often than not, they get in the way and cause people to doubt their relationship ("how can we get married if we are fighting over something as stupid as the wedding invitations??") rather than doubt the cultural pressures placed on weddings today.

I would say The First Dance is only about 30% "done". I have a lot more in my head I need to get out! I think there is so much unsaid in our culture and so much untapped wisdom of real couples. I hope to get more of that out in the coming months.

-Elizabeth