I caught up with a friend today who I haven’t seen since the wedding and she said something that made me very happy.  She said how much she had liked our ceremony.  How it started unexpectedly (in a good way), how people leaned forward to listen and how she noticed that, as it progressed, people started to hold hands and put their arms around their dates/loves.  How, she said, it made everyone feel addressed and included.  As she talked about it, tears came to my eyes, and I hung my head, overcome with post-wedding emotion.

I knew how much the ceremony meant to me before the wedding, as we made choices about what passages and words would be said.  I read it tearily to myself a few times, imagining the words being spoken on our wedding day.  What I didn’t imagine was how powerful it would be to me after our wedding, how special and how meaningful.

At my first marriage we didn’t really have to say anything when we got married in City Hall except “I do.”  We did exchange some sort of vows in our backyard quite a few months later–that was the extent of the ceremony.  I put off writing my vows, then did it quickly that morning.  They seemed less important than picking up the indian food from around the corner.

I no longer think this.  I think the ceremony is the heart of the wedding.  It contains a legal act–and potentially a religious one–but also, perhaps because it is ceremonial, something magical.  The ceremony is a spell you weave over yourselves and your audience.  The ceremony is powerful; the vows are binding.  It is worth spending some time on, because it is infused with great joy and emotion that lasts long after the wedding.

I have now been married for over a month, and I thought I would make a few statements about our wedding:

1) It was worth every penny we spent on it.  Looking back on our wedding the next day I felt nothing but deep satisfaction.  As someone who has been involved in a number of productions and always feels that things could have turned out better, this is quite (delightfully) out of character.

2) It was lovely and every thing went smoothly.  It wasn’t hot.  We had plenty of alcohol.  People smiled.  The speeches were touching and everyone seemed to like everything: the food, the DJ, the flowers, the location.  Even my dress.  My mom looked genuinely happy.  The owner of our venue told me that if I ever wanted a different line of work, I could become a event coordinator.  A flattering and terrifying thought.

3) It’s really true what they say.  I was in a total daze.  I barely heard all the beautiful words of our officiant because I was struggling to take it all in.  It truly was like I was up in the clouds and I just touched down occasionally, not necessarily at the moments you would think: oh look, they are giving me a salad!  And then I went back up into dazed bridey-bride land.

4) I married the man I love.  There is one photo (even the pictures came out great!) of him smiling a me during the ceremony.  I carry this image in my heart, right next to memory of standing up there with him looking at him and not registering much else of anything.  We got married, and it was swell.

After my last very happy post, I am now feeling bad.  For some reason, I was very nervous about picking up my dress from the bridal store.  I guess I felt that when I tried it on, that would be it–because the wedding is next week. (!)  No time for crash diets, major surgery, a major make-over, just me, pretty much how I will look on my wedding day.  And I was feeling worried about that.

So after I tried it on, I turned to the woman who zipped me up and said, completely insecurely, “Is it ok?”  She asked me when my wedding was and then imparted some advice, “Don’t eat for the next week.”  I was sort of stunned.  ”You think?”  I asked.  She nodded sagely, “Just drink water.”

Needless to say, I will not just be drinking water for the next week.  But all my fears about not being lovely enough were unfortunately confirmed by a (I truly believe!) well-intentioned lady in alterations.  I have been trying to do all the right things; I guess she just felt I could do more.  I never expected to look like a glamourous princess on my wedding day; I was however hoping for very pretty.  Perhaps after a good nights sleep I will feel the rage towards this poor lady and admire myself in the mirror for hours, but today it is not so good.

P.S. I should add that many of my friends and fiance threatened to go beat up this lady and assured me that I would look beautiful wearing a sack.  Which is why great friends and marrying the man you love is the best measure of wedding success I can think of.

I’ve taken a little hiatus from posting for awhile.  Not that I wasn’t going full tilt wedding ahead and that there weren’t things to blather on about, but I guess I needed to clear my internet head.  Now the wedding is less than one month away.  And this is what I want to say:

I am overwhelmed with joy.  And not because of my dress, the cake, or any of that bullshit.  Because it is, let’s face it, beautiful, pretty, very fun bullshit.  I am overwhelmed and close-to-tears pretty much a lot of the time because I feel so fortunate that I am going to get to marry the man I love.  It sounds so silly.  But as someone who was married before–and loved her ex–I did not know that it could feel this way.  I can’t wait to marry him, to be married to him.  I would do it in our messy living room in my pajamas this very moment.  We have a really cool officiant–I think she would be all for it.  I am excited that our family and friends will be there.  I am excited that we will have good wine, and a great DJ.  But it turns out none of it actually matters.  What matters is that I will get to be his wife and he will get to be my husband.  It turns out my wedding fantasy wasn’t Catalina after all.  My wedding fantasy was to feel honored, happy, lucky, a little nervous, and so, so much teary-eyed joy.  I hope that is what you get to feel too, because I believe it must be one of the best feelings in the world.

In an attempt to capture the full wedding dress experience, my mom and I went to a fancy schmansy wedding salon in Pasadena.  To give credit where credit is due, the saleswoman was awesome.  She and I were very clear on what would work on me and the two dresses she pulled when she got an idea of what I liked were excellent choices.  I especially enjoyed how she coerced me out on the floor to stand on a pedestal in this giant frothy dress that make me look like an albino big bird.  What a great dress!

My favorite dress was not the big bird dress, or the one that made me look like a slender column.  My favorite dress was one-shouldered and draped in tulle.  She clipped the trailing veil and the flower in my hair and I looked positively bridal.  I know that everyone would say that I looked beautiful.  I even didn’t mind the rhinestones hiding out in the center of a few small flowers around the neckline.  Too much for a garden wedding, yes, but not too, too much when your groom is in a tux.

There were only two problems: it didn’t feel fun, or celebratory, and I didn’t see how I could dance around in it.  It’s the kind of dress that is perfect for standing around and looking fetching but not so good if you want to jump up and hug the hell out of someone.  And it was $2800.  That would make it $2,300 more than wedding dress #1.  As my mom said, You can have a lot of fun for $2,300.  I have to agree.

One of my students got engaged about a week before me.  He shared the process with me a little before he did it—talked about asking her parents, getting the ring, etc.  It was really fun and I was so excited for him.  I had no idea that I would be engaged a week later.  And I was so excited to tell him!  So we just checked in—and we’ve both set dates—in June!  We’re not only engagement buddies, we’re wedding buddies as well!  I love that we can share the process and are on such a similar timeline.  His choices aren’t my choices (they are getting married at the university—which I just can’t do) but they are good ones for them.  And it’s not often that you get to bond with a student over the fact that David’s Bridal is having a sale.

So we’ve set a budget we both feel comfortable with.  And it isn’t $5,000.  But it isn’t $25,000 either.  It’s significantly under LA wedding cost.  And we just looked at place that fit our budget.  But it had no soul.  Does a wedding location have to have soul?  I guess I always imagined it would, that it would be personal in some way.  But I guess it could just do the job.  I don’t know; I hoped for more.  But this place is affordable and practical—it’s a strong contender.

Last night the man I love and I had a little wedding talk with his parents.  If the fantasy  in this situation is that they turn to you with a benevolent smile and hand over a blank check—then sadly that did not happen.  I believe at this point they will be picking up the rehearsal dinner, which is awesome!  But not the carte blanche or the giant buy-in that my love was somehow expecting/hoping for.  Luckily, I was already planning to pick up an extra job or two in the summer.  Next up: the wedding talk with my mom.

We were at friends for dinner and I was admiring the ornaments on their Christmas tree:  one they had gotten when they had gotten engaged, and others were from trips, etc.  It occurred to me for the first time that we would have a Christmas tree, too, covered with memories from our life together.  I always associate Christmas ornaments with the past, those ones that you love from your childhood: the small diorama in a real eggshell, the white dove trimmed with silver thread.  I never realized that ornaments could also represent a future, and that we ourselves would get to create a family Christmas tree.