Why The Bridal Industry Hates Us Friday

 

A math lesson to take you into the weekend:

Service or Product x 5 Gramillion Percent = Price of Service or Product if you say it’s for a wedding

Workin’ 9 to 5…On Your Invites!

Not my invites of course. The Bird scrupulously avoids wedding planning on the clock. My magazine’s readers deserve my full attention and who am I to rob them of the wisdom that drips from my pen like butter off a hot knife?

Except that one eensy weensy time that I needed to dash over to the Decatur House to peruse their courtyard. But that was on my lunchbreak! And the time I needed to zip a contract down to the Hay-Adams. Did you hear me? I said “zip!” Over and back in 20 minutes—that’s less time than most shlubs spend trying to decide what donut to eat and yapping about Dancing With the Stars in the breakroom. Other things that I have wedged, jammed, and stuffed into the free space or periphery of my workday but definitely, certainly never, ever during the workday: making a veil fitting appointment, looking for invites that don’t make me gag (if God didn’t want me doing that on my work computer he wouldn’t have given me a Mac with a huge hunking screen), and fielding approximately 128 vendor emails. Again, to reiterate: not during the workday.

However, there are some brides who feel no such compunction. According to “How to Plan Your Wedding at Work (Without Getting Fired),” the workday is merely one more generous chunk of time to utilize for all manner of non-work related activity. My friend Julie alerted me to this helpful article in an email the other day. An email sent, of course, at the end of the work day, as it was about a personal matter. She writes: “For the bride-to-be, this is great, for all of the rest of us who know all of our colleagues are planning their wedding at work and we’re the ones doing their work, not so funny…” Exactly. If you for some reason feel the need to wage a full-scale assault on your work day by planning your big day, then just go ahead and hire a wedding planner.

Although that raises the question: What’s the wedding planner going to do to slack off during her work day?
Did that just Blow. Your. Mind?

Time Posted: 5:20 p.m. (Because I certainly never blog during the work day either.)

Clinton for President? Yes, And I’m Going to Unseat Mayor McCheese.

Clinton voters,

Let’s engage in some political fact finding. No judgment, no screeds in response to comments. In fact, I’m not even going to respond to comments. I want to know: why do you think your candidate has a viable chance of beating the Republican candidate? And yes, I specifically say “the Republican candidate” even though we know it’s McCain, because the Republicans could run a mentally challenged dolphin and the party will fall in line, provided they are reminded that the gays/immigrants/anyone from that whole iffy Middle East region/French are out to get them.

Look, I’m not even questioning her fitness as president. While I think she really screwed the pooch on her initial Iraq vote, I’m confident she’d do a completely acceptable job in the White House. As my friend Tina Fey noted last week in endorsing her, “bitches get stuff done.” But aren’t you the slightest bit worried that your belief that Clinton’s going to be the bestest president ever has an expiration date of exactly 243 days? From where does your confidence that anyone with a last name of Clinton has a chance of beating the Republican machine/anti-Hillary media spring? (Question that last assertion about the media only after brushing up on your Chris Matthews and MoDowd, please.) Obama can galvanize Democrats and maybe pull in some votes from across the aisle as a bonus. Clinton will be the greatest fundraiser the Republican party has ever known.

When I look at results from last night, I don’t think, “people who vote for Clinton are idiots because she’d be a bad president.” I think, “why are you turning the primary into a short-term popularity contest?” Enlighten my cynical self.

Thank You,
Bird

Update: Reader J brings up a good point in the comments. For those of you who come here for the “What’s the deal with Jordan almond favors?” rants, I also wrote a wedding post today. It’s right below this one.

Because Nana Loves Her Some Global Jazz Triphop Fusion…

Friday night let me cross one more thing off my to-do list. Done: Stop worrying that our DJ is going to be some chucklehead who enjoys blathering into the mic about “all the lovely ladiessss in the house,” or playing “Fat Bottom Girls.” I confirmed after hearing him spin that we’re hiring Daryle Maciocha, who you may know from such gigs as the packed-like-sardines Modernist Society gatherings at Bourbon and the packed-like sardines gatherings at Upstairs at Marvin.

 

He set a very chill vibe the whole night at Marvin and par for the course in my email dealings with him, he was very nice, especially considering that he was working like a headphoned fiend. His regular milieu is soul, funk, bossa nova, world beat, and dance jazz. For weddings, he mixes in guaranteed groove-inducers and then of course anything else specific we want him to play.

Who I am nothiring is the DJ who first demanded in his contract sent with his estimate that he get alcoholic beverages throughout the course of the reception. Then, when I emailed him to let him know we were going to go with an alternate vendor, he sent me a tone-laden email in response chastising me for not meeting with him personally before making that decision. He followed this with, “I sincerely hope that you do not end up getting severely lacking service at your event because of your decision to pay less for another DJ.” For starters, jackhole, we’re not paying less. We’re paying more. For quality. And who in the hell writes a bride trying to scare her about her reception? He closed his email by asking how he could keep our business. Well, my advice, sir, is that you be sure to drop me a line just as soon as a flying pig crashes into your window.

In the mean time, let me know in the comments what your favorite dance song is. And if you’re not doing anything Friday, check out Maciocha at Marvin.

There Goes the Bride

 

I started Sunday foaming at the mouth about Charlotte Allen’s steaming pile of excrement in the Washington Post. If you’re not inclined to gag on your Cheerios, I’ll give you the short version: because some women are getting overly excited about Obama’s candidacy, all women are stupid. Her supporting argument includes: women’s brains are smaller than men’s and women are worse drivers than men. I kept wondering whether she’d go for the trifecta and assert that Hillary can’t be president because “bears can smell the menstruation.”

I ended Sunday reading another article, this time in Newsweek, that made me cringe for my gender. It’s about brides whittling down their bodies in advance of their weddings. Some of the stats: 70 percent of brides want to drop more than 20 pounds before their wedding day, according to a new Cornell University study. A third of them fast, skip meals, or use diet pills to try to do it. And 14 percent purposely order a bridal gown at least one size smaller than their current size to force themselves to lose weight.

While I’d like to claim that my careful effort to avoid obsessing about things like card stock and shades of off-white for shoes puts me securely on the high ground, I am however, no stranger to the seductive lure of turning my body into a high-stakes remodeling project in advance of the wedding. The closer the event gets, the more the devil on the left shoulder gets his due. No mirror or plate glass window gets passed without me stealing a critical glance. No day ends without me having tapdanced on a scale. Size 8 is slowly giving way to size 6. My arms, legs, and stomach are no longer mere parts. They are challenges to be pinched, pondered, and overcome.

When my fiance asked me to marry him he said several things. Not one of them was “provided you lose 10 percent of your body weight.”

So why have I settled on that, like some subconsciously penned pre-wedding vow? The supposition that there’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to look her best for the big day becomes moot when the unhealthy is pondered. The damaging. That which corrodes sense and sensibility.

As it turns out, both of these articles are valuable. Allen’s because it reminds me that there are those who, in 2008, firmly believe women to be vacuous and unfailingly stupid. Newsweek’s because it reminds me not to help them make their case.