Stinkerpants

It’s the Little Things

October 23, 2008 in Miscellaneous Ramblings

I don’t know why, but I’m having a really hard time with the motivation factor today.  What’s up with that?

Because I need to save my energy for actual work, I thought I’d share this with you today:

What is this?  This is my husband being really romantic.  The other day I was having massive cravings for apple juice.  I don’t usually drink juice, but I really, really, really wanted some.  I went out, and when I came home, that was waiting for me!  I swear, it’s the little things that mean the most.  :)

Loving the Programs!

June 12, 2008 in Miscellaneous Ramblings • Our Wedding • Ceremony • Cultural Stuff • DIY Projects • Drawings • Ramblings While Planning • Stationery

 This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Hey!! Today is LOVING DAY!!!! Do you know what Loving Day is? Loving Day is the day we celebrate the legalization of interracial marriage! And what better day to share my programs with you, I ask?!

Now, some of you are probably thinking, “what do wedding programs have to do with interracial marriage?” Well, let me tell you:

First, we are interracial (we’re getting the most obvious one out of the way first, clearly). Second, our program is all about being interracial (or rather, intercultural) because that’s what our wedding is all about. And THIRD, we actually mention this at the end of our programs.

Before I begin, I must say that I have never paid attention to or even noticed programs at weddings, but I never doubted that we would have them. Half of our guests are Chinese and won’t understand the Jewish ceremony, and the other half of the guests will be Jewish and not understand the Chinese parts. We also have our friends, some of whom aren’t Jewish OR Chinese and won’t understand any of it. Thus, the programs.

First the pictures, then some words, shall we?

This here is my sewing machine, all ready to sew some programs. Unfortunately something went awry in the machine and I have to take it in for servicing before I can complete the pink stack and the blue stack…but the green ones are all done, which means I’m 1/3 of the way through. Why three colors? Because everything is colorful at this wedding, and we couldn’t choose just one color for the programs. They’re all the same inside, though.

Here is the design of the program:

I’m quite satisfied with it, but MAN were these a pain in the neck. Believe it or not, the programs were a bigger pain in the butt than the invitations. First off, there was a LOT of printing to be done. These are slightly smaller than half of a regular sheet of paper. Two pages could be printed on one sheet–and there are 13 pages in each program. Plus the front and back covers and the little tag thing. That is a LOT of paper to sew through. It is also a lot of printing and cutting. But mostly it is a lot of ARRANGING. Arranging things in the correct order was a crappy job. Mr. CP and I did it while watching a really, really bad movie. The whole experience was incredibly painful, I’m not going to lie. But it’s over, so we’ll move on.

Here’s an inside page:

Now, for content.

On Page 1, we have our wedding day timeline.

Page 2 is kind of a welcoming. It explains how we met and thanks everyone for being with us.

Page 3 explains the meaning of our ceremony site and the meaning of “our” song–My First, My Last, My Everything, by Barry White.

Page 4 explains the order of the ceremony and reminds people that there will be a group photo in the ampitheater after the ceremony.

Page 5 explains how much our cultures matter to us.

Page 6 summarizes the Chinese traditions.

Page 7 & 8 explain the Jewish traditions (there are more Jewish traditions than Chinese traditions because we’re having a Jewish ceremony).

Page 9 thanks our parents.

Page 10 thanks our officiant and explains how we know her and why she is special to us.

Page 11 is for the bridesmaids.

Page 12 is for the groomsmen.

Page 13 is our “Last but not least” page, in which we honor the memory of our family members who have passed away, thank my aunt and my mom for creating the chuppah, thank my uncle for reading the Seven Blessings, and thank our fuzzy children. At the bottom of this page, we also write:

“Less than fifty years ago, our inter-racial marriage would be illegal. Today we are not only proud to be marrying one another, but we are proud to be Californians, now that gay marriage is finally legal.”

Without fail, that last part makes me cry every single time.

Okay, so I know this all seems needlessly thorough, but trust me, it’s actually really perfect. Mr. Cream Puff gets bored easily by these things, and even HE said it was great and interesting. Which I took as the highest compliment, of course. ;)

At a later date, I will be going through all of the cultural aspects of our ceremony in separate posts. If you guys would like to see the actual wording of any of these other pages, let me know! I would be happy to share them with you, but I didn’t want to make an ultra-long post. :)

To end this, how about a little bit of trivia? In 1948, exactly 60 years ago, interracial marriage was legalized in California. But it wasn’t until1967 that interracial marriage became legal in the United States. The history behind the fight for interracial marriage is very similar to the fight for gay marriage. Unbelievably, very similar reasoning was given for the “immorality” of interracial marriage, and a constitutional amendment was proposed to prohibit it (unfortunately in the case of gay marriage, the amendments passed in many states). I find it absolutely fascinating that it’s been only 41 years since the Loving decision, yet history is already repeating itself. Hopefully in another 41 years (hopefully less), it will be just as strange a thought that gay marriage was once illegal. Here’s to Loving Day! And here’s to really long programs!

The Wedding Backlash, Continued

June 11, 2008 in Miscellaneous Ramblings • Our Wedding • Ramblings While Planning

 This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Color me surprised! I never thought my post from yesterday would get so much attention! Thank you for all of your comments–I really think this is an interesting discussion and definitely worth a follow-up post. I’m taking a break from work in order to write it. :)

In addition to your current 73 comments, our discussion has inspired an entire blog post. Take a moment to read it–I’ll wait. Okay, are you back? Good. Some of you might be offended by what the author is insinuating–basically that we’re all kind of lame for caring about our weddings. I, for one, am not offended. On the contrary, I’m kind of intrigued. The entire post supports my musing from yesterday–which is that the judgment truly is there, and there is apparently a backlash. My confusion (and I am, honestly, totally confused), however, comes from the question of why. Why weddings?

It seems like there are a few arguments here. First, the idea that we are spending too much money on our weddings. Second, that we are spending too much time. Third, that we are feeding into an industry that tells us what to want, and we can’t help but do what they say. Fourth, that we are being socially inconsiderate by having weddings (impact on the environment, etc). Let’s start at number four and work backwards, shall we?

Reader livvie was the first one to bring up the idea of being socially conscious while planning your wedding. I think this is very important. In fact, I think I may start blogging on this subject every once in awhile. A wedding can definitely be a time to be socially conscious. I try to make socially conscious decisions on a daily basis (for example, Mr. Cream Puff and I share a car for conservation purposes–that car is a prius), and I have brought my values to the wedding planning (my engagement ring was my grandmother’s–had we not had her ring, we would have picked another type of stone). I was made fun of at work for being a tyrant about recycling. So I’m with you on that, livvie. However, I’m not really sure that it’s all that feasible for every aspect of a wedding to be socially conscious. I’ve made sure to ask important questions (for example, “is this chicken farm raised?” to my caterer) and I would never make the decision to haul my bridal party around in a stretch Hummer. But being totally socially conscious can be very expensive. I don’t have enough money to hire an organic caterer at $175/person (but believe me, I asked!), and I would venture to say that most people don’t. If I took all environmental factors to heart when planning my wedding, I would be spending a minimum of $50k, which might inch me into the “spending too much money” category. So yes, a wedding can be a great opportunity to be socially conscious. But it shouldn’t be the only time you make an effort to be socially conscious, nor should it be a reason not to have a wedding at all. To me, being socially conscious is about making the best decisions I can– not having a wedding celebration at all because I don’t want to have my rentals trucked 20 miles to my venue would be really sad to me. I don’t think that means I am a socially unconscious person.

Now, moving onto the “wedding industrial complex.” I’ve been engaged for over a year now. I can honestly say that during this year, I have not met one vendor–not one–who tried to pressure me into anything. And this is not because I am choosing the biggest package and therefore there’s nothing to talk me into. Most of the time, I’m trying to talk a vendor down in price on their absolute lowest package. The vendors usually say something like, “Weddings cost a lot of money, I totally understand…I can do X amount of money, but I gotta pay my bills.” Which, if you think about your wedding vendors as actual people who have actual bills to pay, is a pretty good argument. A videographer doesn’t just charge $2k to spend 12 hours with you on one day–they’re charging you for the hours and hours of work they put into editing the video after the wedding. If you assume that they spend another 40 hours editing (which is a LOW estimate of the amount of editing work, I think), they’re making less than $40/hour before taxes and overhead. That’s not exactly a ridiculous amount of money to be charging. I’m not saying that this “wedding industrial complex” doesn’t exist, but I just haven’t seen it. Maybe that kind of pressure is reserved for the insanely rich. I wouldn’t know.

As for the wedding industry telling me what to want? I resent the implication that I can’t think for myself. Furthermore, who cares what the wedding industry tells people to want? The nicotine industry tells people to buy cigarettes, the automobile industry tells people to buy Hummers and Mercedes and the fast food industry tells people to buy deep fried tacos. Who cares? This is something we deal with in all aspects of our lives, and we’re all grown-ups. I think we can handle the big, bad capitalistic “industries.”

Now…I will admit that I am spending a lot of time on my wedding. And maybe I’m a huge dork for wanting to blog about it on a national website. But you know what? I’m having a great time. For me, planning this wedding isn’t about having “the perfect day.” It’s about having a chance to be super creative. I live for DIY projects. Before the wedding, I would knit a bunch of scarves and then look at them and think, “now what?” Now I have a place to channel my creativity: “YAY! I can do this for my programs!” Gone are the days of pointless crafting. I have honest-to-god loved every second of every creative aspect of this wedding. That might not be everyone’s motivation for spending time on their wedding, but I know that it’s the reason for a lot of the Bees. I don’t think it’s right to assume that every bride is obsessing over her wedding because she wants it to be “perfect.” I totally don’t care if my wedding is perfect or not–what I do care about? The process of making all of my fun projects, and making sure that my efforts have culminated into a really fun day for me, Mr. Cream Puff, and our friends & family.

The money factor seems to be the issue that most people bring up. I find this confusing too. If it’s the lavishness (and of course, not all weddings are lavish) of weddings in a time of economic downturn that’s causing this, why is the focus only on weddings? As missrae pointed out, people who aren’t spending money on a wedding may be spending it on something like a giant gas-guzzling SUV or a huge lavish house, which they will then redecorate. Those things are very expensive. Someone my mom knows is pretty judgmental about weddings in general. His take on it is this: weddings are frivolous because they are not tangible things. If you don’t have something tangible to show for your money, it was a waste. Personally, I think that’s a sad outlook. I don’t have anything but memories to show for my trips to Italy, Mexico and Israel, but I wouldn’t trade those experiences for the world. If people want to spend money to enjoy their lives, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, so long as they aren’t hurting people or animals in doing so. As Mr. Cream Puff said, “what’s wrong with enjoying life and spending money that you’ve earned, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone? A wedding is a celebration and a joyous occasion shared by you and your loved ones. If you’re not going to spend money on that, I sure as hell don’t know what you should be spending your money on.”

So at the end of all this, I am still totally confused. I could go on and on and on (and I think I already have!), but at the end of the day I’m not really sure WeddingBee is the right forum for debating how people should be spending their money. I can, however, say this: I am an intelligent woman (I even studied Women’s Studies in college, gasp!) and still, I care about my wedding. I don’t think that by nature of being intelligent (or being a lawyer, livvie, sunflowers and Heather, haha) you can’t have any fun. To each his or her own. As long as it doesn’t hurt me, my fuzzy children or the environment, do what you want with your money and time. I’m not going to judge you for it. :)

Wedding Backlash?

June 10, 2008 in Miscellaneous Ramblings • Our Wedding • Ramblings While Planning

 This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Hey, have any of you guys noticed that weddings don’t seem to be “cool” these days? Outside of Weddingbee, the knot and the wedding industry, I mean. I don’t feel that any real negativity has been directed at me, but it does seem like people our age think planning a big (by “big” I mean lots of planning, not necessarily expensive) wedding is kind of…lame. Kind of like how pink and girly-girls are kind of “out.” Am I the only one who has noticed this?

I first noticed the negativity toward weddings when I came across a book called, “One Perfect Day, the Selling of the American Wedding” by Rebecca Mead. Actually, I came across an article in the NY Times about that book (which actually caused a major wedding freak-out during which I almost called the whole thing off!). Indirectly related is the media’s sudden attention to unjust practices in diamond mining (I, for one, am very thankful for that attention, don’t get me wrong). The conflict diamonds men buy for their brides-to-be seem to be more evidence supporting the argument that weddings are self-indulgent and shallow.

And that’s not all– I’ve noticed a lot of stuff in the media calling attention to the massive amounts of money brought in by the wedding industry; it is then implied or outright stated that people are wasting their money. Then we’ve got shows like “Bridezillas” or “My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding,” which chronicle crazy brides who spend exorbitant amounts of money fulfilling their childhood wedding fantasies, complete with poofy white princess gowns, 10 foot tall ice sculptures and thousands of dollars in “bling.”

When older women find out I’m getting married, they usually congratulate me and seem geniuinely excited for me. Sometimes I get the same reaction from girls my age. But I’ve also had people look at me and say, “I don’t really understand the whole wedding thing…if it were me, I’d just go down to the courthouse and get married. I don’t really need a wedding.” Which, of course, implies that I need a wedding. Which implies that I have some sort of deficit that I’m filling with a giant diamond, a three thousand dollar dress and a 300-person audience full of adoring fans.

And I so don’t want to be viewed that way. I don’t think any of us do. I think that’s why being called “bridezilla” is like, the worst insult ever. Last week I was in a paper store getting paper for a job when an employee at the store commented on all the “bridezillas” who want their paper to match. If a designer wants all their paper to match (ie, me), it’s not a negative thing. But with an engagement ring on your finger? You’re automatically labeled as nuts.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since. What is my motivation for having a wedding and spending a lot of money on one day? For me, it’s about showing our families a good time, and creating memories. Some of my favorite memories are of my cousin’s weddings. Family is super important to both Mr. Cream Puff and I, and really focusing on something pleasant in life is not something we are able to do very often. I, for one, am super excited about this. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Sure, this money could be put toward a down payment on a house (although it still wouldn’t get us to the amount of money we’d need!). But at the end of my life, I don’t think I’m going to think, “crap, I really wish we had been able to buy a house a couple of years earlier.” I think I’ll treasure the time spent with my family and my fiancé, celebrating.

What about you guys? What is your reason for having a wedding? Do you think you’ll regret spending so much money on one day?