December « 2009 « The Imaginary Wedding

December, 2009

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

On having your dreams come true

So I had a fantasy about how I’d like the man I love to propose. I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted him to pick out the ring himself. I wanted it to be romantic. He did all that. He kneeled, as an extra bonus. Having your dream come true is a really bewildering experience.

Perhaps as a result of this wish fulfillment, I don’t seem to have any New Year’s resolutions this year. Perhaps I am too happy. There are many projects for this year: but we know what they are, we have already made those resolutions. I think this holiday season has been so rich, so textured, that I am approaching this new year with a great deal of joy and hope.

A very Happy New Year to you—may all your hopes and joys be realized in 2010!

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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

On my no longer quite so imaginary wedding

So now I’m really getting married. Here is what I have to change: I have to stop saying “if.” As in, not “if we get married” but “when we get married.” Not “if I buy a wedding dress,” but when I do. I’m buying a wedding dress?

And what to do about this blog? I expected to be happily posting along about my imaginary wedding for quite some time. And now it’s a real wedding. But all weddings are a bit fabulous, a bit imaginary, aren’t they? A little bit a of a fairy tale, a little bit of our own personal myth and story? So I think I’ll just continue to imagine, undeterred.

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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

On not calling people

A friend was surprised that we let a group of our friends know about our engagement by text. I agree, it would be nice to do it in person. But LA is big, and trying to get everyone together on the same night is hard. And if we waited to see everyone individually, it could be 2011.

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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

On calling people

I had no idea how fun this was! I was actually afraid when he called his parents; he really old schooled the proposal—he didn’t tell anyone he was going to do it, even his family, so for the whole night we were the only two people in the world who knew. So I was a little worried about their reactions. But they sounded happy. Pretty much everyone sounded happy. We are so lucky to have people to support our relationship.

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Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

An Imaginary Wedding update

I haven’t been posting the last week or so. Part of this was the holidays, and lack of internet connection. The other part of this is my news:

Right before Christmas, my boyfriend proposed to me. I didn’t see it coming. We had just been to a party where a friend was saying that you shouldn’t get engaged until you’ve been living together for a year. My boyfriend pipes up, “I heard 18 months!” I thought to myself, December 2010? Crap! And left it alone. So when it happened, I think I went in to shock a bit. I am still trying to take it in. For me it was such an important moment; I think I imagined it would take forever. But it was so quick! I wish that in life moments could last as long as their significance. That way, his proposal could have lasted forever, and all those useless work meetings would be over in an instant.

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Friday, December 25th, 2009

The Holiday Season

So it seems that we are spending Christmas in the land that internet forgot–sorry about the absence of posts for the last few days. Happy Holidays!

An Xmas classic!

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Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

On your perfect day

I think nothing alarms me more than someone saying that they want their wedding to be perfect. Perfection is, in my opinion, exactly the wrong thing to be aiming for on your wedding day. Perfection leads to people crying when the wrong napkins arrive.

But I understand why perfection is the goal. We are weaving a spell: if it looks perfect, maybe then it is perfect. If the wedding is perfect, maybe the marriage will be perfect. Maybe if everything is just perfect down the last little detail, we can create our own happily-ever-after.

I have tried this. I didn’t work for me. So I am not going to try and make my wedding perfect. I am just going to try and be a good co-host and marry the man I love. And from what I can tell, weddings where everything went completely wrong—the tent blew away and everyone gathered on the porch of the hotel in the rain for example—just opened the doors for people to rally around what was really right: the two of you getting married. I think a wedding should just be like your love and your relationship: beautiful, imperfect, and well worth celebrating.

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Monday, December 21st, 2009

On making your wedding personal

I think that most of us in blogland want our wedding to reflect us: who we are as a couple, who we are as people—to be personal. By that I assume we mean that we want it to be creative, individual, and to be some extension of our interests and selves. Which is why you end up getting married on the ferry where you met, hiring mariachis to reflect his cultural heritage, serving latkes, and having a groom’s cake shaped like a wookie.

Don’t get me wrong; this all sounds awesome. But maybe this is not the goal. Maybe a wedding isn’t so much about your interests as a person or couple—bowling, bingo, the color red. Maybe you don’t want it to look like you two: maybe you want it to feel like you two. Maybe you want it to feel like you feel: happy, festive, loving, in love. Which is why the ferry, mariachis, latkes, and wookie all sound like a grand idea.

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Monday, December 21st, 2009

On hosting

I am not really in to the idea of a wedding being my special day. A special day for us, definitely—how could it not be? But the all-about-me thing is not really my speed. And not because I don’t like attention—I do. But I guess for me, the wedding more a type of party than a type of performance.

And this is how I think of parties: you are either a host or a guest. So I will be co-hosting my imaginary wedding.

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Sunday, December 20th, 2009

On what a wedding should accomplish, really

If the wedding does what it is supposed to do, at the end of the event two people will end up married. That’s pretty much it. But let’s face it, that can’t be it, or people would just go off and do it and people wouldn’t be spending cars of money on this one event.

So what else are we trying to do, really? We are obviously trying to include people. And we say vows, and we eat, and we dance—at least semi-traditionally. There is a celebration. There is some joining: legal, social joining. Joining of the two of you, joining of a community of married people, or of families in general. You want them—family, friends, the world—to see you two, formally and finally, as a couple.

That all is important. But I wonder if there is something else going on, too. Perhaps a wedding is also an opportunity to invite friends and family into your relationship; perhaps it is also a rare moment of inclusion and transparency.

Because that’s what moves me at a wedding; that’s why I feel privileged when I attend one: because they are sharing their relationship with me. For a night we are all part of the same family and tribe. Relationships, and marriages especially, are so mysterious—who knows what is going on in there, exactly? You can speculate, but—let’s face it—you probably have no idea. You are not there to see how they smile at each other across the table, what they talk about when they are alone, what their hopes and dreams are for the future. But on their wedding day, you are.

I think I am going to think of my (imaginary) wedding this way: one night where we are all in it, together.

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