the Bride and the Journalist

]]> http://thebrideandthejournalist.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/a-change-in-venue/feed/ 0 megfinn17 http://thebrideandthejournalist.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/unsurprisingly-dignified-a-chat-with-bina-martin/ http://thebrideandthejournalist.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/unsurprisingly-dignified-a-chat-with-bina-martin/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:51:33 +0000 megfinn17 http://thebrideandthejournalist.wordpress.com/?p=97 ]]> 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?

A. I was teaching a writing class at Second City [the comedy theatre and improv school that churns out mega-talents like Stephen Colbert and Tina Fey] and there were four women in the class. They had written so many scenes about weddings! They came to me and said, “We’re thinking about writing a wedding show.”

The show opened last week, and the cast said it was like planning a wedding. They brought in decorations, did marketing, had favors at the tables. What’s great is that we can show all the gaffes that go on at a wedding without having to fix them.

One thing we were adamant about is that we show people who really like each other. Sure, we can show the pitfalls, but I want these couples to have a reason to get married, actually love each other.

There are scenes for guys, too, like a sketch where a man wants to have a Bears Superbowl-themed wedding. When we were planning our wedding, someone asked my husband what the theme was, and he said, “Um, isn’t the theme marriage?” That’s what it’s supposed to be!

Q. It seems that reality TV often shows us the craziest examples of weddings and the wedding industry gone horribly wrong.

A. It’s such bad preparation for a marriage, who would anyone want to marry any of these bridezillas? We thought we had heard it all when we wrote the book, but it apparently knows no bounds, the behavioral stuff. We’ve heard from a caterer who was scolded by the upset bride at the wedding for making twice baked potatoes instead of scalloped. I saw an engraved bridal shower invitation with the bride’s bra size and measurements printed on it.

Registries have gotten so outrageous, asking for cash, asking to pay for your bills, the whole idea is just so rude that you just tell people what to buy you. The opposite is that if you don’t register, people think you just want the cash. A gift is optional. My mom says it’s become like exchanging shopping lists.

[Read more about cash wedding registries.]

Q. What’s the single most important piece of advice you’d give to brides?

A. Think of it as this is a day when you’re bringing families together. You can avoid a lot of fights and a lot of so-called stress and pressures. Just get rid of the whole ideas that it’s my day – it’s the fastest way to make everyone hate you.

Interview conducted, edited and condensed by Megan Finnegan, originally for theLuvBiz.com.

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?

For one thing, a couple that assumes they’re married legally might not find out they aren’t until something dire happens – a spouse needs to make medical decisions for the other and is challenged by a family member, or in matters of next of kin.  Or a woman could think that she’s trapped in an oppressive marriage, not having the ability or recourse to seek a divorce, when in reality she could legally walk away at any time.  It’s a messy state of affairs, even aside from the emotional letdown it would cause any happily married couple to discover that their special day was just a big party in the eyes of the state.

The best thing anyone can do to avoid confusion is to go directly to the government office that regulates marriages in whatever country you plan to marry or live.  This is especially important with the ever-growing popularity of destination weddings.  For US citizens, you can check out what the State Department has to say.  For those in Ireland who might have to get married again, I can only suggest that you make the most of it and have a super fun, “Hey, we weren’t actually married before but now we are!” party.  Just don’t expect a second round of gifts.

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.

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.

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.

Honeyfund.com

The other facet of these sites is the message that brides, in turn, pass along to their guests (or anyone with a browser). All Wedding Website templates allow for a link to the couple’s registry, and there are now specific registry services that, as MyRegistry.com puts it, “can tastefully request and accept cash gifts without any stigma attached.”

Oh really?

Honeyfund is a site that allows couples to register for amounts of money. For example, one can list a certain number of “gift certificates” for certain dollar amounts under the “requested” column. Many sites exist to register for honeymoon items, such as “Dinner for 2 in Aruba,” or “snorkeling lessons,” but in the end, these are also just gifts of cash, supposedly earmarked for particular tropical outings.

For the record, I think that asking for cash, no matter how you do it, is horrible.  You can adjust the record if you take the poll. Tell me what you think.

Click to take the poll!

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.

But now, as I browse through Lehigh Valley reception sites when I should be doing work, I sigh at every one, thinking, “Ugh, I don’t want a wedding somewhere that’s hosted a thousand weddings and will make me do it the same way.”

Hypocrite = me.

Then I started thinking of alternative options, like an art gallery!  Original, I know.  But the Allentown Art Museum isn’t exactly what I had in mind.  (And over here we have another wooden chair, crafted by some people about 60 years ago.  Next to that is a painting of some grass.)

I might attend the Lehigh Valley Bridal Show, but I fear my own snobbery will keep me too distanced from the whole affair.  The problem is that now I have Brooklyn/Manhattan tastes with a small-town New Jersey/Pennsylvania budget and location.  I also get immediately turned off if a place doesn’t have a functional and informative website featuring good photography of past events.  That’s not helping me.

Anyone out there have any advice on how to keep my aesthetic integrity and remain budget-savvy?

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.

So if you’re in the New York Metro area, or are just generally interested in city-life/love (and really, who isn’t?), check out our site.  Occasionally, the Bride and the Journalist might have complementary content, and we’ll point it out, but we will continue to make fun of the bridal industry while feeding into it over here.  The LuvBiz will make fun of everything else.  Just kidding.  There will also be news, photos, fun stats and witty analysis.

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?!

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.