One (Good Enough) Day

 
I just threw away three bridal magazines my mom bought me.* We had flipped through them and mocked them to pieces back in March, but they've been collecting dust on top of my sump pump since then.

Bridal magazines are not designed to be helpful, unless you need help spending a crazy amount of money. I guess their checklists are also helpful if you need to laugh until you cry. I've had to turn elsewhere for real wedding help. It's handy that my mom has planned plenty of weddings, but I've also explored books and blogs lately.

I devoured the book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. It is not about how to plan a wedding; it's about how planning weddings got insane.

Here is a short interview with the author, Rebecca Mead:




Here is another (audio only) interview with Mead, in which she talks about why weddings have gotten so huge in the last generation: It's at least partially because getting married isn't as big of a deal as it once was. It used to be that a wedding marked the day you moved out of your parents' home, the first time you lived with and slept with your spouse, etc. Now that people are getting married older and so many couples live together already, we throw extravagant parties to make marriage feel like as big of a transition as it used to be. 

Mead's book helped me think through whether any given wedding detail was something Blade and I actually wanted or just something that wedding companies have poured untold amounts of money into marketing to us.

While I was reading One Perfect Day, I was also reading Good News for Anxious Christians, which is about manipulative trends within popular evangelical culture. I couldn't help but see parallels with the wedding industry.** Both the wedding industry and the more wishy-washy evangelical churches put pressure on you to feel certain emotions, and if you don't feel those emotions, there must be something wrong with you. I don't do well under that kind of pressure. I get all panicky and resentful until I understand what's actually going on.

---

The blog A Practical Wedding has been the most helpful resource for actually planning my wedding (as opposed to helping me understand why wedding stuff makes me crazy). Though I frequently disagree with the blog's politics, I appreciate that the posts are full of thought-provoking, tongue-in-cheek writing rather than just collections of stylized pictures. If you're involved in a wedding anytime soon, I recommend exploring the site; I've especially enjoyed the posts: Bride in Exile, Lazy (and possible cheap) Girl's Guide ..., The Slavery of Choice, and Wedding Overexposure.


So Blade and I aren't going for a perfect day. We're going for a good enough day. And if we're married by the end of it, that is plenty good enough.



*I've kept one magazine, mostly because my mom shoplifted it from a bridal salon. She claims it was supposed to be free, that it just looked free, but there's definitely a price tag on the front cover. I can't seem to throw it away just yet due to its shoplifted hilarity. (Seriously? It just looked free? Who thinks like that?)

**My friend Steve saw me toggling between both books and said, "I like that about you." What? "That when you get mad you find a book about whatever's making you mad so you can figure out why."

There are no passports in ten minutes.

Again, from Hyperbole and a Half, whose post on adulthood pops into my mind all too regularly.

 Continuing on my logistical failure when paperwork is involved ...

This fall, due to some combination of peer pressure and family obligation, I'm going on a trip to Israel with basically everyone I know.*

I've turned my apartment upside-down looking for my passport. There's no telling where it could be. It could have gotten lost during one of the seven times I've moved since I last used it four years ago. I have to give in and get a new passport. 

The local passport office is in the post office; rather, it is the post office. The clerks that weigh packages and sell stamps are the same clerks that process passport requests. The post office is open until 7pm, but the clerks will only handle the passports until 3pm, though the sign says 3:30pm. There's also the odd day when they close at noon or refuse to handle passports at all, and these usually seem to coincide with the times that I am off work and able to go to the post office.

I made it in before that 3pm deadline a few days ago and ran into what should have been a small speed bump.


Clerk: I need your actual birth certificate, not a copy.

Me: Oh! That's easy. I can run home and be back with it in ten minutes.

Clerk: I can't do it in ten minutes.

Me: But you'll be at this same counter for four more hours.

Clerk: Yes.

Me: But you won't help me if I come back in ten minutes.

Clerk: No. There are no passports in ten minutes. 


I returned the next day to try again. The first clerk was struggling with her English, and some complications with my paperwork (mostly due to my confusing driver's license issues) made it impossible for us to communicate. She transferred me to another clerk, who was able to be more helpful, especially after I got frustrated enough to cry. 
 
This clerk recognized me from the several times I'd been in before to try and get this goofy passport. She made some phone calls and found some loopholes, and now my passport is being expedited. Although I can't cry on cue, I absolutely believe it would have gone even less smoothly if I hadn't let myself cry. 

Still, I'm terrified that this Very Expensive envelope that contains my original birth certificate is headed to an office like the Department of Records from Brazil: 





*The trip has the potential to be awesome, actually. I just wish it were next fall, after Blade and I have had some time to get used to being married.

Now, that's a pipe of a different color.

Responsibility trophy from "This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult"

I am frequently quite grown up. I go to work, cook for myself, and return my library books on time. My apartment is clean enough not to embarrass me if a surprise guest were to show up at my door, and my bills are promptly settled with checks that do not bounce.

However, all of this grown-up pulled-together-ness dissolves the moment bureaucracy and paperwork are introduced.

I need to renew my driver's license. After studying for the written test, waiting for an hour at the DMV, getting sent to a different DMV, not being let inside the second DMV after waiting in the out-the-door line for another hour ...

Security guard: What's the point of letting you be in this line if you're missing part of the paperwork?

Me: But I have a question about that part, can you answer it?

Security guard: No, I don't know anything about that. The people inside would know.

Me: But you won't let me inside to ask.

Security guard: No. It's not worth anyone's time.

... and realizing that I'm going to have to go through this whole process again anyway when I change my name this fall, I had one of my patented being-a-grown-up-is-hard breakdowns* and called my dad to help bail me out.

It turns out that I can't actually get that awful paperwork without my dad signing over the title of my car to me, which he can't do until we're in the same place, which won't be until long after my license has expired. The best solution seemed to be to mail order a renewed Texas license to tide me over until I get my married name.

I had hoped to commiserate with my friend Steve, who also needs to renew his license, but he has elected to drive six hours each way to a DMV in middle-of-nowhere Missouri rather than deal with the dread Illinois office.


What we could all use is a rogue DMV clerk, like Robert DeNiro's vigilante HVAC repairman in Brazil.** He could burst in, fully armed, and bypass the whole system without so much as a 27b/6.





*To the layperson, these are very like my wedding-details-are-overwhelming breakdowns.


**I seem to watch mostly movies and TV shows that feed my paranoia.

Wedding FAQ

Don't we look engaged?

I will now tackle the questions I have been asked by many friends, acquaintances, former coworkers' relatives, and passing strangers ever since Blade gave me a sparkly ring. Let's put some of these to rest now.


Q: When did you get engaged?!

A: January. Or March, depending on how you count it.


Q: How did Blade propose?

A: By asking. The first time, in January, I had already taken some medicine that makes me Very Sleepy, so I don't remember a lot of details, except that we decided not to tell anyone until we had a chance to talk to our families. The second time, in March, was in my car after I picked Blade up from the airport. He was returning from California, where he talked to his parents about getting married, and they gave him a ring for me. He waited until the car was in park so that I wouldn't run off the road.


Q: Ring! Ring ring ring!

A: That's not a question. But the answer is that it belonged to Blade's great-grandmother, and I love it. We're having his ring made out of jewelry from my great-grandmother, who happened to be a loan shark. Long story.


Q: What is your theme?

A: Oh, you know, marriage.


Q: So you're having a big wedding, then?

A: Again, that is not a question, really. That's an assumption, and no, we're not. We're having as small a wedding as we can manage while still including our families as well as friends that we both know. Blade and I lean toward the introverted side of things and get easily overwhelmed by crowds, so a big wedding didn't seem like the best option for us. We think everyone is great, but we don't have room for everyone all at once.


Q: Are you stressed about wedding planning?

A: Only when I have to do something wedding-ish, which is not that often. Blade made the invitations and website, and my temporarily-crippled mother is flexing her Martha muscles while she recovers from ankle surgery. (She isn't allowed to be on her feet for awhile, which means she's itching for things to make with her hands.) A couple of months ago, she helped me dress shop, and she's handled most interactions with our caterer and venue.

This doesn't leave me a lot to do, really, which is good, because wedding chores instantly fill me with anxiety. I tear up, my nose gets itchy, I have to eat some chocolate and lie down -- it's this whole big thing. Then I want to drag Blade to a courthouse and skip the cake-and-photographer-and-flowers mess. The number one reason we haven't given up and eloped is because we want our marriage to begin with a sacrament, not just a legal form.


Q: Do you resent how the wedding industry has deliberately and systematically brainwashed the entire country over the last several generations?*

A: Why, yes. Yes, I do.



Do you have a question that I missed?



* That nobody has actually asked me this question is something I attribute to the thoroughness of the brainwashing. Also, it's just possible I watch too many Joss Whedon shows.