The Bride Wore Blue
This is soooo true, and one of the better articles on this subject.
To view the entire article, go to
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...Jan12.html
The Bride Wore Blue
By Jennifer Mendelsohn
Not long after we returned from our honeymoon, my new husband looked at me
and proclaimed the awful truth about being a newlywed.
'Nobody's going to applaud when we walk into rooms anymore,' he said.
And so it begins.
The post-wedding letdown is the dirty secret of the bridal industry, the
part that Martha Stewart and Emily Post forget to tell you about in between
advising how to make your own sugared fruit centerpieces and the proper way
to address wedding invitations.
Being engaged means living in a state of constant anticipation, a
forward-looking netherworld where your life status changes -- and people buy
you crystal vases! -- not because of anything you've done, but rather
because of something you're going to do. A part of you is always focused on
a future that has yet to materialize. But no one really prepares you for
what to do when it finally does.
Planning a wedding is also a mammoth, time-consuming undertaking. People
hire people to do everything I did. For nine months, I devoted a significant
portion of my life to orchestrating every detail of a five-hour event. Yes,
yes, I had tried to heed that advice that I should plan for a marriage, not
just for a wedding. But there really weren't a whole lot of concrete things
I could do for the former, and as for the latter, well, did you see that
patterned ivory vellum I found for the programs?
And then you wake up one day and it's over. You immediately feel
enormously ridiculous that you ever cared so much about patterned ivory
vellum. But there's also no denying that there's an enormous hole in your
life where wedding planning used to be.
'I sort of miss the sense of purpose and business that doing all that
planning gave me,' a bride on one Internet message board confided. I hear
you, sister friend. I liked planning my wedding. I was good at it.
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Being a bride-to-be rocks. I was right
to be jealous of my friends all those years. People make an enormous fuss
over you. Caterers try to woo you with fancy food. You get fawned over by
eager saleswomen with armfuls of the most beautiful silk frocks you've ever
seen. You have a religious obligation to buy jewelry. And no one so much as
bats an eye as you indulge your whim for insanely extravagant
Williams-Sonoma kitchen gadgets. Citrus trumpet, anyone?
Being an actual bride on her wedding day -- for however many hours it
lasted -- was one of the most sublime experiences I've ever had. And as my
husband and I swam in the crystal blue waters off Capri and ate steak frites
on the Champs-Elysees, I discovered that being a honeymooner isn't half bad,
either.
And then you come home.
People eventually stopped calling to do post-wedding analyses -- even my
mother. Soon there was no one left to show our pictures to. I still prowled
the message boards on the Knot, that online bridal mecca, gleefully
dispensing my now hard-won advice to all those still planning. I found
myself feeling slightly jealous that they still had it all ahead of them. I
schemed to find a way to bring up our wedding in any conversation.
('Afghanistan? Did you know they have weddings in Afghanistan? Well, at our
wedding -- ')
And then, one Saturday morning, as my husband and I sat with our coffee
and the newspaper at our favorite corner bagel place, I had a moment of
sheer newlywed bliss. There I was, with my, well, husband, doing something
at once so banal and so exhilarating: living our lives as a regular old
married couple. This was what all the patterned vellum had really been
about, wasn't it? This time, no one was applauding, but somehow it really
didn't seem to matter.
To view the entire article, go to
www.washingtonpost.com/wp...Jan12.html
The Bride Wore Blue
By Jennifer Mendelsohn
Not long after we returned from our honeymoon, my new husband looked at me
and proclaimed the awful truth about being a newlywed.
'Nobody's going to applaud when we walk into rooms anymore,' he said.
And so it begins.
The post-wedding letdown is the dirty secret of the bridal industry, the
part that Martha Stewart and Emily Post forget to tell you about in between
advising how to make your own sugared fruit centerpieces and the proper way
to address wedding invitations.
Being engaged means living in a state of constant anticipation, a
forward-looking netherworld where your life status changes -- and people buy
you crystal vases! -- not because of anything you've done, but rather
because of something you're going to do. A part of you is always focused on
a future that has yet to materialize. But no one really prepares you for
what to do when it finally does.
Planning a wedding is also a mammoth, time-consuming undertaking. People
hire people to do everything I did. For nine months, I devoted a significant
portion of my life to orchestrating every detail of a five-hour event. Yes,
yes, I had tried to heed that advice that I should plan for a marriage, not
just for a wedding. But there really weren't a whole lot of concrete things
I could do for the former, and as for the latter, well, did you see that
patterned ivory vellum I found for the programs?
And then you wake up one day and it's over. You immediately feel
enormously ridiculous that you ever cared so much about patterned ivory
vellum. But there's also no denying that there's an enormous hole in your
life where wedding planning used to be.
'I sort of miss the sense of purpose and business that doing all that
planning gave me,' a bride on one Internet message board confided. I hear
you, sister friend. I liked planning my wedding. I was good at it.
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Being a bride-to-be rocks. I was right
to be jealous of my friends all those years. People make an enormous fuss
over you. Caterers try to woo you with fancy food. You get fawned over by
eager saleswomen with armfuls of the most beautiful silk frocks you've ever
seen. You have a religious obligation to buy jewelry. And no one so much as
bats an eye as you indulge your whim for insanely extravagant
Williams-Sonoma kitchen gadgets. Citrus trumpet, anyone?
Being an actual bride on her wedding day -- for however many hours it
lasted -- was one of the most sublime experiences I've ever had. And as my
husband and I swam in the crystal blue waters off Capri and ate steak frites
on the Champs-Elysees, I discovered that being a honeymooner isn't half bad,
either.
And then you come home.
People eventually stopped calling to do post-wedding analyses -- even my
mother. Soon there was no one left to show our pictures to. I still prowled
the message boards on the Knot, that online bridal mecca, gleefully
dispensing my now hard-won advice to all those still planning. I found
myself feeling slightly jealous that they still had it all ahead of them. I
schemed to find a way to bring up our wedding in any conversation.
('Afghanistan? Did you know they have weddings in Afghanistan? Well, at our
wedding -- ')
And then, one Saturday morning, as my husband and I sat with our coffee
and the newspaper at our favorite corner bagel place, I had a moment of
sheer newlywed bliss. There I was, with my, well, husband, doing something
at once so banal and so exhilarating: living our lives as a regular old
married couple. This was what all the patterned vellum had really been
about, wasn't it? This time, no one was applauding, but somehow it really
didn't seem to matter.
