Dressing Barbie Dolls

Well I’ve come to the conclusion that what comes out of my mouth when I try to communicate an idea must sound like Swahili. Or some other foreign language that absolutely no one within spitting distance actually speaks. I mean, I say that in a dress I’d like something with a little definition about the bust. I’m not exactly Pamela Anderson on top and considering that what I don’t have in that area I make up for somewhere else, it’d be nice to appear a little more in proportion. Vain, I know but you get that in brides apparently.

So yeah, I try to explain that I think I’d like either a different fabric on the top of a bodice or some ribbons or artfully draped material or, well, you know, something but I don’t want a gown with a single panel of material that sits flat against your shape as it is followed down from your décolletage to your waist (or however far the panel of material actually goes down). I say this to dressers and the description, however vague it really is, actually makes sense to me. What I get is what about this lovely gown here (that has a single panel of material that drapes over your chest and in guaranteed to make you look flat as a pancake).

Ok, so I am exaggerating the description of my attributes (or lack thereof), but seriously, it can’t be that hard to listen to someone and process that information accordingly. If you don’t stock that style of gown then that’s ok, but you certainly notice the difference in service from someone who tries to understand your likes and dislikes as opposed to someone who assumes that women in wedding dresses are kind of like barbie dolls. You know, they’re all going to look sort of the same at the end of the day anyway so at this point, you’re only really debating sequin placement!

Wedding Wankers and Other Wonderful Things

Well it appears we are not really any further in finding the perfect photographer for our wedding than we were a couple of weeks ago. Last night we met another photographer who somehow failed to impress us with his superior customer service skills, his ability to work with the client and adapt to their individual needs and his genuine desire to be part of our day. Oh wait, perhaps that’s because he had none, wouldn’t and didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong though, he was polite and courteous and made just enough of the right noises that he could be seen to be doing all of the above but he really did fall a little short for us. Forgetting the grooms name was a good start. I’m sure he sees heaps of people in his profession and they pretty much come and go without being recurring business but its sort of poor form to make it obvious that the name of the person to whom you are speaking has mysteriously flown out of your mind. Maybe that’s just me. It wasn’t my name he forgot though so that wasn’t what really got me.

As far as I was concerned the pièce de résistance was when he advised me with a completely straight face that because their photographers are professionals, out of the thousand or so photographs they promise to take of you on your day, even though they cull them to supply you with around 500 (you know, so you only really see the “best of the best”), all of the photos will actually be usable. Excuse me? Are you trying to tell me that when you get around 4-8 people in the same photo who are not professional models, and are only really there to enjoy the day and the other guests so therefore will chatter or get sidetracked at the drop of a hat, that they will not make a face or start talking right when a photographer is taking a shot? Do you honestly believe that just because you are a “professional”, you are now exempt from capturing people mid blink/sneeze/word/gesture etc. thus creating an image that is, shall we say, less than aesthetically pleasing? Maybe you are. May you should add I am a God to your resume.

And while we’re considering that the client only sees the best of the best and is only allowed to choose between 40-50 photos out of the 500 odd they are supplied with, why do your display albums have pictures of people scrunching up their face as they squint into the sun? Are they the best? Maybe I’m missing something but I fail to understand why I should pay thousands of dollars to get lasting memories of the creases in my forehead. And it wasn’t just the one album either. We viewed at least four albums, each of a different wedding and they all had shots like that…Shots…Multiple. I know Australian summers are not the easiest thing to deal with but other people seem to manage. Or maybe they don’t try to take those shots. You know, the seemingly ubiquitous big white dress in front of the big white lighthouse or the walk across the sundrenched rolling sand dunes, that is unless you’re a wog of course cause then the first port of call is apparently The Rocks or George Street.

So yeah, it appeared that the photographer we saw was slightly puffed up with his own sense of self importance and not the kind of person with whom we felt a sense of easy rapport. Sort of like the other Wedding Wanker who didn’t do much to inspire my patronage either. I know I’m not the classiest person you’ve ever seen in your life and I can put on the Ocker when I’m around other people who seem to be doing the same, and yes, I did actually attend a bridal fair in Blacktown which is only a couple of bogans shy of Tasmania but I’m not especially partial to people I don’t know swearing in front of me. You don’t have my business, you don’t know me and you are a professional trying to sell yourself. There has to be options in your vocabulary that do not require “f” words. I know it would seem like the pot calling the kettle black as I am hardly immune to certain words coming out of my mouth (as nouns, verbs and adjectives I must admit), but there are times when I feel that a little decorum would go a long way. I’m sure as shit that Shazza with her meringue dress, six sheilas to the side dressed in pink taffeta with puffy sleeves and beau named Bruce would not bat an eyelid if someone didn’t bother to use the queen’s English (actually she probably wouldn’t understand them if they did) but I did a quiet double take when the photographer did swear and wasn’t standing there thinking this guy is a dude!

Seeing Red?

Well, now that I have been shopping with my mother and my sister, I’m more confused than I was before!

The Boy and I have been dress shopping a few times and I thought I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted. When mum saw the dresses though, she liked all the ones I liked but the one I thought was was the pick of the lot, she wasn’t in love with. In addition to that, she thought the dress sort of wore me instead of the other way around. Thats not the impression I was going for funnily enough. So now there are a couple of off the rack dresses I like and a couple of made to measure gowns (which are of course significantly more expensive) and I’m not really any closer to choosing something than I was before I saw anything. I seem to want a lot of different things, not all of which are conducive to each other. Helpful, I know.

Everyone keeps telling me that its my wedding and I can do whatever I want so I should just choose whatever makes me feel great but right now nothing does. And its all very well to say you can go to a designer and get them to create something individual but from what I’ve seen so far, you have to get into really big money before you can go to someone and say I have no idea what I want but you have to make me something anyway. It seems that you really have to start from a base idea an build on that but I’m struggling with even that step at the moment. I had the same issue with the engagement ring.

When we were looking at options I saw a couple of jewellery designers but they couldn’t just put designs out there based on a few vague likes and dislikes. I had to commit to a diamond and then work from a base design and that’s why we gave up and avoided the whole stone issue in general and decided on something completely different. The Faberge ring we want does actually have several stones in it but they are so tiny and more there for decoration than anything else.

So I am obviously still having a whinge about the whole thing. I must admit, I am very frustrated by the lack of people I feel I can go shopping with for all this stuff. I don’t really have many female friends in Sydney I can call on if I need stuff. One is seemingly chronically busy and I see her seldom when I actually think about it and another is getting married herself in three weeks so she spends every waking moment running around doing her own wedding stuff. As one would expect. I have acquaintances in Sydney and there are one or two people who The Boy and I see socially together every once in a while but they’re not my friends, you know? I know I have my mother and my sister in Canberra but that’s the thing, they are in Canberra and they can’t just start coming up every weekend so I can get a female point of view from someone who knows me. Bah. Maybe I should stop whinging, elope and just come back and throw a massive party!

Bridal Mags Have A Lot To Answer For

So I actually bought a bridal magazine the other day. With the actual intent of using it for ideas and contacts. Not that I have bought those types of magazines before for any other reason but you know, they have always been “those” magazines until now. And I must say for the most part that they are a wanky waste of money! They all seem to be geared towards those sugar puff brides who are happy sailing along in their blissful cocoon of nuptial nuances, planning the last detail of the happiest day of their lives with their one true love / soul mate / divine other half or whatever description seems more kitsch and well, vomit inducing sounds a little strong but you get what I mean.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I do not see myself as one of those sugar puff brides. Nor do I actually believe that my wedding day is going to be the happiest day of my life. I’d like to point out that this is not because I don’t love the person I am going to marry but rather that I’m hoping to have a rather long life filled with family and friends and if the happiest day of my life happens before I’m 30 and I live till I’m 80 odd, then that means its really all downhill after the wedding then anyway. Cynical, I know, but The Boy isn’t marrying me for my sentimentality and romantic ideals so its all good. And since we already have one of us in the relationship reveling in the significance and emotion in all the details, if I joined in then I’m sure no one could bear listening to us both talk about the wedding without wanting to gag so its all good.

That’s not to say that I don’t care at all about the details but lets just say I have a slightly different outlook to the whole thing than The Boy does at the moment. A girlfriend asked me how things were going the other day and I told her that as far as I’m concerned, as long as the girls are all carrying something and the boys have buttonholes then I’m satisfied for the flowers. Churches usually come with some sort of arrangements anyway and the reception venues usually sort something for the tables and I don’t much care what that happens to be. The Boy on the other hand wants big flowers. Everywhere. He’d concede to my attendants just carrying a small bunch of flowers but he wants a florist to do my bouquet. Just like he wants a cake decorator to make the cake. I’m all like no one is going to remember what the cake looked like a week after the wedding and unless you are actually serving is as the dessert, people won’t much care if its not the most sinful and decadent thing they’ve ever tasted in their life either. I’d prefer to have an extra person at my reception than fifty bazillion tiers to the cake and lots of intricate icing work. But marriage is all about compromise so we’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle.

Just as for the most part, I am the girl in this relationship but sometimes he really does it so much better than I do. We were having a chat last night about some of the vendors we’ve seen and the ideas we liked so far. We were also talking about bridal parties cause over the last couple of months, we have been asked to be part of one, asked to step aside, asked back and, well, it didn't work out in the end. Anyway, I was recalling the sickeningly saccharine article I started browsing through in one of the mags that went something like…once the engagement has been announced there will come that time…for the bride, this is one of the most important decisions that she will have to make…the bride might ask you out to lunch, just the two of you, and say “we’ve been friends a long time”…then comes the question… And The Boy was sitting there saying that he thinks he’s finally decided who he wants to be his best man but he thinks he needs to make absolutely sure first. If he does go with gut feeling though then he’d need to take his mate out to lunch, spend the afternoon with him and ask him properly etc. I was all like I’m just going to email my girlfriend and ask if she’ll be a bridesmaid :-). And thats just what I did.

I told her my sister will be my maid of honour but I would really like to have her there if she was able. At the moment, since we don’t have a firm wedding date, I said I'd understand that that possibly would make things quite difficult for her. She is in another country after all. I advised we have a suggested date of 07/08/09 which is a Friday in winter (thus making the reception venues a little cheaper) but thats as far as its gone. The date is kinda cool too so I’d like to go with that but as I say, its not final and may well change. Not exactly overly sentimental but it was functional.

So yeah, considering we don't even have a date at the moment, on the plus side, I think I may have found my dress. Wouldn’t have a clue what to put the bridesmaids in but first things first. The dress I like is definitely not traditional and The Boy actually came with me when I tried it on but he has told me a dozen times since then that I looked really hot which was kind of what I was going for so we’ll see. I’m going to try and get mum and The Pussycat to have a look when they come up for the engagement party. As much as I do care what The Boy thinks, I really would like a second opinion from a female or two. Its all very well to make a spectacle of yourself in front of all your family and friends when its your wedding day but theres part of me that wants to be reassured that it would be a good choice nonetheless. Also, if I did decide to go with the dress I’ve tried on, I think my mother would like to make the decision with me. I have to get her here first though. She is a three hour drive away after all.

You know, I can just tell I am going to get frustrated with the whole thing over the coming months. I’ve only just scratched the surface and I’m pretty over it.

Wedding Bells...

So I started this blog in 2004 when I was “Single in Sydney” and navigating my way through the trials and tribulations associated with dating. It seemed a good idea at the time and then I stopped, basically because I started a serious relationship. That relationship has since led to an engagement and now I find myself back again, this time with a new focus that may well provide numerous stories or anecdotes, some of which have already amused my friends.

I considered actually starting a new blog cause I am obviously no longer “single” but then I figured, the blog was still roughly about a singular topic, ie. my wedding. So this blog is no longer The Single Life but Down The Aisle and all that that entails. Who knew it was so bloody much!?!