Wedding Slideshow!

I'm finally getting around to posting the awesome slideshow that our photographer, Ryan from Small Moments Studios, created with images from our wedding. Here it is!

Kathleen & Ben: ROCK STAR video slideshow from Small Moments Studios on Vimeo.

When a Family History Nerd Gets Married: The Bachelorette Party

I had some misgivings about allowing myself to have a bachelorette party at all. Clubbing and loud music and dancing are not my style. Wearing "BRIDE" or "Last fling before the ring" t-shirts is not my style. Luckily, my fantastic sister had something else altogether in mind: a genealogy-inspired bachelorette party designed just for me!

A normal bachelorette party location:

A Dance Club

My bachelorette party location: A tour of NYC's oldest bars!

Ear Inn (image source)

McSorley's Old Ale House (image source)

Normal bridal party shirt:

My bridal party's shirt:

(I think they were making fun of me.)

Normal bride's shirt:

My shirt:

Probably from here?

It reads:

#1 Leave no stone unturned, unless it is a headstone.

#2 Handwriting legibility is inversely proportionate to a document's importance.

#3 The further away a cemetery or library is, the more awkward the opening ours will be.

#4 The relative you most need to talk with is the one whose funeral you are currently attending.

#5 Wherever you find two or more sibling, there also will you find two or more surname spellings.

Normal bachelorette party pin:

My bachelorette party pin:

designed by my awesome sister Laura!

Is my bridal party not obviously the very best ever?

Next time you're in McSorley's look for the "Genealogy is Cool" pin stuck above the door jamb!

(Several of the links in this post are Amazon.com affiliate links.)

(Cross-posted at You Are Where You Came From)

When a Family History Nerd Gets Married: The Bridal Shower

My fantastic sister Anna created this word search as a game for my bridal shower, which was a few weeks ago. As you can see, the list of words includes some of our favorite interests, like Ben's Redskins and my Yankees; the places we met, including Georgetown and Vital Vittles; and all of the surnames in our lineages!

(Cross posted at You Are Where You Came From)

Reflections on Wisdom and Wedding Registries

My mom once mentioned to me that the point of bridal showers used to be for generations of women with experience of marriage to bestow their knowledge unto young brides who could then benefit from what they'd learned. I think it's a shame that our generation no longer gets those benefits. Instead, I've registered for exactly the things *I* want. We're making these choices with no first-hand knowledge of what marriage will entail. I'll be benefitting from product descriptions and Amazon.com reviews, not aunts and great-aunts and cousins with hundreds of years of married life between them. How indicative of our independent, self-sufficient, isolated, and soulless society. 

Our engagement presents were uniformly generous, thoughtful, and much-appreciated. All stand out in some way - some were handmade, some particularly generous, some particularly "us." Two stick out because, I've realized, they hearken back to this idea of gleaning wisdom from those who have come before us - even if, in certain cases, they've come less than a year before us! Our friends Jeff and Michelle got us The Marriage Covenant by Derek Prince, complete with a note about how valuable they'd found it when they read it in Pre-Cana, and which concepts they'd found particularly useful in their relationship. We, of course, made a point of reading it and discussing the parts they'd found worthwhile, wanting to gain from their experience of having been just where we are - even if they'd only been there a few months ago! (They weren't even married yet!)

The other "wisdom" gift we got was from my cousins Laura and Keith and their family. Laura wrote in the card, "So I thought to myself, 'What do all "old-married" Gatto women need? A black coffee pot!'" (We cousins are Gatto women, though none of us by name, and a "black coffee pot" is what we call what other people seem to refer to as an "espresso maker." I searched for "black coffee pot," and all I got were pictures of brown coffee pots that were black!) At the time, I couldn't have told you why, but a huge grin spread over my face when I opened Laura and Keith's gift. It was clear that she was drawing on her 9 (?) years of marriage and her knowledge of what our family's party hosting practices look like and figuring out exactly what I needed. I felt inducted in adulthood. I imagined future Sunday dinners, serving black coffee to my husband, cousins, uncles, Grandpa. I didn't have to worry about whether I wanted or needed a black coffee pot, because someone else had taken it upon herself to share her wisdom with me. What a perfect system!

I recognize my idealistic nostalgia for what it is. I understand that in the pre-registry days, people used to get 6 toasters as wedding gifts, because there was no way of organizing who was passing on which bits of wisdom. But what's worse? Duplicate wisdoms, or ignoring our need to turn to others for wisdom?

Notes on registering

I had very mixed feelings about registering. I didn't like the idea of making a big fat list of "stuff I want" with the expectation that other people should be buying it for me. I worried that it had the potential to give me the gimmies. (I don't want our guests to be too nice, give us too many treats, too many toys, and too many rides on the Bucking Duck at the mall. It's not good for us!) I think this fear was well-founded, because, let me tell you, now that we've registered, I am so. freakin. excited. for the things we've registered for. And I'm having trouble reconciling really wanting stuff with not wanting to want stuff.
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Looking through Macy's and Bed, Bath & Beyond this weekend to finish our registry really brought home to me that from April on, I'm going to be living with a boy. Choosing linens was the hardest thing we had to do. Ben vetoed everything with flowers, and I vetoed everything that was boring or ugly, and there was not much else left. (We ended up picking a paisley print in neutral tones, with which I think we'll both be very happy. But who says boys can't sleep in flowery beds, anyway?)
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I couldn't help but feel that wedding registries by their very nature are rude. ("Here's our wish list. As you'll see, we've indicated both color and quantity, and provided an address to which to send the things you surely will buy us.") And yet, I had it impressed on me numerous times - by our guests, no less -  that it would be so much better for them if we registered, because to skip it would make their lives so much harder. And making someone's life harder when you can avoid it is certainly rude. I think it's a paradox.

Crunch Time!

We're down to the final 68 days of wedding prep time! I hope to have the blog be a little less neglected in the upcoming 2 months and 1 week, as I'd like to record this time and hopefully remember more than just the stress. (and oh boy, is there stress!) Besides, I received an e-mail last week from a friend, saying that her sister could lend one of my bridesmaids a dress, as she owns the bridesmaids' dress in clover that we'd had such trouble with. I suppose I shouldn't blog about problems without blogging about their corresponding solutions, as the dress situation was resolved very quickly; J. Crew was actually very helpful and we were able to return the wrongly labeled dress for the proper dress with little hassle and a quick turn-around. 

We're getting lots done: more than half the invitations are addressed; we've registered; flowers have been chosen; the band is working on a setlist; we have ideas for favors, although not favors themselves; we've chosen readings, and know who we would like to read them, though we haven't asked them all yet; we've looked at wedding rings, although we haven't decided on them yet. Clearly, "getting lots done" and "having lots left to do" are not mutually exclusive!

Wedding Photos

This post goes out primarily to my cousins - distant and not-so-distant - who may read this blog. Ben and I have decided that we'd like to include our* family history obsession in our wedding celebration, and so we're collecting the wedding pictures of our direct antecedents to incorporate into our decor. We have most pictures of our parents, grandparents, and some great-grandparents, but we'd like to collect as many as possible.

Some pictures we're looking for, if they exist - (some of these predate the widespread availability of photography, but it can't hurt to ask) :

Marilyn Mulcahy & William O'Hara

Veronica Mulvaney & Joseph Mulcahy

Mary Madigan & Michael Mulcahy

Margaret Sullivan & Matthew Madigan

Johanna Roche & Matthew Madigan (Johanna's not a direct antecedent, but I'll take what I can get)

Margaret Ryan & James Mulcahy

Julia Toner & Patrick Mulvaney

Bridget Rothwell & James Mulvaney

Mary Cullen & Richard Toner

Mary Quinn & John O'Hara

Mary King & John O'Hara

Bridget Hopkins & Michael King

Margaret C---- & Nicholas King

Bridget Kearney & Patrick O'Hara

Mary Gillen & Hugh Quinn

Mary Nora Grimes & Martin Gillen 

If you happen to have photos - preferably wedding photos, but other photos of the couples named would be appreciated, too - please contact me at kathleen.scarlett.ohara AT gmail DOT com.

*we're getting married. I can start saying "we" are obsessed with genealogy now, right?

(cross-posted at You Are Where You Came From)

Symbol vs. Show

Traditionally, people threw rice at weddings. I don't know how old this tradition was, but numerous internet sources suggest that it dates to ancient times in some form or another, and that the use of rice reflected guests' wishes that the newlywed couple have a lifetime of fruitfulness and prosperity. This makes a lot of sense.

 

Though not actually providing the couple with a meal, literally showering them with food is powerfully symbolic. (I'm reminded of It's a Wonderful Life, when Mary Bailey hands the Martinis "bread, that this house may never know hunger; salt, that life may always have flavor; and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.") 

We're not allowed to throw rice after our wedding. Though the exploding-bird thing appears to be a myth,  there are apparently worries about both liability (someone might slip) and clean-up (someone's gotta clean it up). I might, I suppose, accept a substitute of birdseed, confetti, rose petals, etc. Throwing something just feels, viscerally, to be connected to the age-old practice of throwing rice. Like it means something. Those, however, offer the same disadvantages to the church, and are similarly forbidden. (I wanted to invent something that could be thrown at newlyweds that would not cause a mess or a safety hazard, but it's kind of hard to do.)

What could we do instead? Most people blow bubbles these days. Some ring bells. And honestly, I'm not feelin' it. Bubbles have been blown at every wedding I remember being at (I think I might have gotten to throw rice once, as a little girl, before it was forbidden, but I can't remember clearly), and I never had any objection. They were fun and they were pretty. What's not to like? But I'm trying to be a little more mindful in planning my wedding than I ever was as a guest. I had never asked myself "Why blow bubbles?" before, but I'm asking it now, and, as best I can tell, there's no answer. If I had asked, "Why throw rice?" I would have gotten an answer. I wouldn't have staked my life on its historicity, but I could have more or less believed that people were throwing rice at us because they wanted us to have a fruitful and prosperous life. But I can't come up with an answer for "Why blow bubbles?" Instead of blowing bubbles without knowing why - replacing powerful symbolism with empty show - I think we're going to skip it.

Take 2: Wedding Dress for Sale

I recently tried selling the dress I'd first bought on eBay, but had no luck. I've now listed it at the 100 Layer Cake Marketplace, in the hopes that it will sell there. If you're interested, it can be seen here.

Wedding Dress for Sale

I'm finally getting around to trying to resell the first wedding dress I bought. It's a new, perfect condition, size 8, ivory, strapless, beaded wedding gown by Emerald Bridal. You can bid on it on eBay here! Tell your friends!

Bridesmaids' Dresses!

I went shopping with 3/5 of my bridesmaids last week. My sister Laura, and my cousins Gina and Jamie are local, but my sister Anna is away at school, and Ben's sister Laura lives on the other side of the country. We went to the J. Crew Bridal Boutique in Manhattan, and then hit up a couple other stores - some combination of Bloomingdale's, H&M, GAP, Banana Republic, Zara. 

I was not the nicest person to shop with. I find making clothing decisions to be very stressful. I am not even remotely qualified to make fashion choices for myself, much less for anyone else. 

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The above was the part of this post that I had written before today happened. It was going to be all about how I was an unlikeable grouch while we were shopping, and the salesladies at J. Crew were unhelpful because the dresses I wanted were only available online, and they played (or were) dumb about what was available online, but (after I apologized for being a grump) it all turned out okay in the end, because we ordered the dresses online and that was it!

And then the dresses showed up. Awesome, right? Or it would have been, if they had all been the right color! And if I were a good practical bride with my priorities straight, I'd still be writing a post about how it'll all be okay in the end, because the color of anyone's dress has nothing to do with my wedding, my relationship, or my marriage, and that's what's really important on my wedding day.

Instead . . . I'm pissed. And frustrated, and freaking out. Because they were on sale, which means all sales were final, and what if they won't take it back, even when the mistake was J. Crew's and not ours? And what if they run out of the right color (which is being discontinued) while we're resolving this error, and there's NO WAY for my sister Anna to wear the same color as everyone else? And the dress was labeled as being the right color (clover), when it was actually the wrong color (wintermint) . . . what if all the "clover" dresses left in their inventory are actually wintermint dresses labeled as clover dresses, and there's ALREADY no way to buy another dress in the same color as everyone else's? Do I have to start over and pick a whole new dress? And eat the cost of the dresses already bought? Do I leave Anna in a different color dress, which is in no way complementary to the color of the other dresses? She's one of my maids of honor, but I need to either have both of my maids of honor wear the same thing as everyone else, or have them both in something different . . . if I have one maid of honor in something different, it looks like I'm just having one maid of honor, and then my sister Laura gets left out, and THAT'S not right. 

Anyway, this is what the dress is supposed to look like: 

(Silk chiffon Sophia dress by J. Crew)

The Blaire Reinhard Band

Choosing a wedding band was difficult for us. Ben - and countless other people - kept suggesting my cousin's band. My cousin's husband, Keith, is the drummer in The Blaire Reinhard Band, and we love them and have seen them perform numerous times. But I had serious doubts. Not about the band, because, as I've said, we love them. They rock. We also know they have plenty of experience playing weddings.

My standard response, when they were suggested, was "Unfortunately, the band isn't available that night. Their drummer has to go to his cousin's wedding." Keith is family. Family is supposed to spend your wedding day celebrating with you, not working for you. I didn't want him to be "on the job" when he was supposed to be eating dinner with the family, drinking sambuca with my uncles, chasing his kids, dancing with his wife.

It's an indie wedding trend to make your wedding meaningful by encouraging the participation of your loved ones instead of involving strangers as vendors. I get that, but while it sounds great in theory, it can only go so far in practice. Being good hosts is important. And while good hosts may graciously accept assistance from their guests, they certainly don't put them to work to the extent that the guests would work while the hosts eat, drink, dance, and socialize. That's just not okay.

So I didn't pursue having the BRB play at our wedding, and we began looking into DJs for music options. Then my dad went ahead and asked Keith whether the band would play, despite my objections to the set-up. He said they'd be glad to, but I said I didn't want them there unless Keith could be a guest, too. Turns out he can combine both fairly easily! (Just goes to show, it never hurts to ask!) So we've managed to set up a band/DJ combo arrangement, and are incredibly excited that we will be having the Blaire Reinhard Band playing at our wedding - while still being able to celebrate with the band members!

Here's a sample of what you're in for:

Things I learned in Amish Country

Amish wedding season begins in late October.

Update

It's been a while.

We went through a period of time where we sort of thought, "Well, we've taken care of all the big stuff. We can sit back and relax now!" That more or less lasted until I moved home, and my mom politely informed me that there was so much left to do and that I was not doing it fast enough.

The ensuing weeks have involved lots of decision making. Or rather, lots of attempted decision making. We have discussed extensively, but not made any decisions about, everything from favors to bridesmaids dresses to flowers to where to register to the song to which we'll have our first dance. We've made lists: of songs to have the band play, of things to register for, of guests who will need hotel rooms, of Mass settings we like, of songs to have the band NOT play.

With all the wedding talk we've been doing, none of what we accomplished seemed substantial enough to justify blog posts.

But I just made a phone call that seemed very substantial indeed. My dress has come in, and I just set up my appointment to try it on at the store! To put on, for the very first time, my very own wedding dress, the actual, physical clothes I will wear when I marry Ben!

Decisions, Decisions: Photographers

We were entirely at a loss as to how to begin looking for wedding photographers, so we started out following Jill's advice, left in the comments of this post: by googling "wedding photos + View on the Hudson" to see other photographers who had shot at our venue specifically, and how their pictures had turned out.

My mom had also been looking, and we got ideas from friends and relatives as well as, in at least one case, from a wedding blog, which left us with a pretty substantial list, that we then narrowed down by price, style, and grammar. (Listen, photographer-who-shall-remain-nameless: If you think that saying "da" instead of "the" is cool, that's your prerogative. But if you think that using it in on your professional website is appropriate, you have to expect that you will drive away those potential customers who do not think that using "da" instead of "the" is cool.)

We arranged to meet with as many of the photographers as was possible on a single day, and spent a weekend in NY that looked like lots of our weekends in NY do lately: the wedding-family-wedding-family-wedding sandwich. (It went photographer #1 - graduation party - photographer #2 - grandparents' house - photographer #3.)

The first photographer we met with was Ryan Kaplan from Small Moments Studios in Suffern. As we left, we looked at each other and Ben said, "I'd be fine canceling the other appointments now." We thought Ryan's photography and his personality were wonderful and would fit our wedding perfectly, but we decided to go through with the remaining appointments anyway.

After my cousin Emma's 8th grade graduation party, we met a second photographer, whose photography was beautiful but whose personality didn't do it for us. Then, after stopping by my grandparents', where Grandma gave us homemade cookies and zucchini from the garden, we met with the last photographer. Her photography and personality were both wonderful, and she gave Ryan a serious run for his money. We thought we could have worked well and been happy with either of them, but in the end we decided that Ryan's style better fit our needs. (His price was better, too; there wasn't a huge discrepancy, but we did feel extra confident in our decision, since all the relevant factors - style, personality, price - lined up.)

We're very excited to work with Ryan!

Wedding Dress Friday: This time, it's for real

This past weekend, I went home, with the intention of showing my mom the dress I had bought and looking at bridesmaid dresses with my sisters and my cousins. My mom was disappointed not to have been there when I bought the dress, and - given my unspoken misgivings - I agreed I was going to look at just a few more dresses. We went to RK Bridal, in Manhattan, which has both bridesmaid and wedding dresses. The whole point was supposed to be looking at bridesmaid dresses. I already had a wedding dress, right? I was just humoring my mom, right? But we spent most of the morning trying on wedding dresses.

RK Bridal doesn't take reservations, so we made sure to get there early, before the store opened, and we managed to get our names first on the list for wedding dresses, which meant we were the first group to be assigned a consultant. Our consultant was Olga, who was fantastic. I probably tried on a dozen dresses, which, added to the 2 dozen or so I'd tried on at the Running of the Brides, puts me way over the average for number of wedding dresses tired on (which I think is around 10-12). (Remember when I said I'd try on a couple dresses and pick a pretty one, and be done with it?)

The dresses - most of them - were gorgeous. It's a completely different thing, I realized, too, to try on a dress at an actual wedding dress store. (They use binder clips to hold the dress in place so you don't have to just imagine how it would look if it actually fit! Binder clips!)

My sister Laura got there late, and so she'd missed the first couple dresses I'd tried on. After I'd tried on my dozen or so, and ruled out several, I started over, trying on what was left a second time. I walked out of the dressing room, in a gown that my mom, sister Anna, and cousin Jamie had liked the first time, but which Laura was seeing for the first time. She instantly burst into tears.

That means that's the dress I'm supposed to wear, doesn't it?

It's not the dress I bought.

I spent a while going back and forth, eventually, between the dress that made Laura cry and the dress I ended up buying. Olga told me that the first was more "bridal" and the second more "sexy," but that's not really the way I saw it. Sure, the second is closer-fitting, and open-backed, but when I wore it, the feeling I had wasn't "sexy." (It wasn't "unsexy," either, of course.) It was "bridal." I could see myself walking down the aisle in that dress. I smiled a lot when I put it on. And when I imagined myself walking down the aisle in that dress, the image in my mind was of Ben waiting at the altar, not of the dress itself. It was a dress that I loved, that looked awesome, and that knew its proper place, being amazing while simultaneously getting out of the way to let me focus on what really mattered - my groom. The only thing that prevented me from choosing was that I was weighing the dress I loved against the dress everyone else loved. Once I realized that, the decision was easy. I picked the dress I loved.

Pictures after the break! (Dear Ben, Don't click this link. For real this time. Love, Kathleen)

Wedding Dress Wednesday: Part I

I bought a wedding dress. And then . . . I bought another wedding dress. I'm still trying to come to terms with being the kind of girl who buys two wedding dresses. I'm not entirely sure what kind of girl that is, but I doubt the words used to describe her are complimentary. Fickle, materialistic, and extravagant are a couple that come to mind. But with each dress, buying it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do at the time.

On July 30, I went to the Running of the Brides at Filene's Basement, with two friends, Jessie and Maggie. I did not go to the crazy running/throwing elbows/stealing dresses out of the hands of other women portion of the day, but after going to work in the morning, I took the afternoon off and headed over to Friendship Heights. I probably tried on close to two dozen dresses. Lots of them were exactly the type of dress that I'd had in mind: sleeved and lacy. All of those looked awful. Many were accompanied by beading of the variety that made Jessie remark that they looked like they'd been Bedazzled by a kindergartener. In short, it seemed that the only sleeved dresses they had were quite dated, and had likely been making periodic appearances at these sales since their heyday in the early '90s. Someone picked up a dress that looked nothing like what I'd been picturing myself wearing. It was strapless, beaded (though tastefully), and a color close to champagne. But it was beautiful, and when I tried it on (it fit almost perfectly), it was incredibly flattering, and strangers stopped to tell me how great it looked. And since the price was right ($249), I bought it. At a sale like the Running of the Brides, there's no thinking about it and coming back for it another day. It was now or never, take it or leave it, and I could not leave behind a dress that was so pretty and looked so good.

I'm not sure I would have taken such a dramatic step away from the image I'd had of myself had the dress been more expensive, but at $250, I felt like it was too good to pass up, and it wasn't a huge sum of money if, in fact, I ended up returning to the dress I'd imagined. (This from a girl who regularly carries groceries home in the palms of her bare hands to avoid paying DC's $.05 plastic bag tax, which just goes to show you how much weddings skew your perceptions.)

Almost immediately, I began to have the niggling feeling that I was talking myself into this dress. Part of me was disappointed that I'd "caved" to the prevailing trend of the strapless dress, a feeling I couldn't shake, no matter how many times I firmly told myself that not doing something just because everyone else is doing it is just as silly as doing something just because everyone else is. My mom said things like "If you love it, then I love it," which is not exactly a glowing endorsement. And then there was the feeling that I would not have ever shared with anyone, had I not eventually gotten a different dress: the feeling that, when walking down the aisle, I'd be overwhelmingly disappointed in what I was wearing.

But . . . it was just so pretty! There was no denying that it was a gorgeous dress. There was no good reason not to wear it, and the good reasons to wear it were not limited to its pragmatic attributes - like the fact that I already owned it. No, my (admittedly limited) aesthetic sense continued to tell me that it was a beautiful dress, and that I, or any other girl, would be lucky to be married in it. (Which is undoubtedly true.) My sentimental side, though, just kept saying, "But . . ." And "but" was all it took for me to decide to try on some more dresses this weekend, which you will soon read about in another post.

And after the break, I'll post pictures of me in the first dress. I'm hiding it behind a page break because I haven't the foggiest idea whether or not it's ok for Ben to see a picture of me in a wedding dress that is not the dress I'm wearing to my wedding.

Engagement Pictures!

My lovely and talented cousin, Jamie Vitale, took some engagement pictures of Ben and I when we were in NY this weekend. The first of them is now posted on her website! Check it out!

Update: More pictures!

I bought a box of Frosted Flakes, today, for a snack (don't tell my mom), and the expiration date was April 30, 2011.

My cereal is so romantic.

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Searching for "The One"

While at home this weekend, I tried on my aunts' wedding dress. (Yes, that's appropriate pluralization; more than one of my aunts wore this dress.) I liked it a lot. My mom expressed reservations about whether the cut flattered my figure, and I could see her point. Do I love the lace at the neck enough to make up for the fact that the skirt makes me look a  little thick about the middle? (Sometimes I think I do. From the waist up, this dress is everything I want in a wedding dress.) Besides, Mom said, "when you watch Say Yes to the Dress, they say that when you put on "the" dress, you and your loved ones just know, and it overwhelms you. I don't get that from this dress." I told her that was all propaganda. You can't take your dress-buying (or dress-borrowing, as it may be) cues from a show designed around the wedding dress industry.

For generations, didn't people get married in their mothers', sisters', aunts', or cousins' dresses? Or in pretty dresses they already owned, or in dresses they could afford? Back when getting married was simpler, women got married just fine without searching for "the" dress.

Or did they?

Over the course of the weekend, I heard stories from relatives who got married 15, 25, or 50 years ago, and they each had stories - though not in so many words - of looking for and finding "the" dress.

An aunt, who got married in the late '90s said that she went to one dress store, and tried on 3 dresses. The first two had been suggested by the saleslady, though she liked a different one. When she tried that one on, she loved it and she bought it.

My mom, who got married in 1982, said that she had liked the look of her aunt's wedding dress in pictures, asked to try it on, and knew as soon as she did that she didn't need to try on any more dresses.

My grandmother, who was married in the '50s, told me that she got her dress in a warehouse. Some friends from work had connections, so she was able to go to the warehouse to see dresses before they were distributed to stores. "As soon as I saw it, I liked it," she said. And that was the dress she got.

Now I'm torn. I really hadn't thought that I would try to find "the" dress. I would find a dress that I liked and that was flattering, knowing that there are probably hundreds of dresses out there that would fit the bill. I would not buy into the wedding dress industry-sponsored propaganda. I would not seek it far, seek it wide, seek it low and high. I would try on a couple dresses, pick the one I liked the best, and I would have a wedding dress. My wedding dress shopping would, ideally, hearken back to the simpler days of wedding planning. And now I learn that even in the simpler days of wedding planning (my grandparents' wedding didn't have RSVPs; they just planned to have enough food in case everyone they'd invited showed up) brides sought and found "the" wedding dress. Is my attempt to mirror days gone by actually a romanticized attempt to invent days that never were? What's a girl to do?