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.
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…
Big production proposals and being true to you
Like so many of you here on Offbeat Bride, I was never one of those girls who dreamed about what her wedding would be like. I never dreamed about getting married in a big white dress and having children and buying a home. My partner G knew this about me and was fine that I had no pointed interest in getting a ring on my finger on any sort of timeline. I’d said that many times over the first couple years together and one of the sweetest things he ever said was, “Well, if I thought you wanted to get married I would have asked you a long time ago. If you ever change your mind you’ll have ask me. So after nearly six years together I did just that.
“Oh, I’d never do that” or how getting married has turned me into a liar
Apparently when you tell friends and family that you’re happy the way you are and that you can take it or leave it (“it” being matrimonial bliss), that you’re out of yo’ damn mind. But that’s not what makes me a liar, since I’m still stickin’ to my guns that I’d not made any sweeping declarations regarding marriage. But still… in the past month or so, I’ve been scratching my head about and thinking “Huh. I am such a liar.”
My Nigerian engagement ceremony bridentity crisis
I’m generally of the belief that your wedding is not always about you, but it should reflect you: your beliefs, your values, and your community. But how could I feel good about a ceremony where I didn’t feel like myself and nothing else felt like me either? In the end, it was really been a two-step process…
Why wedding planning brings out my inner Andy Rooney
There’s the Offbeat Bride for whom “typical bride stuff” is already too much to think about. In fact, it kind of turns her into a cranky old man. That bride is me. And in my head, that cranky old man is the late Andy Rooney, whose out-of-control eyebrows and ranty commentaries on modern life used to comprise the last five minutes of “60 Minutes.”