A Change in Venue

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the Bride and the Journalist

Unsurprisingly Dignified: a chat with Bina Martin

I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with the charming Bina Martin, co-author of “Miss Manners’ Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding,” and the director of a new Chicago-based sketch comedy show called “Better Off Wed.”

Martin at her perfectly executed wedding

She and her mother Judith Martin, aka “Miss Manners,” set out to update the previous version of the wedding etiquette book with an eye toward the modern bride, drowning in “advice” from a bridal industry that’s usually just trying to bilk her out of cash. Read my interview below, which also appears on theLuvBiz.com.

Q. How did you get started working on the book with your mom?

A. She was asked to revise it, and around the same time, I happened to get engaged. I started to look at “bridal porn,” the $10, 10 lb. bridal magazines, and talked about how ridiculous it was. She was like, you need to write this with me.

Q. What was different about this new version of the book, and how did your input change it?

A. In the original book, there was an edge of blaming the brides [for over-the-top behavior], but I think it’s being done by the bridal industry. Your target audience are brides, so you might not want to be too rough on them. It’s sort of an awful comparison, but it’s kind of like the funeral industry or the baby industry, where they tell you, well if you truly love your guests, you’ll do this for them.

Q. You wrote the “troubleshooting” sections of the book, as well as some of the essays, and finishing it in March coincided with your April wedding. How did working on the book while wedding planning affect you?

A. It was more attitude than practicality. You do get sucked into this mentality of “by the time you get engaged it’s too late to get married.” I realized that we don’t have to subscribe to this; I gave myself a reality check. All brides fall into that trap.

Q. What was your favorite part of planning your wedding?

A. Cake tasting! Whenever anyone asks me advice, I tell them, taste as much cake as you can, it’s your only time to eat free cake! Humor helps with all the pressure and the stress. At the end of the day, you’re picking out flowers and tasting cakes, how stressful can it be? I definitely played princess for more than a day.

Q. So much wedding advice suggests cutting costs by slashing the guest list rather than pare down the extravagance of the event, and Miss Manners expresses her horror at such an appalling notion in the book. What do you think about the idea that a particular vision is the most important part of a wedding?

A. By the time you’re ready to get married, you probably should have learned how to navigate other people’s opinions. Our actual wedding was a tea instead of a sit down dinner. There was tons of food, but sitting at a table in a white dress is just danger for me. I wanted to be able to walk around and talk to people and greet our guests and to accommodate different people’s tastes. It’s such a weird concept that the food and the decorations are more important than the people there – why are you doing it then? The whole idea is joining together two families.

[Read more about brides with skewed priorities.]

Q. In the book, Miss Manners is quick to point out that she changes with the times and doesn’t insist that people stick to what we consider “traditional” gender roles. Was your then-fiance interested in any of the planning?

Check out the book

A. My husband was interested, yes. Women have been programmed to care about these details, but it’s a great lesson in how to start and prepare for the marriage. The person who takes an interest in one thing, like the food, gets responsibility for that.

Another thing we emphasize, everyone talks about tradition, but tradition evolves. Men don’t always have only male friends. My husband included a close female friend who actually introduced us to each other in his wedding party. Women will try to cast a perfect chorus line of bridesmaids, but my brother was my “best man,” and I told my bridesmaids to just wear nice dresses.

Q. How does the advice in the book differ from what brides might find in “bridal porn?”

My mom’s very fastidious about some things, like how the invitations are worded. But all the wedding books say, “personalize it,” and she always says that personalizing it means depersonalizing everyone else. You’re ignoring other people’s tastes. Why should everyone have to wear a certain color because you like it? It’s based on “everyone look at me,” but you’re the bride, everyone already is!

Q. How did “Better Off Wed,” a sketch comedy show based on crazy wedding stories, get started?

Ireland Declares Thousands of Marriages Imaginary

In America, states don’t put too many restrictions on marriage licenses (for straight couples, anyway).  In some states (Nevada comes to mind), a couple can get a license and get hitched in the same day, with little more than a photo ID.  Almost anyone can become an ordained “minister” these days online through the Universal Life Church and be qualified to perform weddings with a few clicks of the mouse.

Oh honey, this is nice, but we're not actually married!

Religious organizations set their own rules, but to get legally wed in the U.S., you just need a license and a ceremony with a licensed officiant.  Not so in other countries.  In Ireland, for example, you need to be married in a state-approved location that is open to the public.  Doesn’t seem like too much of a burden, considering that that includes most churches and places of worship, but it doesn’t include places like foreign embassies, and that recently proved a huge problem in Ireland when thousands of marriages were declared invalid.

Though the rules have always been the same, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs announced last week that about 3,000 marriages were considered illegal and not recognized by the state.  And according to international law, any marriage not recognized by the country in which it was performed cannot be recognized in the couple’s home state either.  In other words, if a Danish couple gets married in Ireland and doesn’t conform to Irish marriage laws, the Danish government won’t accept the union either.

It’s unclear how the European Union will handle this snafu, or if it will interfere at all.  But now thousands of couples need to be remarried.  Or, in the eyes of the Republic of Ireland, married for the first time.

This isn’t the only case of unclear marriage laws.  In 2006, an organization called Women Living Under Muslim Law, which offers a network of support and advocacy for women around the world, produced an analysis and report of the ambiguities surrounding British law and Muslim marriages.  It found that many women were ignorant of the fact that in the United Kingdom, a marriage held in a mosque is not automatically valid; only a handful of selected mosques have been registered by the government to conduct civil ceremonies that will be recognized by the Registry Office.

Whose responsibility is it to disseminate the proper information about marriage laws?  And what harm does it cause, aside from massive confusion, when people make assumptions that aren’t correct?

Maid of Honor/Slave of Honor

I found this awesome video describing the duties of the maid of honor.

Maid of Honor Duties Unveiled

Some of my favorite tips include listening to what the bride doesn’t say and remembering that your social calendar is given over to the bride for at least six months prior to the wedding. I went straight to the source to find out what real Maids of Honor think of this kind of directive.

Me: “Hey Beth (my sister and Maid of Honor), what do you think of this video?”

Beth: Look of dismay. “Bullshit.”

Exactly. Since when did being a best friend – or worse, a sister or relative, because they didn’t choose to be related to you – mean that you become a slave to the every whim of the bride? My sister has a career, a live-in boyfriend, a cat, a puppy, an affinity for video games and horror movies, a personality and a life. She also lives out of state. There is no way she can attend every single one of my dress fittings, and why should she? I want her there to help pick out a dress, and I want her there to help me put it on on the wedding day, but I can make do with the in between steps without expecting her to take a four-hour drive to the bridal salon every three weeks.

And the idea that I get whatever I want might be nice, I guess, in some weirdo narcissistic alternate reality, but in this world, I’m not willing to make everyone around me miserable so that I can be a bridezilla. This instructional video wants you to believe that you’re lucky, privileged even, to be a maid of honor, and that sacrificing your personal sanity and happiness is a small price to pay for… um… getting to stand close to the bride, who you now hate with a seething vengeance and vow to humiliate with the frilliest of dresses when it’s your turn to get married?

A side note here is that the day should not revolve around one individual, it should revolve around two people, the bride and groom, or even better, around a celebration of family and friends. The marriage is about two people. The wedding is about sharing an important milestone and partying with your nearest and dearest – if it was just about the bride, she could just get gussied up and have a photographer follow her around.

That, I fear, is what some women would actually prefer to do.

Great Bridal Extravaganza

Last week I attended my first bridal expo, under the guise of journalism, to report back for the LuvBiz and get a general sense of how these things work.  I was pretty busy just documenting and live-blogging and really wasn’t thinking too much in terms of my own wedding.  Also, this was a New York expo and I’ll be getting married in the Lehigh Valley, PA, so I wouldn’t be using any of the vendors who were there.

For a minute-by-minute recap of the event, you can replay the live-blog here over at the LuvBiz, and check out my photos by clicking below.

My fave dress from the fashion show

I must admit, most of the vendors were pretty candid with me, as a bride and a journalist, especially when it came to explaining pricing.  When I asked if women were being savvier due to the recession, Jake from Sandra’s and Donath’s Florist told me that brides are coming to the table with more knowledge, which allows them to negotiate on even footing.  If you know, for example, what kinds of flowers are local and in season for your wedding, you can expect to pay less than when importing bulbs from overseas.

All in all it wasn’t too much of an artificial experience; in fact, because the only reason to be there is to either buy or sell, it had an air of directness that I could appreciate.  I plan on attending some other bridal expos, strictly as a bride-to-be, and I do wonder if it’s worth the cattle-call atmosphere to have vendors come to you.  At the very least, you usually get free (or at least included in the ticket price) champagne and little Swedish meatballs.

Cash registries: nauseating or necessary?

The below is adapted from our latest on theLuvBiz.com

The advent of the wedding website isn’t exactly new, but it seems to have proliferated in this semi-recent age of Facebook apps and Twitter shout outs. Engaged people (mostly ladies, let’s be honest) have many free options for creating a Wedding Website, but what’s the purpose of these sites?

MyWedding.com

A personal Wedding Website is different from a wedding/bridal blog in that its function is not to create or access a community; its function is usually to inform, and it’s not interested in receiving information, only disseminating. Brides can get free websites from the OneWed, eWedding, the Knot, and on and on…

While it’s easy to be enticed by the giant label of FREE when planning an inherently expensive event, where everything from cake-plating to extra tulle incurs an additional per-person fee, the wise bride might keep in mind that nothing is free. There’s a big fat monetary reason these sites offer free services – to provide advertising access. You have to sign up for something, and then you’re a target. That might be just fine with you, and at the very least it allows internet ads to be targeted, to be for products and services you might actually want. And the advertisers, in turn, want your cash.

Location dismay

Apparently it’s too much to ask for a reception site,

With: great lighting, nice ambiance, the ability to bring your own alcohol, the option to have cupcakes or other such whimsical and better desserts than wedding cake, space for a kick-ass band, a rockin’ dance floor, tables of different heights, classy decor, a no-simultaneous-events policy and proximity to both ceremony site and a gorgeous but not-too-pricey hotel,

And without: absurd cake cutting fees, rigid menus, horrendous aesthetics, disgustingly high prices for an open bar and a “head table” decorated with gaudy shiny trinkets and chair covers made out of someone’s Nana’s curtains.

Woe = me.

I often rail against brides insisting that THEIR wedding will be unique and so personalized and different.  Um, no it won’t be.  It’s a wedding.  It will probably be a short ceremony in which you walk down and aisle and make some promises, led by a priest or Wiccan minister or what have you, followed by a 4-5.5 hour catered affair at some reasonably attractive location.  Perhaps there will be music and dancing.  There you go.

The Luv Biz

Ladies (and the occasional gent), I’d like to introduce you to a new site, run by myself and four of my amazing journalism colleagues, called the LuvBiz. Making sense of New York City’s Love Industry from Dating to Divorce.  Click the link or find us at http://www.theluvbiz.com.  Here’s what we’re all about over at the Biz:

Our Mission: To give readers the news, the economics, the stories, and the lowdown on the love industry in New York City.

Who we are: Five journalists with a few guest writers popping up here and there.

The Goal: To eventually have a readership that contributes to the conversation. Stories. Anecdotes. Advice. We want to hear it all.

What you’ll find here: Stories/contributions dissecting the different love industries. How much did that wedding dress cost you? Or, how little did it cost? How much revenue does speed dating bring to venue it’s at? How does eharmony.com match you up? Why have words like bridezilla, serial monogamist, serial dater, etc. invaded popular lexicon? And why is there a need to “brangelina” every coupling?

What you’ll be hard-pressed to find: Put it this way, we’re not really in a position to help you plan your wedding or your dream date. You probably wouldn’t want us to. Plus, there are a million sites for that. We’re here to talk about why there are a million sites.

Save Money! Trick Your Guests!

Here is a new “money-saving trend” that I simply ADORE! Renting a wedding cake! That way, everyone will think you spent $1000 on this glorious, intricate cake but REALLY you’ll be serving them sheet cake from WalMart hidden in the back!

http://www.rentthecakeofyourdreams.com/

Seriously? It’s more important that people think you can spend oodles of money than to just serve them what you can afford? Could you possibly get any tackier? Why not just, um, SERVE A FRICKIN’ SHEET CAKE! Who cares?!

Seriously: Toilet Paper Wedding Gowns

Just watch this video, which I found via Recycled Bride. And note the use of the phrase “wiped the competition” in the narration. Hardy har har.

I think I might try to construct a dress out of nothing but used tea bags and Q-tips. Seriously people. There’s creative, and then there’s just weird and gross.