Archive: December 2007

As a follow-up to my thoughts on weddings, I’ve described the wedding that JG and I put together over when we got married over two years ago. At the end of the day, I was happy because I was married, no one got sick or fell over from the heat, and everyone liked the food. The quick version is that we got married on the hottest day in June that year, I wore a dress from J. Crew, we ate barbecue chicken and strawberry shortcake, there was no dancing, and we took off in JG’s beat-up Subaru before leaving for a cruise to the Bahamas. We opted to have a casual wedding so that we could invite all of our friends. It wasn’t a fancy affair, but it was just right for us. I still gaze lovingly at my wedding dress and flip through the pictures fondly.

The (much) long(er) version is after the jump…

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My blogging days did not start until after I got married, so I have never really broached the subject of wedding-planning in detail because I didn’t think a two-year retrospective would have been all that interesting. Apparently, Jess does. Without further ado (and because I love an excuse to talk about weddings), I present a two-part mini-series in which I will discuss my perspective on weddings in general and the motivation behind the decisions I made for my own wedding.

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When I was planning my wedding, two other girls in my office were doing the same; our three wedding styles ran the gamut of price, style, and stress level. Since I was the least stressed out, I earned the nickname, “Zen bride.” Now, I am not typically labeled “Zen.” Or laid-back. Or easy-going. I am as tightly wound, structured, and rigid as people come (I am working on it), so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a rather c’est la vie mindset about the entire planning process.

The attitude sprang from a conversation I had with an older friend who had been married for about ten years. I was debating whether or not to create guest gift bags to be waiting in hotel rooms, but the cost was significant since almost everyone would be traveling. I made some comment about how I couldn’t justify the cost and effort to create all these gift bags, but I wasn’t sure what people expected when they went to a wedding, so maybe I should just hunker down and make the darn things.

My friend looked me straight in the eye and said, “Listen to me. It is not about the guests. It is not about their expectations. It is about you and JG. You can’t waste your time thinking about the guests because they are there for you. It is not about them.”

This wedding is about us, I repeated in my head. How novel!

The subliminal messages from the bridal magazines that littered my dorm room floor had seeped into my brain, persuading me that weddings require certain behavior, people expect certain things, and once-in-a-lifetime memories have a certain price tag. I had become, as JG later coined, Bride Stupid. I suffered from a paralyzing state of mind that somehow made me think that it was logical to agonize over matching shades of green, debate spending hundreds of dollars and hours of time to create gift bags with lotion in them, and feel monstrous guilt over not paying for bridesmaids’ hairstyles.

That conversation snapped me into being Bride Smart. I didn’t give a second thought about gift bags afterward. I didn’t bother making or buying favors. I left my bridesmaids’ shoe selection up to them. I gave fabric swatches and color preferences to my florist and let it be. As I told my co-workers, I was going to be happy as long as I ended up married by the end of the day, no one got sick or fell over from the June heat, and people liked the food. I didn’t have the brain space to worry about all of those tiny details: no one needed a gift bag, I never liked toting home useless wedding favors, I wasn’t about to tell someone what kind of shoes to buy, and what did I know about flowers? I simply did not care.

“You say it’s all about me and my fiancé, but what if what we want is to match invitations to our cake, hire a horse and buggy, and coordinate the arrival of 500 guests in trolley cars?”

Well, that’s fine. Do what you want to do. Just don’t expect me to have sympathy for you when you’re gnashing your teeth because missing response cards make you guess at a count of trolleys. Try your best to remember that, while your wedding is about you two, it does not give you license to transform into unreasonable customers, family members, or friends. Don’t act like planning a gargantuan wedding is a sentence a judge has laid on you.

Don’t think that I was not stressed out during my wedding. Trust me — I was. No one warned me that the wedding rehearsal day, when our two families collided for the first time, could be the most trying day of the entire process. Between setting up for the wedding reception, going through the ceremony, running interference between troublesome family members, and making our way to the rehearsal dinner, I was not a happy camper. Being the sole question-answerer was such a strain on me that I hardly enjoyed that day at all. I didn’t allow myself to thrill softly, “I’m getting married tomorrow!” Instead, it was all about tablecloths, layout, processional order, and starting on time, so help me. In hindsight, my friends and family could have figured out how to do the tablecloths without me. There was a diagram for the table arrangement. A friend of mine was overseeing the processional order for me, and our pastor made sure that we were on schedule. I chose to clutch at the idea that I was in control rather than stepping back and enjoying the idea that I was getting married the next day.

All of this is not to say that weddings are not important; I’m saying that weddings aren’t that important. They shouldn’t inspire anxiety attacks over shades of tulips or a lack of organza chair covers. Getting married, however, is a hugely important deal, and it should not be confused with all of the trappings of being a bride. It’s a declaration of a life commitment; it is a happy life milestone. Weddings can be sophisticated, personalized, coordinated, designed, and engineered, but at the very base of it, they should be happy.

When I talk to my stressed-out, engaged friends, I try to remind them that a wedding is a big deal, but it is not that important in the grand scheme of things. It should be a happy occasion, but they are not responsible for responding to guests’ expectations because it is not about the guests. The wedding is about you, I tell them, but please be nice about it.

“3 … 2 … 1! Yes! We won! We’re going to the championships!”

JG’s triumphant cry at Delaware’s victory over Southern Illinois rang out on Saturday evening. In the event of the win and berth to the championships in Chattanooga, Tennessee, we had discussed having a little get-together to watch the game on Friday, which happened to fall on JG’s birthday, conveniently enough. He had forbidden me from making concrete plans until the win was final, but I had a list stewing in my brain, just waiting to be executed. I turned to JG to ask about a guest list and whether he wanted pigs-in-a-blanket or wings, but I stopped short when I saw him hold his phone up to his ear.

“Dude, are you watching this? Do you want to go to Chattanooga or what?”

Uh, what?

“I can definitely take the day off that Friday. … Tickets go on sale on Sunday, and I think season ticket holders get some kind of advantage. … Okay, call me tomorrow!” He hung up. “You’d let me go, right?”

Let him? What just happened?

I proceeded cautiously. “What does he think about going?”

“He has to talk to some other guys first, but he definitely wants to go. How awesome would that be?”

“Yeah, that would be really cool. Did you two talk about this beforehand? I wasn’t even aware that you were thinking about it.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up and jinx the game, but it was always in the back of my mind.”

Oh. I wish I had known about that. “When would you have to leave?”

“Probably late on Thursday, after work.”

I did some quick calculations. The game was at 8pm on Friday night, so if the drive was 12 hours long … I wouldn’t get to see JG for the 36 hours surrounding his birthday.

“Okay. Well, um, just let me know what you guys decide.”

My mind swirled. I was ready to spend JG’s birthday with him. I had presents and a scheme to make cupcakes all set to go. I had no other plans for the weekend. It was out of the question for me to take Friday off, so I had never even entertained the option of going down to Chattanooga. The vision of game night at our house (with a side of birthday fun) was vaporizing before my very eyes.

I fretted all through dinner and the rest of the night. I couldn’t be hurt that JG automatically turned to his guy friend because I couldn’t possibly take the day off from work. (But I’m the football buddy!) He didn’t intentionally hide the plan from me; it was just a sports superstition thing. (What about the plans for the party?) It would be a really fun trip, especially for his birthday. (Doesn’t he want to spend his birthday with me?) JG was able to take the day off, so there was no reason not to try for tickets. (But I want to go, too!)

The worst part was that I didn’t feel comfortable telling JG that I wanted him to be at home. That it would make me really sad to have to watch that game by myself, from home, with a stack of birthday presents next to me, and know that I couldn’t be with him. That I wish I had known that he was thinking about going down to the game. That I really wanted to give him a shindig at home as a next-best option. But all that would have been selfish. It wasn’t like it was my birthday.

It’s not fair, I moaned internally. By making it seem like I have some sort of say in the matter of whether or not he goes to the game, he makes me the scapegoat or the hero. It’s either “my wife is so awesome because she understands that I wanted to be at this game” or “I can’t come, guys, the wife wants me at home.” I would have preferred that JG made a decision, even without my input, and left me to the consequences. At least I could have been angry with a clear conscience.

That night, I climbed into bed with a sigh. I could take the high road, tell JG to go to the game, and silently hope that he would telepathically understand the sacrifice I was making. I could be honest, ask him to stay home with me, and then wonder if he resented the fact that he could have gone to the game. If those were my choices, neither the high road nor the honesty was all that attractive. I could say nothing and let the guys decide whatever they wanted. I knew that if I didn’t say anything, it would be to get out of saying, “JG, I don’t want you to go to the game.” That wasn’t the case; I did want him to go to the game, but I was torn at the thought that we wouldn’t be together, especially on his birthday. That was the real issue.

Finally, I turned to him and said, “I would really like to be with you on your birthday. That’s not to say that I’m not letting you go to the game. I just wanted to spend that day with you, that’s all.”

And all at once, my brain was deluged with guilty misgivings that I was being manipulative. What if he thinks I’m playing him? Am I actually trying to make him stay, in some underhanded way? Am I telling him that he has a choice, when I really want him to pick The Right Choice, that is, staying home with me? That’s not what I’m saying! What am I saying?

JG wrapped his arm around me. “No problem,” he said. “You just have to promise me that the next time Delaware makes it to the finals, you’re coming with me.”

Deal.

In college, JG and I used to throw together semi-spontaneous game nights in a common area of our dorm because we were, and still are, the consummate party-hardy types. (Ahem.) Depending on the number of people, there would be several areas of play going on at once: Catch Phrase, Dutch Blitz, and spades made appearances, but I inevitably huddled on the floor to play Cutthroat Anagrams.

I learned to play this anagramming game during a summer college program I attended during the summer before my senior year of high school, and it played to my strengths so well that I was on a constant mission teach others how to play so that I could whip them. I mean, I wanted to spread the joy of a fun game…

Uh, anyway, the game is pretty simple, and it works best with at least 4 people:

• Dump Scrabble tiles onto the floor and arrange them so that all of the letters face down. Players should circle up around the tiles.
• One by one (we usually go clockwise), players flip over the tiles in the center. If a word (3 letters or longer) can be formed from the exposed tiles, a player can say that word, take those tiles out of the center, and arrange the word in front of him. That player then flips the next tile.
  - For example: If C, A, and T, were all flipped over, the first person to say, “cat” or “act” would take those tiles out of the center. Ties are generally settled by popular consensus of who was first.
• As players continue to flip over tiles, they can form words from both the letters inside the circle (as above) and words that others have made — hence the cutthroat aspect. There are no limitations on the number of times a word can be stolen.
  - For example: If someone flipped over a K, a player could steal CAT from the player who claimed it and anagram it to form TACK.
• If a player flips over a blank tile, put it aside; they are not included in play.
• Play continues until no additional words can be formed. Players tabulate their scores by counting up the Scrabble values of the letters in their possession. Letters remaining in the center do not count toward anyone’s score.
• Limitations on word formation:
  - Words must be at least three letters long.
  - Words must appear in the Scrabble dictionary to be valid. If a word is challenged successfully (i.e. the word is proven to be fake), the letters return to where they started.
  - Anagrams cannot include derivations of the original word.
  - - For example: CAT could not be stolen to form CATS. DATE could not move on to form DATED. However, it would be legal to anagram CAT to CART and DATE to FATED.

There were several regulars who enjoyed the game as much as JG and I did, and we had a good time talking smack and coming up with new word combinations. I was not known to be particularly competitive, but when I played Cutthroat Anagrams, I was rather ruthless. I shouted my new words loudly, so as to drown out any other potential rivals. In the event of a claiming tie, I found that if I swiped the letters right away, people would generally let me keep them. I sat in the circle on my knees, perched right over the tiles so that I could afford a good glimpse of the newly-flipped tile. My posture earned me the nickname, “the Vulture,” which I interpreted as a sign of admiration.

On one occasion, I taught the game to a newcomer, but I wasn’t sensitive to the fact that I was somewhat, uh, overzealous in my energy. Anagramming didn’t come easily to this new girl, and I showed no mercy as I swept up tiles left and right. I remember stealing a word from her with a triumphant “HA!” and pouncing across the circles to gather my prize. In a low voice, JG said to me, “This is why people don’t … never mind.” Okay, whatever.

At the end of the round, the new girl got up from the floor shakily and said, “I think that’s enough of this game for me, but thanks for showing me how to play.”

Is this what JG meant? This is why people don’t what? Don’t want to play with me? They don’t want a challenge? It’s not my fault that I know that the ZOO will most likely go to OOZE and then OZONE. If she just played longer, she’d get it, too.

But I knew that I wasn’t as gracious as I could have been. I tried to dial down the Vulture mannerisms for other newcomers, despite the fact that it was perfectly obvious that we should be looking for a sequence like CAT, CART, CRATE, TRACED, DETRACT. Right? Totally obvious.

#53, 54

Sunday Scribblings #88: Competition