How being a bridesmaid taught me to embrace my inner fancy bitch
When I got married two years ago, budget budget budget was the focus of the day. This meant forgoing a big expensive dress, keeping costs low on the honeymoon, having a lunch instead of a dinner wedding. Looking back on my wedding, I have no regrets and didn’t miss wedding planning afterwards. But then I got invited to be a bridesmaid for my little sister. Upon hearing that I could choose my own dress and shoes, something deep deep within me that had been suffocated since my own wedding has reared its head.
Discarding wedding traditions and getting married on our own terms
With every questionable-twist of the lip, my matrimony-related-decision-making process, comes slightly un-done and I’m left asking myself; if the decisions I’m making about our wedding, which will ultimately be the bunting-draped rocket that launches us into married life, are the right ones for us? I’m talking about the decisions that dictate how much, and what kind of tradition we’ll be incorporating into our marriage. This I know, is the female fiasco that plagues every slightly-inclined-to-call-herself-feminist-thinking bride to ever question the merits of “something blue.”
5 step “WIC-whiplash” recovery: how to calm down when you feel pressured from all sides
Do you ever feel like you’re getting it from both sides: you’ve got pressure to be more traditional and materialistic on one side, and on the other side, you’ve got pressure to be uniquer, more special-er, authentically truly meaningfully YOU-er. Back! Forth! Back! Forth! I can resist tradition! I don’t want to avoid something just because it’s traditional! I like chair covers! But I can’t like chair covers! Everything we picked is personal! Now it feels like of embarrassing…like it’s over the top and “me me me”!
THIS, my friends, is what one reader coined as WIC-whiplash (WIC-lash?). Together, we’re going to take a deep breath and try to get over it.
A poly wedding: My decision to marry my boyfriend while I’m legally married to my husband
When my boyfriend first mentioned the possibility of getting married someday, I was taken by surprise. “Sure, I’d marry you if it was legal,” I told him. And he asked me: “Who cares if it’s legal?” We’re polyamorous, and I’ve been legally married to my other partner for over a decade. I had somehow never really considered that we were free to get married, too, regardless of whether or not the law would ever recognize it. My boyfriend and I were already committed to sharing our lives together, building a family. Did I really need some kind of ceremony to solidify that?
Dear Bridal Industry, we need to talk about “looking pretty” on our wedding day
Dear Bridal Industry, I will not allow myself to become caught up in your ideals of what a bride “should” look like. I will not become sucked into your standards of beauty, ones that are different from my own. I will not let you dictate to me what pretty is, and isn’t.
Speaking of which, here are more things I refuse to do…
How life and a terminal illness inspired us to elope
The topic of elopement came and went several times, but we both decided that a big, beautiful wedding was the way to go for us. Then life decided to get involved. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Neither of us could ignore the incessant ticking of the clock the doctors had set for me, though. So the topic came again: to elope or not to elope?