quickie

My friend Jose Fritz posted about on-radio weddings in a gameshow-style ABC program that ran from 1945-1950. I link this for two reasons: 1. I like Jose, 2. it's obscure knowledge (like pretty much everything else he posts) and I thought it was kinda interesting (and topical).

new best idea ever

In case you were wondering, this dress is the new best idea ever. I hate how beachy dresses are slinky, because while I might be thin, I'm certain squishy, and even if I could convince myself in a store that clingy dress looks beautiful, the photos will tell the truth. This solves all my problems, and I am so totally 100% buying 6 yards of muslin to test with like, this weekend.



These clever ladies designed a dress out of two strips of silk that tie onto the bride, instantly rendering her amazingly glamourous. I saw this almost two years ago and have stored it in my mental notes long before I ever thought I'd be getting married. And no, I have no problem copying someone's idea when it's this awesome--MOH and I will have to play around with some muslin to try out different styles, so it's possible my dress will look entirely different. What's more, it passed the bridesmaids' tacky-o-meter too!



*love* Any thoughts on the dress? C'mon, you can be honest. I'll probably be working some extra fabric into the sides, I'm not a very leggy gal. The best part is that for a destination wedding, this dress will pack as small as possible, making it hassle-free.

scrappin it.

Okay, we're scrapping some old ideas now.

As I've mentioned before, our first two days of planning were all like "Yeah! And I'll make the menu! And we'll have friends cook it instead of a regular gift! And then we'll have our homebrew friends make beer for the big day and have an open bar! And we'll have it at a summer camp and do an overnight bit and omfg, check out our totally diy wedding!"

Within a week most of those ideas were bunk. No alcohol at summer camps. No alcohol brought in much of anywhere, actually. Nobody wants to cook your stupid menu. Also, that business is going to cost way more than just going to a normal venue.

Then it devolved further. DIY is more expensive AND you have to have your wedding somewhere with drop ceilings in order to do it [editor's note: ew, drop ceilings, they are the hallmark of a gross hall]. An open bar is going to multiply the cost of this thing. Our wedding is going to be boring, 4 hours long, and expensive. We won't really be able to take a honeymoon straight away. We'll have to put off buying a house for another year or two.

If we invite So-and-So, and He-and-She, we also have to invite They-and-them, even though we've only ever seen them at parties. And we go to a lot of parties for our three huge circles of friends.

So we're scrapping it. The whole plan.

And instead we're doing a destination wedding. Because I don't care what my centerpieces are, I don't care what kind of champagne toast we have, and I haven't found a single hall that's nice enough to warrant the price, even the cheap ones. We have relatively small families and the only people we really care about all that much are our immediate families, who will definitely be in on this. We are the perfect destination couple.

Right now thoughts are to keep it in the US so nobody has to get a passport, and we think Puerto Rico for three days of the wedding, then the Virgin Islands for our honeymoon because it turns out there's a Marriott there and we have plenty of free room points thanks to Dano's extensive work travels. We'll get to spend time with our guests, a novel idea. Nobody ever says "that was the best night of my life!" they always say "that was the best wedding I've been to," which is the equivalent of saying "That was considerably less boring than I'd anticipated," a testament to how boring those things are.

While I can't promise the best three days of anyone's life, I can give them an excuse to go on vacation and I'm sure it'll be way more fun. And also, way less expensive for us, not to mention a built-in honeymoon. We'll have a party upon our return for anyone who can't make it.

Rum drinks in coconut shells, here we come.

just dumb enough to work...

Best photobooth idea ever, thanks Awkward Family Photos! This way, everyone can get a shot with the bride & groom, and I have a feeling our friends will come up with some truly excellent scenarios to photograph, especially if we include props. It's just stupid enough to peak my curiosity (I am a collector of dumb shit I find that makes me laugh--and this falls WELL in line with that collection).

According to LifesizeCustomCutouts.com, this will run me between $120 and $170. SO doable.

uh oh

Considering making this public to my family . . . I have some neat info I wanna link to, like the Moissanite thing I just posted, and since everyone's been really cool by and large, I might want to limit the complaining and keep it just a place for everyone--family included.

I'm so bad at living this double life business (it's bad enough having to decide whether to sign emails as Aleta or Stephanie, and that's just for my impersonal food site), but I'm worried about giving up my anonymity when it might prove convenient later on.

The goal of this is really to get perspective from other people, so this is where you come in! Have any of you kept a wedding blog, and how did you deal with this situation?

major blingage

So I FINALLY have an engagement ring. Calloo! Callay! While I've been pretty online-chatty about the engagement, in person the only people who know are my Facebook friends and family because the moment you mention your engagement to a passive third-party, suddenly they're all straining their necks to take a glance at your left hand. And then I'm all "Well, I don't have a ring *yet*" which sounds like "Yeah, so my boyfriend mentioned possibly getting married and is just a browbeat away from caving in," when in reality I did get a real proposal, just not one accompanied with bling. So here it is! Set in platinum, and those two green thingies are peridot. There's also scrollwork (hard to see even in person) shaped like a stretched figure eight with a little spiral worked in. I like it!



Dano designed my ring and it's just lovely. Originally I wanted to avoid diamonds altogether because I think they're a rip-off. Then tradition got the best of me, and we briefly considered a synthesized diamond because they're about 1/3 the price of a natural one and we could afford a much nicer quality than otherwise, but even that was so expensive. Couple this with the fact that I'm not really a bling girl anyway, and I'd rather have a house than a $20k engagement ring. It'd be less weird paired with my gaudy costume jewelry. At the same time, I don't know that I could really bring myself to get a cubic zirconia because it loses its lustre after not too long and feels . . . apologetic.

So Dan found Sachs Jewelers in Shrewsbury who recommended Moissanite. Moissanite is a mineral similar to diamond, originally found in meteorites, but due to their extreme rarity in nature (usually as inclusions in diamonds and other stones) are now synthesized. The cool thing is that they are really not all that different from a diamond. On the hardness scale a diamond is at 10 and Moissanite is 8.5-9.25--similar enough to be sought after for industrial uses. So hardness is all well and good, but doesn't really affect the way my jewelry looks, right?



WELL, Moissanite also weighs in on the visual front. Its refractive index (a measure of "flashes" or how many times it sparkles) is about 10% higher (diamond = 2.417, moissanite ~ 2.670) so for every ten sparkles a diamond gets, my stone gets one more. What's SUPER cool, though is that the dispersion (a measure of how wide the color spectrum is bent by the stone) is more than twice that of a diamond (diamond = .044, moissanite = .104), so my stone throws off more than twice the color. So for all intents and purposes, it's a prettier stone! And unlike cubic zirconia, it'll last forever, just like a regular diamond.

Because it's synthesized, the clarity is excellent and there are no visible inclusions in the stone. The only limitation is that the stone itself is slightly off-white, though not visible in most light and probably not any more than ideal-cut diamonds might be anyway. I found information on this subject here.

Oh, did I mention that they're about a tenth of the price? Finally, it seems, that thrift gene has shone its head.

the mixer & the crystal, part II

Okay, I would be remisce if I didn't include photographs of this stuff. Also, got a really interesting comment from Melissa G that I totally want to share:

I think you may change your mind about the Crystal. I didn't really care for it, but my MIL insisted that we register for it. I pretty much planned to return it for store credit after the wedding but something made me hold on to it, and I'm so glad I did. I don't love it because it's fancy or expensive. I like that it makes a dinner feel special. To me it represents our wedding and our marriage. And a kind of tradition. We make it a point to use it at least once a month because what's the point if it's only going to take up storage?

Hope that doesn't sound like assvice. Just thought I'd lend some experience.

Melissa, that's actually awesome advice. I really enjoy the feedback because not many of my friends are married (except you Heather!) and so my lifeline to this stuff are my mom and future MIL, and neither of them has been through this in about 30 years. So, you know, even if I'm being snarky it's just because I'm trying to be cute, if you're reading you are totally allowed to disagree! And both Steph and Heather mentioned that their mixer was a good thing.



I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm pretty sure this thing is going to get some use. And it's such a pretty color (my favorite since childhood, in fact). Thanks, Mom.

The crystal really is quite lovely, and actually, as far as crystal goes, these things are pretty useful. BT-dubs, I mention the brands & patterns not to be a jerk off, but in case you really like it, then you know what it is! Future MIL gifted a lovely, simple vase because I always have flowers in the house . . . well, any time I have anyone over anyway. So yes, this will get, and already has gotten, some use. The brand is Mikasa, the pattern is Patridge.




My Memere bought me a lovely trifle dish, not too big, not too small, and with a scalloped edge so you don't have to fill it all the way. My mom has always made use of her trifle dish, and there's no way I can't fill that with lady fingers and cream. The next couple to come over for a four-person dinner party is in for a treat. The brand is Shannon by Godinger and the pattern is Dublin.



Oh! And one of Dan's cousins actually sent us our very first wedding gift almost immediately! I absolutely adore this soup dish. It has three pieces: there is a leaf-shaped plate underneath the cabbage-shaped tureen and the rabbit poking out is the handle for the lid. To say I got a bunny-rabbit soup dish really doesn't do it justice, but the photos sure do.




The card that accompanied it said it came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but sadly I can't find it anywhere online, which is just too bad. The dish is so beautiful and I would never regift it, but I would certainly buy it for someone else (thereby regifting a really great idea). For now I'll just have to live knowing I have a relatively unique item, how unusual it is to not be able to find something online!

The tureen is a reproduction of a common Bohemian tureen theme with a rabbit in a head of cabbage, and from what Dan tells me, his family has some history in Prague. This is the kind of kitchen thing that is pretty enough to live in the living room. Man, I just really love it.

why I don't want a Kitchenaid stand mixer

First of all: this is not meant to be an incrimination of anyone who owns one of these things. I do know people who use them quite a lot to great effect, this is just my take on it.

The Kitchenaid Stand Mixer: an iconic, sought-after wedding gift, on par with Crate and Barrel as a whole with its implicity in the wedding gift-giving firmament.

I hate the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. For one thing, I know more people who have one that don't use it than people who are big into baking and cooking and even own one. Couple this culture with the creation of a food website and you are met with all kinds of incredulous comments.

"You don't own a Kitchenaid? But I thought you baked all the time!"
"How do you beat egg whites?"
"How do you make cookies?"

Now, keep in mind I've also met people who didn't know you could make cookie dough from scratch and previously thought that from scratch meant buying a chilled roll of dough, slicing it and baking on a cookie sheet. I'll ignore that extreme and explain why I've never wanted a Kitchenaid.

• They're a status symbol, and I'm not really into that kind of thing. They are pined-after, expensive and ultimately unnecessary. And they perpetuate the myth that you need a long list of kitchen gadgets to be a "good cook."
• They're heavy as hell and take up a lot of space on your counter and you have to wipe them down every time you clean the kitchen or they get that gross dust/film on them.
• The vast majority of recipes don't require a mixer.
• I can think of a sub-list of other things I'd rather spend $300 on, including, but not limited to, a Dyson, a new rug for my living room, a credit card payment, and a tattoo.
• It would encourage me to bake more often, and I already have a hard time curbing my sweet tooth.
• I already have a Kitchenaid stand mixer. It's me, standing there with my Kitchenaid hand mixer for about 5 minutes, which is more than most recipes need anyway.

I don't know how many bridal shower pictures I've seen with a woman dramatically draped over her new Kitchenaid as though it was the machine she was marrying rather than her fiance, and look, getting engaged has already paid off. And ooo! It comes in Sassy Woman Red, Country Kitchen Blue, Clearance Industrial Grey, Dramatic Black, I'm Obnoxiously Sunny Yellow and Breast Cancer Pink! Women who have baked about three batches of cookies in their adult lives are registering for these things, hoping that its very ownership marks a new era in being a Stepford Wife who suddenly, magically knows how to cook. I would imagine that this endeavor often lasts a month at best, if it even comes to fruition for a moment.

And lastly, the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer also drives home the idea that getting married ought to involve overpriced *stuff* because that's why you get married. We'll focus on the presents now--worry about the marriage itself later. I even considered adding it to my wedding registry then checking it off as received so as to discourage anyone from generously gifting something I've repeatedly said I don't want. On a side note, one other thing I don't want: crystal.

So naturally, the meeting of the parents yielded:

• One crystal vase
• One crystal trifle dish with four crystal dessert dishes
• One Green Apple Kitchenaid stand mixer

Now it bears mention that I absolutely value the generosity of any gift at all, and I am completely appreciative of the thought that went into them. I think my mom sensed (or more likely, already knew) my lukewarmness toward the crystal (she was the one who gifted the suddenly-beloved Kitchenaid), and she pointed out that while I may not want these things now, I probably will want them in 10 years and this is the one time you get any really nice gifts so you might as well hold onto them. And upon reflection, I believe her. I may not have a lot of room in my kitchen now, so I can throw this stuff in storage, pull it out for fancy occasions, and maybe some day have a china cabinet to stow it away from the dust.

Until then, I'll work on my meringue and maybe even get a loaf of bread properly kneaded.