I Hate That I Want a ‘Wedding’

How I went from “Let’s get married in an antique train car!” to “I wish I could afford this hotel ballroom.” in 11 neurotic steps.

Step 1. Immediately post-engagement, I know that I don’t want a traditional wedding. I’m not a traditional girl, I don’t want to limit my decorating choices to 2 matching colors, and I just don’t get chair covers. I used to have pink hair- I can’t have matching pink bridesmaid dresses! I’m joining Offbeat Bride!

Step 2. OMG I love all these crazy creative ideas I’m finding- especially for venues! People get married in caves! In bookstores! Underwater! They have 5 total guests and wear handmade leather bustiers and use tin can centerpieces and it all looks awesome! I’m so amped to plan my alterna-wedding!

Step 3. Max out on non-traditional ideas like getting married in the heart of a bird sanctionary, in a hot air balloon, an antique bike shop, a discovery museum, an abandoned roller skating rink, etc. Adjust food choices thematically from hot dogs to custom grilled cheese sandwiches to fancy foodie strolling dinners to cake on a stick.

Step 4. Notice lots of other brides start off with ‘cool’ ideas (a mountain top! A fishing boat! A grungy rock club!) and end up at catering halls. Wonder briefly why they ‘quit’ and continue to research airplane hangars and medical-oddity museums.

Step 5. Realize that I do want: to hold the reception on a Friday or Saturday night; to serve dinner (or at least a lot of food); to have said dinner be yummy and of a good quality; to have seating for elderly and, well, everyone; to have everyone in the same room; to have normal, plentiful bathroom facilities; to have a dance floor and lots of rump-shaking dance music; to spend no more than the national average; to invite a reasonable but not especially small number of family and friends; …basically, I want a lot of things found in ‘typical’ weddings, afterall. Hm.

Step 6. Chic little art galleries, local bars and cramped historical homes do not offer enough space for the whole guest list. Also, when reviewing said guest list, the mantra “I’m alternative and my wedding will reflect that, damn it!” fades a little when I try to picture our 80 year old grandmothers seated inside large industrial blinged-out shipping crates, or perched on teensy mod stools placed precariously above indoor lakes in riotously neon nightclubs. Or my north Jersey, Coors Lite-loving cousins settling in at the test kitchen of a renowned (by me, anyway) liquor store to sample cocktails with no fewer than 11 ingredients each. Most weddings are ‘typical’ because when you’re dealing with 125+ people of different backgrounds and tastes, the few things the majority of them all agree on are that they want decent food, plentiful (normal) drinks and good music (and a comfortable place to sit). Hence the prolificacy of catering halls.

Step 7. Begin to absorb just how much effort would need to go into a lot of these unconventional wedding locations.

{Here is an incomplete list of things I would need to find, pay for, and coordinate myself: tables, chairs, linens, cutlery, glasses, bar set up (mixers, mix-ins, fruit, garnishes, shakers, blenders, ice, places to keep ice, portable refrigerators etc), liquor, permits, insurance, bathroom facilities, clean up/trash collecting, security and staff, food, drink, cake, servers, people to place centerpieces, hang decorations, bring out the cake and coordinate dinner time… oh, and each of these things has its own fee, plus tax, plus often a 20% gratuity. So sure, the rooftop of a former piano factory turned loft apartment building is cheap on it’s own, but when combined with everything else, it becomes more expensive than the nice restaurant next door. And that hotel in New Jersey is a lot more feasible for our guests than the base of an Icelandic volcano. Also, the hotel and restaurant have in-house event planners included in the price who do all the worrying for you. Read that last part again “ …[person] who will do all the worrying for you.” A designated worrier. Where have you been my whole anxious, OCD life?}

Step 8. Realize that while I haven’t exactly been dreaming of my wedding my whole life like a David Tutera worshipping pouf princess, I have had a picture of it in my mind, and radically, it involves me wearing a white dress and walking down the aisle of my mother’s church. It also definitely included me being nervous about nothing but saying “I Do” in the right place. I did not dream I’d be worrying that the bathroom trailer got dropped off in the caterer’s spot or that the DJ booth won’t fit through the ancient front door or that the pigeons haven’t been completely roused from their winter roosts in the ceiling. 

Step 9. Wrestle with my opposing visions of getting married in an architecturally beautiful but probably impractical former Carousel House (without heat or A/C, kitchen facilities or bathrooms), and my vision of enjoying my wedding day without being my usual bundle of nerves multiplied by being my own defacto wedding coordinator. Decide that maybe if I want to have a cool, weird wedding that only I and a few friends will truly enjoy, I should just do that with them, and not try to squeeze 100 of our unwitting family members into a tugboat. But if I want 100 people to come out and have a good time with us, in this case, compromise is best. Finally beginning to see that many of those offbeat ‘quitters’ were probably just smart girls who wanted to make their guests happy, as well as avoid giving themselves an aneurysm.

Step 10. Remember that personality is all in the details. By choosing a venue that takes care of the large but tedious parts (tables, chairs, food, liquor etc) you can focus on the cool, fun stuff, in smaller and easier ways. In high school, wearing green velevt Doc Martens was not enough for me- I had to pair them with, say, outfits constructed entirely of vinyl. As an adult, I am pleased to say I have tempered my propensity for excess. (I’ve found that many other people are pleased to learn this about me, too.)

Step 11. Step 11 is yet to be completed but involves fully committing to my resolve to make a compromise between what I want and what’s best for everyone, and will culminate in choosing a middleground venue. Which in a way, I think, makes me even more offbeat, because I’m not falling into the MeMeMeMeMe/It’s MY day/Bridezilla mentality, which to me is like subtley or not-so-subtely telling everyone from guests to your fiance to SUCK IT. And choosing to be practical is also Offbeat- at least when you contrast it with insisting you enter the reception on wires descending from the ceiling, or arriving in a fake pumpkin carriage, or spending a year's salary on one day. In the age of bridezilla, being reasonable is revolutionary.

I want to add that I LOOOOVE so many of the offbeat ideas I see on Offbeat Bride, and in fact love a lot of the ideas I mentioned above, and give mad props to anyone who pulls them off. Unfortunately I’m realizing that many of them, location-wise, are just not feasible for us, both financially and for the sake of our guests- and my overthinking worrywart personality. Low stress trumps originality in this case. {A message from my mental health advisor.}

Bridal Meetup

A few weeks ago I met another fellow bride for drinks and wedding talk. My new friend and I had met in the Offbeat Bride Tribe and had been emailing for a couple weeks. She was considering some of the same venues and I was able to pass along some of the spreadsheets other brides had been kind enough to share with me.

We met at The Dove Parlour, a very cute speakeasy-style establishment downtown, where she and her fiancé had first met- and then gotten engaged right outside of! She and I have had reverse paths, as far as locations go- she grew up in Brooklyn (and Seattle) and now lives in Jersey City.

We had a couple of champagne cocktails and discussed a whole range of issues, from the egregious assumed gender roles in typical weddings and how they’ve affected us, to fun ideas for Save the Dates.

She just booked the Newark Museum, which is gorgeous.

I’m very excited to have made a new friend, indulged in some wedding talk with a like-minded bride, and I’m looking forward to hearing more details of her wedding as they emerge!

Offbeat Bride just published one her blog posts about planning an offbeat wedding as a visually impaired woman, which she is. She’s also a second generation burlesque dancer with a Master’s from Sarah Lawrence in Women’s History, marrying an anarchist lawyer, in a wedding that will feature a cocktail hour amongst the classics and a reception full of swing dancing. Hurray for Offbeat Brides (and new friends!)

The Coolest Wedding I’ll Never Have

On Friday, Mike and I stopped by our local bodega for beer and on a whim, I bought a lottery ticket for Mega Millions, which was up to $300+ million that night. On the block and a half walk back, I wondered aloud where we should get married if won.

Here’s a couple of ideas…

I probably wouldn’t go nuts and do the ‘June at the Plaza’ route or the New York Public Library ($40,000 just to rent that place, without food or drink!) or anything like that if our wedding budget suddenly increased. What I would consider is something decidedly more modest- two Brooklyn venues that actually aren’t that far off from our budget. In fact, if we were willing to cut back the guest list a little, we could probably pull these places off.

First one: Galapagos in Dumbo. This place used to be in Williamsburg (their old building is now Public Assembly) then they renovated their current location and moved in 2008. They have multimedia artists in residence, rotating exhibits, performances and events (like the Busker's Ball, at which talented street musicians perform a concert, and Nerd Night, which is speed dating for geeks/smart people), and most famously, Saturday evening’s Floating Cabaret- in which  the cabaret is performed floating above the 1600 square foot indoor lake.

They have pretty reasonable drink packages, with a variety of caterers you can bring in. The prices are staggered for days of the week and time of day- you can even have a more ‘casual’ wedding that concludes with the floating cabaret performance.

Next- the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene. We see movies here a lot- it’s close to our apartment, and is only a couple blocks from the park in which Mike proposed. We love this place. They have movies as well as theatre, and shows in the Café space- which is also where you can hold your wedding. Those cool lights on the outside of the building? It’s right inside, next to them!

Pics pics

You can hang out here on Friday and Saturday nights for happy hour before the performances start at 9:00. BAM’s mission is to be the preeminent progressive performing and cinema arts center of the 21^st Century and most people agree they’re on their way- BAM Cinematek is regularly lauded, as are the performances. Alan Rickman and Geoffrey Rush both performed there this year. It’s one of our all time favorite places in Brooklyn. They are exclusive with one caterer. And god bless both both of these venues; they spell out their wedding packages right on their websites. I know other brides planning weddings will relate to what a rarity and blessing this is!

In the end, we’re not comfortable cutting the guest list, nor spending even a few thousand more than the absolute ceiling we set for ourselves, so these places will exist only in my dreams. Well, actually even better- in my every day life! That’s a perk of living in NYC. One person’s dream is another person’s happy hour- and sometimes, they’re the same person.

Veils

Let me describe my wedding attitude. Let’s call it my Wedditude. (No, wait, let’s not.) I am not a traditional person. However, I don't want to throw an idea out simply because it’s the norm. I don’t want to do something different just for the sake of being different, either. Nowadays there’s a new attitude towards weddings (wedditude wedditude) that focuses on making them not just personalized but meaningful and true to yourselves. So I’m looking at each element of ‘normal’ weddings and examining it to determine if it’s a good fit for me. (Er, I mean us. Right.)

So on that note, let’s talk about veils. To be upfront- I don’t really like them. At least not on me. Ok, I haven’t technically worn a veil since I was 7 and performed an original song entitled “I’m Getting Married” for a talent show my neighbor, her Irish foreign exchange student houseguest, and I put on for her parents (sample lyrics: “I’m going to marry, a boy named Harry, I’m getting Maaaarried!”) but my fashion sense has evolved a bit since then. (Saddly, my songwriting skills have not.)

Right, so, 3… er, 25+ year old me and veils don’t seem to match. But before I throw them out the window, I decided to investigate the concept.

Many modern wedding traditions have stuck around for hundreds of years. One theory on the origin of bridal veils dates back to the height of the Roman Empire. Brides wore veils to hide from evil spirits and protect them from the gaze of the evil eye. Vikings, asian cultures and many others believed in this superstition. In fact at one time veils were painted with flames to scare the spirits off. I’d like to see that trend come back! The Chinese actually carried wedding umbrellas (which connects to the wedding parasol look) and the Japanese wear really cool looking headdresses called tsunokakushi and wataboshi.

So- do I connect with this? Well, no, but that’s okay. If veils ward off bad luck, they could be considered a good luck charm. I’ve been known to wish on a star or an eyelash or a wishbone. I may not believe in it but the history doesn’t offend me, at least. It's kind of cute, like the whole Old, New, Borrowed, Blue (And a sixpence in her shoe) deal.

Another veil origin- arranged marriages. The bride was concealed so that the groom wouldn’t try to back out of the deal if she was ugly. Conversely, she was also covered in case she was very pretty, so no one would try to kill the groom over her beauty. Hm. I guess the grooms aren’t making out too good in these scenarios either.

Who dat?

The lifting of the veil was also a form of ceremony relating to the bride as chattel to be traded. The groom lifts the veil to symbolize opening a gift and taking possession of it.

The rise of veil popularity is actually accredited to the rise of Islam, in which veils rose in use by women and came to represent modesty and purity. This transferred to the ‘white wedding’ and was symbolic of a virgin bride, and again, the groom being the first to reveal her and take her virginity. The veiled bride portrayed submission, chastity, a willingness to obey her husband.

So, do I relate to this?

What do you think?

The Jewish roots are pretty interesting. A bridal veil conveyed the woman’s right to her personal space; a nod to the superiority of inner beauty; and a promise by the groom to clothe her from that day forward.

Well, okay. I like all those things.

In modern time, veils lost the bulk of their meaning and became, for most, simply an accessory. In the earlier part of the 20th Century, they shrunk to mimic fashion and economic climates- hence the birdcage veil. By the 1980s & 90s, the bridal industry had swollen with a love of excess, and veils ballooned in size. Who can forget Princess Diana’s 25 foot long cathedral veil train? Or Star Jones’ 27 foot long veil, which holds the record for the longest ever. (Wow, I could really go on at length with what I thought of Star Jones and her wedding, but let’s stay on topic.)

So now let’s just talk fashion.

Veils come in various lengths- most commonly elbow, fingertip (self-explanatory) and cathedral (which is floor length- or longer, if you’re very formal, a princess, or an ego-maniac talk show host marrying a gay man. Oops!) You also choose whether they are tiered or not, which seems to come down to whether or not you want a ‘blusher’- a piece that covers your face. Also called a chapel veil. Actually, I’m not going to even describe them all, try this glossary from the knot: Knot Veil Glossary.

Also mantillas:

And birdcage veils, also called Russian or fishnet:

To be fair, I think they look very pretty on some girls. It seems most people just see them as emblematic of ‘bride’, just as much as the white dress. Although it’s sentiments like the one below, from The Knot, that make me want to run screaming: 

“For photos that really say "It's my day!" you'll want a veil that makes a statement from the front as well as the back. One such variety is a fountain veil (also called a waterfall), which rises up from the top of your head. This style adds height, which may be desirable to petite brides, but it's a poor choice if it will make you taller than your groom.”

I cannot begin to describe the many ways that scares me. Ladies, I’m sure someone out there has rocked a fountain veil and rocked it good, but in my case, I would probably look like I had indeed just fallen into a fountain and climbed out with something stuck to the top of my head, drowning me in tulle. Pass. It’ll still be ‘my day’.

Hoo boy. Then you also have to think about the material, embellishments, and how you’ll wear it- barrettes, combs, pins, fascinator, or tiaras or crowns. Folks, I do own a tiara, actually. But I wore it as a 15/16 year old with flannel and plastic clothing, and once to a school dance with this exquisite little black Betsey Johnson dress that had a sort of faux wood paneling finish that I’ve insisted on keeping even though I’m not likely to see the days of Size 2 again anytime soon. But otherwise, yes, my tiara wearing was purely a la Courtney Love, i.e., ironically.

1996. I'm Miss World

Anyway, we’ll come back to this at another time when we start talking hairstyles. (Which happens to be the category Mike has his strongest wedding opinion about!) I feel pretty confident that I’m still going to ditch the veil, although there are some birdcage styles that have caught my eye. (And a few more that just look like they’d get caught in my eye.) And of course, crafty, stylish, and offbeat girls are creating their own unique looks!

So what’s my decision? Still leaning heavily sans veil- although I’m now sincerely concerned someone might glimpse my bridal beauty and attempt to murder Mike. But, it’s a risk he’s willing to take.

More Wedding Purchases- Books and Magazines

Today Mike is out doing his part for the wedding (oh, yeah, and our future and all that), doing a sound gig for extra cash. So I’m keeping up my end of the deal and planning ways to spend it.

{Note- we are contributing equally to the wedding financially; however, I am definitely fulfilling the stereotype of Bride Does All the Planning.}

Recently I bought some more books: Altared, a book of essays by modern women writers on contemporary weddings, including essays by Curtis Sittenfeld, Amy Sohn, Amy Bloom, Lara Vapnyar, Carina Chocano and Janelle Brown (and Julie Powell, blech); The Conscious Bride, a more scholarly exploration of marriage and bridal identity in the 21^st Century; and Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides.

 I’m still working through The Conscious Bride, but I finished Altared, which was a real treat, and I’ve actually started re-reading Offbeat Bride, written by the creator of the Offbeat Bride blog I mention so often. I identify with the Offbeat Bride label and get a lot of good advice and inspiration from both the site and the book. I highly recommend all three!

                            

Now for the guilty pleasures- the magazines! I love Martha Stewart Weddings and New York Magazine Wedding Edition a lot, but I’ll buy almost anything, both national issues and NYC/NJ specific. Today I bought:

Real Simple Weddings- purchase of this magazine came with a free year long subscription!

Brides, national edition- your standard wedding mag

Well Wed: New York edition. Goooorgeous 'wedding porn' here

I’m spending the day snuggled on the couch with my cough syrup (still getting over bronchitis, wah) and magazines while Mike puts in some overtime that’ll go straight into the wedding account. Happy Weekend everyone!

Engagement Celebration Dinner # 2- Brooklyn Brides & Wine

I went with 4 friends the other night, to celebrate all of our engagements. Okay, that’s a rather misleading sentence. The ‘friends’ were girls I’d met through Offbeat Bride’s Tribe forum, a private online community of brides (and grooms) run by Offbeat Bride. We met through a group defined by geographic locations. Noticing several girls in Brooklyn, someone suggested we all meet up in our home borough to discuss our weddings over wine.

Let’s take a minute to go over how much awesomeness is contained in that last sentence.

A night out in Brooklyn, after being bullied by weather into staying indoors for weeks? YES.

Discussing weddings? Oh, yes please.

Wine? Hell yes!

Meeting other brides? Hallelujah! (Almost as good as wine!)

The weather in New York (as well as many other parts of the country) has been atrocious. I believe we have had 5 snow storms in the past 30 days (and a sixth starts today.) Michael is already a homebody. Throw a few flakes into the equation, and he’s got an excuse to hunker down with a six pack and a PS3 controller until April. On the other hand, my favorite thing to do in a blizzard is bundle up and walk the mile to our favorite restaurant for dinner. So what if the subway lets off directly in front of the entrance? Braving the elements and slogging through fresh powder is half the fun! I usually reward Michael for humoring this weird impulse by lobbing snowballs at his head the whole way home in a (now slightly tipsy) effort to start a snowball fight. He’s so lucky to be marrying me.

January 2010 outside Moto

Anyway, so I was thrilled to be going out without having to coerce Michael with offers to pay for his drinks or fight over whether it’s appropriate to wear the sweatpants his mother bought him from a Jersey mall (that’s he’s been sleeping in for 2 days) out to dinner on Saturday night. And I was especially thrilled to be able to talk freely about weddings. My friends have mostly been indulgent of my constant wedding related chatter, but I am self-conscious of the fact that it seems to always be the #1 thing on my mind. I feel like the self-obsessed ‘my wedding is the event of a lifetime’ Bridezilla I’ve loathed for so long. It’s just that there is so much to think about! So many elements to consider, review, strategize, submit; so many people to contend with; plus budget, and dates, and personal style, and ‘couple style’ (ugh what an awful phrase), and food and drink and fashion and paper and flowers and favors and decorations part 1, 2 and 3 and vendors and venues and photo shoots and jewelry and honeymoons and hotels and lions and tigers and bears. Oh no. It’s hard to explain the exquisite pleasure and pain that goes hand in hand with planning. Very hard to explain. The same people that tell you, “It’s your day! Do what makes you happy!” will 5 minutes later say, “It’s just one day. Don’t go crazy” and both sentiments are true but often mutually exclusive.

Right. So, I am lucky not to have a ton of people telling me I need to do things a certain (traditional) way, but it was still great to sit with a group of girls, ask “How are you dealing with dressing your bridesmaids?” and have two of the four shrug and say, “I’m not having any”, then hear a third girl say, “I’ve just got one, and it’s a dude.”  It was awesome to reveal my wedding cake ‘surprise’ and hear squeals of “oh cute!’ and “great idea” rather than the silence and blank stares I got when I let it slip at work. Hurray for Offbeat Brides!

We met at Olivino's wine bar, recommended by one of the girls, and it was lovely. On Fulton Street in Clinton Hill, two doors down from the wine shop, it’s tiny and cozy with eclectic music, a super friendly bartender and a great wine list. For once I didn't try the champagne but had a nice Malbec instead. I will definitely go back. And I will definitely try to plan another night out. I can’t say enough times how fun it was to meet girls whose weddings were all a little ‘different’ though each in their own way. One is getting married in a gallery in Brooklyn, another in a restaurant in Vermont. Two girls are self catering. One’s wedding guest list is approaching 300, while another is well under 100. One girl had just come from trying on Vera Wang dresses; another will be gathering all her foodie friends for a group cooking experiment on the day of the wedding.
 

Bar Olivino

 

To reiterate, wine + offbeat Brooklyn brides + wedding talk + more wine = a lovely time had by all.

My Boardwalk Oceanfront Round Yummy Asbury Park Wedding

This right here is a front runner. It has the best of both worlds- a lot of character, cool history, awesome amenities, and it's not a wedding warehouse. Yet, they're a full service venue that does do amazing weddings (just not every weekend): McLoone's Supper Club in Asbury Park.

It's the old Howard Johnson's! Iconic building in Asbury Park, and it has a bonus of it's own- it is directly on the boardwalk, with the best views of the ocean, plus Convention Hall, the lawn, the lake and the Wonder Bar. All the great Asbury Park photo opps are as close as possible.

Cocktail hour is on the famous wraparound deck.

The reception room is dramatic and looks stunning in the dark. Windows surround so you're looking out and seeing Asbury and the beach all night.

The room is lined with booths, and then you can customize your additional table configurations and sizes, which I love.

What's great about the awesome architecture and abundant views is that traditional large centerpieces would overwhelm the room, so it's in your best interest to go small and simple- which helps out the budget too. They will even provide glass vases, which you can simply fill with your own flowers.

The food and drink packages are reasonable, and the cool thing about using this restaurant is that the food is actually good. No wedding rubber chicken here! There are price minimums to be met according to the night and season, but our wedding will be large enough that we can choose May or even June and not pay more. And, there's a 10% discount for Friday nights- I was already open to a Friday, and now I like it even more!

Mike's parents love this restaurant. My mom used to go to shows here all the time. I used to go to art opening parties here in the between time of the HoJo and the Supper Club. We have decided that if we get married in New Jersey, we really want it to be in Asbury. And you absolutely cannot beat this place in terms of location and views. We can pop across the street and stay at the Berkeley on our wedding night, have an after party at the Wonder Bar or Beach Bar, and hang out on the beach the day after if we want.

The cons would be that if it rains, the cocktail hour moves into the main reception room, and I am a little hung up on a separate cocktail space. (It's amazing, the 'traditional' wedding practices I thought I didn't care about that have now dug there little Wedding Industrial Complex claws into me!) I didn't want to hold any part of the wedding outdoors because I don;t want to be obsessively checking the weather up to the day of my wedding. But, I think this is worth the risk. The cocktail hour is just that, a single hour, after all. And I have to admit, after falling for the grandeur and size of the Berkeley, it's hard to 'downsize', even if this place has even more character.

But all in all, when we add in budgetary considerations, location, and emotional connections, this really is our front runner. Check out timmcloonessupperclub.shutterfly.com for more pics- plus these!