I had something of an epiphany moment. Part of it started when riiiiiight as I was working on my application, the Weddingbee community imploded on itself a little bit. It's not something a reader would have noticed from just reading the posts by the vetted bloggers, but there was chaos on the boards for about a week while some things got settled. The situation involved a number of members (again, not the vetted bloggers, but general site members who posted in forums, like myself) who had been posting on a Sekrit Forum hosted by another website that was, essentially, wedding-world meets 4chan. Members were badmouthing other members behind their backs on the Sekrit Forum, coordinating attacks on certain thread topics, even threatening to take this mess IRL at member meetups. It's the way the internet works, but suddenly finding out that you've been made fun of behind your back (even by people you've never met and don't care about at all...) just makes a person feel... well... weird. It turned me off of doing a lot of communicating about stuff I'm working on, and definitely turned me off of the idea of applying to put my stuff and myself out there that publicly.
For the most part, I still feel like Weddingbee is a great and safe online community, but I just redirected a lot of my wedding-thinking-energy elsewhere for a while.
Where did I direct it, you might ask? Toward actually making stuff! Hooray!
I wish I had pictures of all the things I've made and found so far. That's been complicated by the fact that we've been having camera difficulties in the form of "we can't find Mom's charger, so it's been dead for two months." But for a basic list of things accomplished:
- Bridesmaids bouquets - are DONE! It's funny how once I got the flowers themselves made, the rest of the process just flew by. I'll do a photo step-by-step of the process of how I got from the flowers to the end product (which involves really heavy duty "gas resistant" wire...) when I do my own bouquet. I'm relieved to have them done - especially because all the flowers for the last two bouquets were barely saved from garbage dump doom after my Granny mistakenly took my cardboard box of them, thinking they were trash. (I don't think it was because they look like trash - it's the macular degeneration. I hope.).
- Card box - This project popped into my head in the middle of Michaels. I bought the stuff for it then and there, and it's almost complete. It's painted but still needs something attached to the lid to help folks open it. Workin' on that.
- I have not one but two projects that will end up being surprises for Johnny (so I can't talk about 'em...)
Something about being a shoestring budget bride that I come upon weekly, if not daily, are the conflicting ideas of "this is what makes a wedding." There's the stuff you see and the stuff that is. And a lot of times, what you see isn't an indicator of what is, and what is isn't something you can see. The isness of a wedding is a marriage - which is a ritual, an event, a covenant. You can witness that taking place, but can you see the things that happen in your heart and in your relationship when that event takes place? Nope. The stuff you see are the symbols that couples choose to evoke the feelings that they think go with the ritual event (can you tell I used to be Pagan here? :P)
But media and magazines can't make money off of talking about the isness. In fact, you really can't talk that much about the isness. It's not as easy to put words around as "this is a way to make a great centerpiece" and "let's look at the differences between these dresses." There are so many details surrounding the stuff you see, but the is? It just happens. And no amount of money or time spent on the stuff has an ounce of impact on that event whatsoever. It's just there for the mood. In reality, it should be the afterthought, the coda to the fact that two people are committing their lives to each other.
But it is kinda hard to deal with the stuff in that way when it does involve a lot of details, when you have a creative and aesthetic side that's wanting to play more than a kid with a box of 120 Crayolas, and when the nature of how people wrap their heads around things pushes the stuff side to the forefront.
Anyway. I've talked about this a ton before, and I'll probably talk about it more in the future. But enough of it for now.
And, on a totally stuff-related detail, we may end up with a caterer after all, if I can make sure to call her after I get back from South Carolina to talk with her. Johnny's dad had her food at a work event, said it was good, and found out that she only charges for the ingredients plus 10%. That's a good deal!
I'm sure I'll have some more thoughts and ramblings after returning from Becca's wedding this weekend. I'm not going to preface that here with any details about the experience I'm anticipating because I'm trying to go into this as much on an even keel as possible. Johnny knows how bad I've failed at that already, so I can at least try for you all. But if you've made it all the way through this War and Peace of a post, congratulations, and I'm glad to be writing again :D
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