Wedding Blogs

(V's note: This post is really long and mostly inspired by the link below in orange. Most of the post is about wedding blogs in general, but the paragraph with the orange link is about marriage equality, so spend your time reading this post with whichever piques your interest more... If you can't read the whole, long thing, though, just read the linked post... it's sweet and wonderful and important to think about.)

One of the most inspiring and helpful parts of the wedding process for me has been reading wedding blogs.

For over a year now, I've been subscribing to a blog called http://www.snippetandink.com/, which is full of awesome wedding inspirations. Kathryn (blogger at snippet and ink) compiles pictures and first-person descriptions of real weddings, she posts inspiration boards (including the one that FINALLY ended my battle over what colors we would have at our wedding), posts a weekly round-up of cute/sweet/funny/charming links... her blog is pure eye-candy, and I love, love, love what she does! I'd have to say that about 70% of the ideas in my wedding ideas folder* came from Kathryn.

The more time I spent on Kathryn's blog, I learned that she used images and ideas from Martha Stewart weddings quite often. This makes total sense... Martha is Martha. She just DOES classy, beautiful things like none other. So, I go to their site, too: http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/. Now, there is a LOT of information to sift through on that site, but I like that the many contributors (who I imagine - perhaps wrongly, but still happily - were vetted by Martha herself) bring many ideas all together for me to check out. In many ways, I want the vibe of our wedding to be a little like both snippet and ink and Martha Stewart Weddings - classy, timeless, and a little nontraditional to represent the US in what we're doing with this big party.

As I got deeper into the actual wedding process (ie. actually got engaged instead of just being a weirdo planning a yet-to-be-decided wedding), I started looking for other blogs that might inspire me. I found a site called Grey Likes Weddings: http://www.greylikesweddings.com/, and I like what Summer (aka Grey) has as the mission of her site: Love, Well Styled. Unfortunately, that seems to be a lot of over-done, pricey, staged, model-looking (for all I know many of them are models) people getting married. Even if we had all the money in the world, I'd like to think we wouldn't rent out an island just for our nuptials**. Even though I'm often a little crinkly-nosed at all the idea that real people with real bodies, real money, real families, etc. could look like this on their wedding days, I still think that these weddings are beautiful and are a tribute to the art of photography, wedding, styling, and wedding planning. That being said, I think our wedding will be few of those things and still be awesome, so I look to Grey as more of a high-fashion magazine than a how-to this-is-for-you sort of site.

Recently, I found a dress designer I really like online (more on this later, I'm sure!) and was looking for reviews of her products. I found some cool indie bride sites (several of which were a little too indie and chic for me, I'll admit). Through that looking process, I came to a site called A Practical Wedding: http://apracticalwedding.com/. Kathryn has mentioned the APW staff MANY times on her blog, but I'd never gone over to check them out. They're much less about the pretty and much more about the nuts and bolts, and now that I'm out of the sort of fantasyland of pre-planning*** and into the reality of planning, APW is exactly what I need. Already, they are helping to keep me grounded and focused on the REAL that often gets lost in the pageantry of weddings.

The reason I'm writing this mini-round up of sites that inspire me is because of an APW post from today, which you can find here: http://apracticalwedding.com/2011/01/lgbtq-use-of-wife/. I REALLY recommend to anyone married, engaged, gay, fighting for marriage equality, fighting against marriage equality.... pretty much everybody who's ever thought about marriage to read this post. There's a lot I could say about how this post makes me feel, but I'd rather that you all read it for yourselves and feel your own feelings about it. I will say, though, that I'm continuing to look for ways to honor the fight for marriage equality as a part of my own wedding, and I'm hoping that some of you out there might have suggestions or resources to check out, which I will eagerly accept and try to integrate into our wedding.

Ultimately, the ladies (and gentlemen who support them and occasionally post on these sites) who take their time, energy, and talent to write the above blogs are who inspired me to start this blog. I'm hoping that other brides might be able to see what I've seen and be helped by it in some way. It's for me, my family and friends, too, but hopefully it'll be out there in the interwebs waiting for someone who needs guidance in their planning process. (One can hope, right??)

*Over the past year or so, I have been compiling and organizing pictures, quotes, ideas, links, etc. that inspire me in a wedding folder through Microsoft One Note. I would HIGHLY encourage anyone starting the planning process to look at this software. It's easy to use and has been really functional in helping me catalog all this information I've encountered on the webs without letting it overwhelm me.

**This is, of course, in my true style, an exaggeration. I'm not sure that anyone on Grey's site has actually done this, but there's a feeling about the site that they would...

***This fantasy land has been something like my inner princess running through every design heaven imaginable and pulling a Veruca Salt... You know, Willy Wonka, the "I want it now!" girl? Not that I've been bratty to anyone outside my imagination, but... well, let's just say that I probably can't have 5 or 6 centerpieces on EACH table. Put another way: I have a LOT of narrowing down and saying no (to myself!) to do!

P.S. I realized after I wrote this that I could've been fancy and done hyperlinks instead of link links, but I'm too lazy to fix it now... hope it's still readable and doesn't offend any fancy-computer-type people!

The nomenclature of engagement

I did not know how to spell fiance(e) until a few weeks ago. Well, to clarify, I wasn't sure which one to use for which person. Having taken Spanish in high school, a language that makes a modicum of sense, I was very confused by the -e -ee endings on fiance and fiancee. When I was emailing a potential vendor to ask about seeing a reception site, I had to google the spelling to ensure I wasn't turning myself into a man - insofar as the email was concerned at least.

Beyond the spelling of this new word, I am kerfuffled by its usage. I am so used to being a girlfriend who has a boyfriend (8 years will do that to you) that getting used to calling J* my fiance has taken quite a bit of doing. I am constantly catching myself in the middle of the word "boyfriend" and switching to "fiance". People think it's cute now. They're like "Aww, it's new. You're excited." Wait till they realize how poor my memory is (just shy of that guy from Memento)... knowing me, I'll be calling J my boyfriend when we're celebrating our tin** anniversary. Apparently I am not alone in this. J shared a story with me from work last week. He was sharing some bit of holiday news with his co-workers when suddenly one of the other librarians stopped to ask him who this "girlfriend" was that he kept referring to, and asked if he was seeing someone on the side. I think we're both going to need these not-so-subtle reminders that we have, in fact, taken a step in a new direction.

Then there's this whole thing with "we". Even though, as I said, J and I have been together longer than I care to (or even really can) remember, I have never REALLY thought of us as a "we". We were two "I's", coexisting happily. Now, I really feel as if we're some sort of unit of person-ness, which is hella-weird for me. Right after I got engaged as I was telling the story to people, I kept hearing myself say "I want to get married in October" and "I am really excited" and things of that nature. These statements kept sounding odd to me, and finally I realized that starting when J pushed that ring across the table at me, we were no longer two "I's". We are now a we. That doesn't mean I'm going to start talking for him or making decisions for him, but it does mean that we are sort of linked together now. I suppose it's possible that we always were a we and I was just too me to see it, but the focus has shifted towards a future and that seems to require a move from the singular to the plural.





*J doesn't want me using real names or posting pictures for now. He prefers we keep things a bit more private out here on the world wide webs, and I'm totally okay with that!
** Apparently this is the 10th anniversary gift??