I have been despondent of late. In the olden days I would leap from my fur-lined monkeycot and rush to my computer, fez awry and absinthe at my paw, and tap and tap until juice squirted from behind the space bar. But these days seem to have passed, and instead I watch my 'site traffic' fall (from 23 readers per day to 7) and with it, my hopes of a blog-rich future. Instead, the kidz are having a go on Twitter. "OMG!! I just broke my nail!!!!", writes Demi Moore. "At the pub having a pie and a pint of mild", writes Cat Deeley. "Eating Jammy Dodgers and reading Andy McNab", tweets Alain de Botton. "Called it Twatter by mistake", I write with one hand, whilst simultaneously updating my Facebook status and searching for pictures of dogs in lobster outfits.
The once-constant source of my joy - this web-blog and its remarkably attractive readership - is left neglected and dusty, as I fill my days with other considerations, including 18 inch bum-wipers, enormously fat upside-down cats, and wedding porn.
Yes. On the internet there lives a group of ladies whose lives are, it seems, devoted to planning their weddings. They are special ladies with high standards and special decorative needs and I have, to my shame, been obsessively reading their writing and looking at their pictures. It is very informative, and I have learnt a lot about how to plan a wedding in the twenty-first century.
Here, for your amusement is a "compare and contrast" type entry, in which I compare the wedding norms (as defined by wedding ladies on the internet), vs. what I am doing when I get married on 17th October to a French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist. I will have to do it in two parts, otherwise your heads - like mine - will explode.
Proposals must be romantic
Ideally involving getting down on one knee, flowers, crying etc, or perhaps a piece of animation that takes 20 people 3 months to make, audiences, Italian restaurants, more tears, rings hidden in fortune cookies, mystery trips away for the weekend, Ferraris, etc, and a lot! Of exclamation marks! About the whole! Thing!
My real-life proposal moment:
We are in a restaurant where they do not stop giving you food, including candyfloss in a box and over a hundred different types of cake.
Pathologist: So, do you think we should get married then?
Me: Did you just propose?
Pathologist: Yes.
Me: OK then.
The bill is put on our joint credit card. I am reminded that the pathologist is a French-Canadian and marriage is, to him, "counter-intuitive" (i.e., they don't do it much and think people that do are a bit weird); he is doing this thing for me.
Engagement rings are really important.
As any fule kno, all men must spend at least 12 months' salary on a ring and it must be presented in a box with said gentleman down on one knee with a rose in his gob. Ideally, music will also be playing. You have to worry about the 4 Cs and all of that and it must be very shiny, and perhaps made of diamonds made of old coal.
According to the web-blogs, it is also a really good idea to have it custom made on Etsy or have something 'vintage' (i.e., old) 'reworked' according to your own design (e.g. the face of Andrew Lloyd Weber, celtic knot-cum-arabic logo, etc).
Note: the amount of money the person who proposes spends on the engagement ring is directly related to how much he likes you and if he is able to chop wood, protect you from wolves, pay the bills, etc.
My engagement ring
Pathologist: I have not got you an engagement ring. I thought about it but I thought it was a waste of money.
Me: Oh. OK then.
I wear my great-grandmother's ring instead. This has a double effect: I get to wear something that I like and wouldn't otherwise wear, and I do not have to have the following conversation:
Nosy lady: If you are engaged where is your engagement ring? Is your fiancey a stingy motherfucker or poor or stupid or something?
Me: I do not have one because the person I am marrying is a particular type of person who is very generous, but does not believe in spending the same amount as a car would cost on a ring that I will keep getting caught on things.
Engagement shoot
This is vitally important and must feature pictures of shoes, a shot in a field, umbrellas, balloons and jumping in the air. (If you are portly you probably better not have an engagement shoot in case you do yourself an injury.)
Gentle cupping is also 'de rigeur' in North American engagement photograph sessions:
Our true-life engagement shoot conversation (today, c. 11.12am):
Me: Oh my fucking christ! We haven't had an engagement shoot. We have to have an engagement shoot otherwise we will die.
The pathologist: Who do we shoot?
Coming next: invitations, wedding inspiration boards, calligraphy, dresses, bridesmaids, food, decoration and the answer to that eternal question: do I have the cat as a ring-bearer, or just put her in a matching frock?
**UPDATE**: The pathologist (who has just read this post) fears that I have made him sound like "a terrible man". He is in fact the best of all men, which is why I am marrying him. He is also very handsome, mends things, does all the administration (including paying bills and every bit of negotiation and paperwork when I was buying a flat in Montreal), is enormously patient and very generous with himself and his money .
These things are harder to do all day, every day, than buy an expensive ring. Fact.
20 comments:
You are right, you've just made my head explode. I'd never heard of an engagement shoot till I popped in here, and I don't have an engagement ring. Now I worry that my marriage is doomed to be a failure because of these gross oversights on my part...
Just you wait until tomorrow. (Or perhaps the day after.) Ever thought of having each address individually calligraphed on each invitation before sending it out? No? You soon will.
If you're doomed, I am too. We can go down together, holding onto gigantic baskets of "wedding favours", each one adorned with our personal monogram.
i never heard of ana engagement shoot either but if i were you i'd go with the one with balloons. balloons are always festive.
I don't want to know about the engagement shoot until you have given me the low-down on the arse-wiper. Does it fold the allocated two sheets after the first pass? Does it allow multiple passes, refolding each time to present a clean face to the rosette? Are you prepared to endorse this product on your wedding invitations or are you only out to get the free Bonus Get-a-Grip?
Damn internet is giving the creative, competitively romantic types IDEAS. Lots and lots of annoying IDEAS. I keep having to banish blogs from my reader once the proprietress gets engaged, because the endless piss-stream of twee makes me come all over itchy. Thank you for not giving me hives...and congrats on the marriage. (See? I'm not entirely bitter, just nuptially intolerant.)
"Endless piss-stream of twee" is the BEST way I have heard so far of describing it, and I will quote you on that when I post Pt 2, which so far I am having trouble doing due to endless gagging over fucking personalised monograms and $5,000 flower bills.
As for the arse wiper, I will be giving one to every guest that comes to the wedding. They are very lucky, even if they do not yet know it.
And the only engagement shoot we will be having is engaging ourselves in hanging out of the front bedroom window shooting the fat middle-aged Harley riders who disturb our country peace by revving up and down the hill outside our house. Wankers.
Belated congratulations NWE. I do admire your stamina, keeping up with the blog.
How prescient of you, it seems now, moving to Canada. I read somewhere last week that Canada hasn't been affected by the global financial meltdown because it kept its investment and retail bank operations separate and didn't allow dodgy loan securitisation.
Me, I hope to move to Tangier before the lights go out in Blighty for the next 20 years.
INDIGO! You are back. My heart leaps with joy.
Oddly enough, only last week I was wandering around Montreal and said something smug like "you wouldn't think there was a recession on". We feel it a bit but I think I am in the right place. For the moment, anyway. Yes.
Thank you, NWM, I am moved. Sniff.
Yes, the Canadia is the place to be. In a year's time, the Canadia will be the only country on Earth visible from space at night, being as it will be the only one where there is still electricity in the pipes. Er, perhaps I exagerate a bit but not much. :-)
I can't believe some of the crap that people do in their weddings. A friends son got married and the reacher nattered on and on and on about building a house and specifics for each room... BORING! His daughter was the bride so I guess he felt he had the right to put us all to sleep. Worse yet, before the ceremony they did photo montage salute to the grooms mother who had passed away many years before. We all thought it was obnoxious and pretentious and rude as hell as his father was there with his not so new wife, bet she was cringing inside, I would have been. Many people just light a candle in memory of parents that have passed, that would have been nicer and much less intrusive.
Last time I got married ( sounds serial,eh?)we just went off to Lake Tahoe we 2 other couples and got married.The reason we went there is because all of them went there every year to ski. I don't but I do gamble =). The reason we did that is because his mother started interferring the minute we told them that we were going to do it. Oh , btw, this was the 2nd time we married each other, after a 20 year break. It's working uot much better this time!
Good luck NWM and FCVPWCHOH or should I tell him Bon Chance?
Your pathologist doesn't sound in the least bit terrible. It is brilliant that he hasn't fallen for the marketing scam that attends getting married. Hurrah etc.
Please tell the pathologist that, far from being terrible, he is actually my hero.
I think the pathologist sounds jolly nice, but then I always have.
The pathologist is brilliant and I think it should be clear that it's not just males who think so. My ring featured a teeny tiny stone and I loved it - also it cost... I think a week's salary. The salesman looked at me with kind sympathy and suggested I could swap it for something larger later. I restrained myself mightily and did NOT make any rude jokes. Not one. About bigger things and all that. It took a great deal of personal sacrifice though and so I have decided the marrying thing is terribly hard work and in the future I will simply go on a lovely holiday.
I love your post and I love the pathologist. I don't have an engagement ring and I never wanted. My proposal went like this, after 5 years of living in sin:
Me: should we get married or not?
Him: Well, my parents are catholic so that would be nice.
Me: And a party would be fun.
15 years later, I am still madly in love with the man and didn't exploit any diamond miners. You go NWM!
Ooh, this made me think of you: http://nevver.tumblr.com/post/132387820/stage-stories
It's still not too late to elope.
You get way more comments than a 7-visitor-a-day gal! Unless every single one of your visitors comments, which makes you super-special indeed.
But anyway: Engagement shoots? What?? I have never heard of such a thing. What an abomination.
I can't wait for part II and the actual wedding photographs - I went to a wedding the other week and the photographer looked like Ken Dodd's, uglier, fatter and sweaty brother. I refuse to be pushed around by such a man.
The wedding was VERY traditional and part of that tradition is to plonk "personal touches" all over "their day".
Post wedding, do you start being hyper critical of other people's?
I love you and the pathologist equally; neither of you are terrible. And you don't have to be French Canadian to find all the wedding hoohah odd.
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