The Visa Diaries

I have always been one to opt for the benefits of anonymity and independence over a close, cozy community. Benefits of anonymity? you might say. And indeed as I write it, it sounds so post-industrial and alienated – like I am that modern social malaise that so many commentators have commented upon. And yet from the inside, it feels like there is a freedom in being anonymous. I don’t have to pretend I’m interested in things I’m not, or interrupt my reverie to engage in small talk. Formulaic pleasantries make me start to itch rather quickly. In a place like New York City, you can cry in public or have a meltdown or step outside the lines in any number of ways, and there’s no danger that somebody will judge you, and tell the neighbors, and then remind you of it time and time again. They can’t because you’ll never see them again. The sheer number of strangers we all meet makes keeping tabs on each other impractical.

All of which may make me sound like a loner, but I’m not. I have lots of friends, and generally feel like I can barely spend enough time with them, so why dilute my efforts. Perhaps it is a cool-headed calculation to only expend my social energy on the most rewarding returns. Perhaps its just the introvert in me. But whatever the reasons, I have always valued the ease of anonymity: not being a ‘regular’ anywhere, not knowing about the secretary’s children or seeking out gossip that doesn’t really affect me.

So imagine my surprise to I find myself not only a regular, but a chatty favorite, at the concession stand in my work building. Fair enough, there aren’t so many other options around and I do go there several times a day to feed my coffee habit. But still, a devoted anonymous urbanite could skillfully give only a polite veneer and semblance of interaction, and still remain wholly unaffected by the experience. I blame it all on Armando, who seems to be one of those preternaturally upbeat and good-natured people that I only of dream of being. Armando is from Oaxaca, Mexico, I learned, when we chatted about that fact that I was going to Oaxaca for my honeymoon last year. He and Benjamin, one of the other two dynamos at the concession stand, are in a Mariachi band together called the Conjunto Dinamico, and they play all over the tri-state area. Yolanda, the third member of the concession team, who may be Benjamin’s sister of girlfriend, I’m not sure, often goes to watch their gigs. It is always obvious when they’ve had a late show the night before, because they are sort of squinty eyed and tired looking (though never-the-less flawlessly efficient and good natured in their service).

I am discovering the benefits of being a regular. When they see me coming in the morning, they pop in a whole wheat bagel in the toaster without me having to wait in line to order. They remember that I like my iced coffee with poco hielo, and recently have started chilling decaf coffee just for me. If I’ve forgotten to stop at the ATM, they say ‘don’t worry about it’ and let me pay later. The biggest benefit, perhaps, is the enthusiastic greeting and ‘Que pasa, Kate?’ that I get every time I go. Corny as it may sound, I feel special and recognized in the crowd that is New York City… or at least my big office building. I am now Facebook friends with the Conjunto Dinamico, and if that’s not a commitment to relationship, I don’t know what is.

I like to call this transition time between Winter and Spring the Winter-Pudge Season. Worse than any other part of the winter, even though its almost over, this is the low-energy, bottom of the pendulum swing, back-up batteries are exhausted time of the year. I am always taken by surprise. I roar through November and December with the holidays, then coast through January, and at some point think, “huh, that wasn’t so bad. my clothes still fit, I’ve still got a bit of oomph. you go girl! winter weight, I got you beat!” And then, inevitably a couple of weeks later, toward the end of February, it catches up with me. I start to notice my clothes feeling a little bit tighter, and my hip bones lose their definition. And then I go, “uh.” Because I’ve had it. I don’t have the energy to exercise more or eat less. I just don’t want to. I’ve used up all my reserves, and they won’t be replenished until the sun comes out and charges them for several weeks at least.

And that is the most depressing part: changing this trend is like turning around a big ship. The extra layer of insulation won’t drop off as soon as spring arrives (which it must be here, btw, because my tulips are sprouting ALREADY!) Instead, it’ll be a slow process of reversing the on-putting process, which took at least two months. Wah.

I think it is in regards to this issue, then, that I have found myself at the at the Lulu Lemon store a couple of times recently. And also the Adidas store, in the, erm, Stella McCartney section. Both of these purveyors of fine, flirty feminine workout apparel are obscenely overpriced. Up until now my attitude about workout gear has generally been,”Its just going to get sweaty,” and “Target is good enough.” But some deep part within me recently has been yearning for a glorification of the workout, for any excuse to think of myself as a svelte, in-shape body. This is retail therapy at its most basic – I’m not feeling fit, so let’s buy some clothes that are all abut fitness… maybe they’ll rub off on me. For that marvelous alchemy, no price seems too high.

I first became aware of the guiles of Lulu Lemon when my friend Ana, yoga-teacher and wholesome living guru, became an ambassador for them, and showed up in one cute Lulu Lemon piece after another. Their styling genius is making grown women feel like coddled, cuddled, indulged little girls. They do this through cut, and ruffles, and fabrics. The typical Lulu Lemon sweatshirt is cut longer and thinner than your average old-school sweatshirt, and it has a bigger hood – even fatter laces for the drawstring – and sleeves that extend down to the hands and have a thumb-hole. Lulu Lemon also puts ruffles and pleats and fabric overlays in places unexpected for athletic gear, feminizing and doll-ifying apparel that has typically been about performance and economy of form. The combined effect is a silhouette where the shoulders seems narrower, the head bigger, torso longer and leaner. Inside the cuddly fabric, the wearer feels delicate and swaddled – like one of those fragile twig-like ballerinas in their layers of coverups on Black Swan.

The truth is, I have been wanting *something* from Lulu Lemon for months now. When Matt and I were up in Montreal over the New Year (LL is a Canadian company) I made us take a special detour to the store, only to find out the prices are exactly the same there, and they seem not to do sales. Because it is so expensive ($98 for a sweatshirt??), it seemed like it would have to be the perfect thing – one garment that could channel all my desires to be a fit, delicate, cuddled ur-female, all at once. I had perused the website and the local shop on Union Square a couple of times without anything feeling just-right enough to pull the trigger.

However, last Friday it all came together in the “Spring Willpower run jacket.” Its got ruffles, a big hood, and layer-ability for multiple temperature usage. I tried it out Saturday on my new weekly run date with Christy and Nicola, and I felt fitter already .

Hello hello. My, I see its been a little while. Happy, ahem, 2011.

We were so snowed under here on the east coast that I couldn’t get to my computer to type in a Visa Diaries entry… Plus, we were so snowed in that I couldn’t get to he store to buy anything… er. Ok, let’s just be honest, January is a month of hibernation. No energy for shopping or blogging, or anything fancy like that. It has always struck me as counter-intuitive that we celebrate the New Year by making resolutions. I think most of the reason resolutions fail is because no sooner do we make them, then we plunge into January, the darkest, coldest, most slothful time of the year. Any juice and fervor we had with our new-found resolution quickly shrivels up and crawls under the covers once it gets a look at the sludgy gray world out there.

It could be, however, that the dead of winter is the right time for planting resolutions. I recently bought and planted some tulip bulbs. A regular reader will know that I am a very new gardener, and so I did not really know that tulips are supposed to be planted in the Fall. I was not even aware that that train was leaving the station back then. But a few weeks ago I go an email from Eden Brothers, a flower seed company whose list I seem to be on, that they still had tulip bulbs, and IT WAS NOT TOO LATE!! to plant them. So I thought, well sure, some fresh tulips will be nice in the spring, and I ordered a bag of 25.

Planting them was more of an ordeal that anticipated. I have several bags of soil left over form last year, but I did not realize how frozen solid even bags of dirt would be. I could not actually use it to plant the bulbs until I brought a bag into our living room to thaw over night (during which maneuver little clumps of dirt obviously got scattered around our living room. wonderful.) Anyway, the next morning the dirt was soft enough that before work I was able to throw it with the bulbs into an assortment of pots and therefore get my tulips finally planted. There is snow a little cluster of pots sitting on our porch, amid the receding snow.

My late planting of the tulips puts me in a small dilemma, in that I read online that they are supposed to be cold for 6-8 weeks after planting. That would mean that, for the tulips’ sake, I should want Spring to delay itself until at least late March. However for all the rest of our sake, I’d like Spring to come as soon as possible. In reality of course I have no control either way, so I just hope my tulips make it, after dirtying up the living room and all. My main point with this whole post is: if only we could plant our resolutions like tulips. Instead of giving birth to them live January 1, and expecting ourselves to go on a diet and get in shape starting right away, maybe if we planted them in our subconscious and let them just be cold and dark and hibernate there a little while, then they would naturally blossom in spring with everything else. It would require less will power, and they’d have more chance of survival. In fact I think its no coincidence that today, Feb 13, is one of the first sunny warm-ish days we’ve had in a while, and my fingers were inexplicably drawn to the Visa Diaries keyboard. Spring may not be here just yet, but all of the little bulbs nestled in the ground can feel it coming.

Well here we are, smack in the middle of The Consumption Season – er, I mean – Christmas Season. The twinkling lights, christmas jingles squeezing through every speaker, and the stores jammed to capacity. Last weekend, Matt and I headed into the big bad Mad-hattan – specifically to the even madder Soho – to do some shopping. It might has well have been a world cup game or an asian religious festival, there were so many people everywhere. I feel lucky we did not have to cross a bridge that might have started trembling.

One interesting thing about this time of year is that shopping becomes a duty, rather than a guilty pleasure. Of course it is supposed to be shopping for other people rather than oneself, but who’s to tell if a couple of personal purchases accidentally make their way in to the bag? It is practically inevitable, with all the exposure to all the wonderful goodies, that we will find some things irresistible for ourselves. I half-think the whole ’shop for others’ is a social ruse, a complicit pact between marketers and shoppers: feel good about shopping for others, while really you’re shopping for yourself. Everybody knows it, but nobody says anything.

Despite my cynicism, there may just be a beautiful irony to all of this, which is: while we are out pretending to shop for our others but secretly also shopping for ourselves, we actually have to get things for others. Otherwise we would blow the whole ruse. And the irony is that that feels good. I am no psychologist or spiritual guru, but I observe in action a paradox they often discuss: the incomprehensible mood-lift of doing something for somebody else. For example, I am dying for a particular ring for myself (I am not going to tell you which one, for fear somebody will snap it up), but there’s no way I can afford that along with my gift list. Instead I am going to get Matt a custom tailored suit. Can I tell the difference between off-the-rack and custom tailored? no. Does he already seem to have plenty of suits? absolutely. But he has been talking about needing more suits for a while now, so I figure, hey that what this whole Christmas thing is for, right? So I have been in touch with Matt’s friend Nik, who lives in Frankfurt where the tailor is, and we have been hatching up a whole plan and design for the suit. What color, what fabric, what lining, 3 buttons of 4, you know how it goes. In the process Nik and I have discussed our lives and new year’s plans, and the meaning of life… ok, ok, I’m exaggerating, but the point is it has been a fun collaboration, and really I’m not thinking about the ring any more. I could totally take it or leave it. Instead I am thinking about how happy (I hope) it will make Matt when he opens his cool pressie.

And same with the totally awesome rainbow colored Amac boxes I got for my niece, and the pillows I have sewed for my brother and sister-in-law, and every other item on my giving list. When I show up on Christmas with my bag of presents (wrapped with a different wrapping concept each year, which is a whole other fun project) I feel excited and happy and generous. The rest of the year I am quite a selfish person, which I feel guilty about. But due to the collective momentum – and the social ruse – of the holiday season, I get into the spirit of giving to others. The good feeling that I get in a return is a big, unanticipated present back to me. Perhaps one of these years I’ll even learn to extend the generous spirit beyond the month of December…

Perhaps in line with my newlywed state of mind, perhaps in line with this season of rest and hibernation, all of my energy recently has turned decidedly toward nesting. In the past month I have gotten through an amazing backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to do for, like, ever. I have sorted through boxes of things that I’ve carted with me on my last 4 moves. (Each time telling myself I’d look through it when I unpacked. And then didn’t). I’ve organized our storage closets (by size), linen closets (by color), and supply closets (by function… ok, ok, only roughly, and that one is getting messed up already). I’ve changed all the blown out lightbulbs, and even got extras. Last weekend alone, I refinished a sideboard, sewed a pillow, put rug pads under a couple of rugs that were missing them, and repaired two lamps that were broken in different ways. Whew! If you are an anal type-A like me, you can see why I am feeling good right now. Otherwise, you’re probably thinking something a little less flattering

But either way, let’s rewind to that sideboard, because that is one of the most fun and satisfying things I have done in a long time. About a year ago I inherited a lovely mid-century teak sideboard from my grandmother. It is in good condition, super cool and all great, except for one thing: the orange-y color of teak. This wouldn’t be a problem in itself, except that it is completely the wrong color for the rest of our house, which is all in the grey/ dark brown range. The sideboard had been hiding out in the living room, outside of direct clashing distance, until the other weekend, when we decided logically and storage-needs-wise, it needed to go in the kitchen. We moved it there and it fit perfectly… except for that color.

At first I was worried. Traumatized by my whole former history of never managing to ‘get to’ projects around the house, I anticipated the weight of that orange sideboard sitting there, gently annoying us with its color-clash, forever. Despite the fact that it would become part of the furniture (ahem) and we’d stop really seeing it after a while, I felt how its un-resolved-ness would be a subconscious but constant reminder of the imperfect state of my life; all the compromises I ‘live with’ waiting for some future when they will be fixed. Right up until the time I die. Yeah, heavy, that orange sideboard…

I was feeling a bit depressed, until all of a sudden I thought – well dammit, I should do something about this. I hopped online to learn about furniture refinishing and staining. Starting with the ever-helpful Design*Sponge led me to the awesome Brick House, and then Google found me a couple of woodworking-wonk sites, and between all of them I pieced together an idea of the process. Matt and I Zipcar-ed to the Ghetto Depot on Thursday, and by last Saturday, I was ready to tackle the refinishing and staining project.

All did not go smoothly, I must report. The sanding blocks we originally bought were not strong enough, and they gently smoothed, rather than removed the old finish.  I had to run out to the hardware store again. Then the short daylight was running out on me by the the time I got the first coat of stain on, and I had to finish in the dark. When we hauled it inside for the night, we could see that the first coat of stain had come out very splotchy… kind of like a calico cat. Matt hated it. I was convinced I had ruined the piece.

But my mother always said, “things always look better in the morning,” so Sunday I rallied, and re-sanded, and applied a second coat. This time we were looking much better. A little bit of further spot staining and some steel wool (I am newly in love with steel wool), and it is looking a-maaaazing! I still have to oil it and perhaps wax, but already it is in place inside and it goes *perfectly* with the rest of the room. Every time I walk by, I can’t help smiling and stroking it.

The strange thing is how empowered I feel by this whole episode. It cost me one weekend and maybe $50 in supplies, and I transformed something that wasn’t quite right into something that I now love. A whole new world of furniture finding and finishing possibilities has opened up. But perhaps most of all, I denied that feeling of compromise and “just living with it” from taking hold. Getting that for almost-free makes it 100% satisfaction.

Although my tan is rapidly fading (hopefully a little less rapidly than it naturally would, thanks to Dove Energy Glow…) and the sunny beaches of Mexico seem far far away from my Herman Miller work cube in Queens, there are still little bits of the vacation I am hanging on to. Oaxacan hot chocolate, for example, turns out to be the perfect evening treat now that Fall has firmly settled in here. Also, I am still waiting for a delivery from Mexico: a custom, hand-woven rug.

One day in Oaxaca we rented a car (a truck, to be precise, to deal with the roads), and followed a route recommended by a tourist brochure out toward some pre-Columbian ruins at a town called Mitla, with several potential stops a ‘craft villages’ along the way. I was a little apprehensive that these craft villages would be Disneyfied recreations of the ‘old-fashioned way of living’ just for tourists, but in fact it seemed to still be a genuine way of living. The craft businesses were very much up and running, and not solely for the benefit of tourists. The first village we stopped out was Teotitlan, advertised as a rug-weaving village, and indeed as we drove up the main road, both sides were flanked by somewhat sleepy family-owned weaving businesses.

As a total sucker for textiles of all sorts, I was delighted, and we picked a shop at random to stop and check out. A man was at a loom on the patio as we approached, with a couple of feet of colorful rug poking out from the back of the loom, as he tossed a shuttle of bright yarn between the complicated array of strings. In between each pass of the yarn, he adjusted the strings with a foot peddle, and rhythmically changed the color of yarn he was using. I was enchanted.

The shop was full of piles of bright rugs of all sorts of geometric patterns, which we to began to look through. The sales technique was decidedly less pressureful than my experience in Morocco, and when the owner Miguel eventually joined us, he was absolutely laid-back and congenial, proudly showing us his work without being at all pushy. Most of the rugs featured traditional designs, and though lovely, I was having a hard time picturing them in my house. As we looked further and he asked what I wanted, I asked hesitantly if he had anything in gray. This seemed like a travesty among such vibrant colors, but the reality is that gray is the unifying color in my home. Fortunately gray he did have, and he pulled out some gray and white renditions of the same types of design as the others. Much more up my alley. Then I spied one that was gray and had only a mottled pattern, like the static on an old black and white TV. That was it – perfect for my house! Unfortunately he only had it in a small size, but was happy to take an order for the larger size that we needed and send it to us in Brooklyn. A deal was reached.

Tootling back down the road from Teotitlan to the main highway, I felt a little sheepish. I had entered a land of bright color and intricate design, and had emerged with a rug that even Mies would approve of. Adjustments of some common aphorisms come to mind to describe this episode: “You can take a designer out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take the designer out of the girl.” Or perhaps, “You can take a designer to Mexico, but she might still drink gray water”?  No, they don’t really work, do they, but anyway you get the point. And I get the rug I want, and Miguel gets his money, so all’s well that ends well I suppose. In fact, I am so pleased that I am plotting further (modern design) rug commissions for Miguel and his talented hand weavers of Teotitlan…

I think that shoppers can be divided into two broad categories: those who buy things and those buy ‘experiences.’ I fit quite squarely into the former. I will always choose to skimp on transitory services or luxuries, and spend my money on cold, hard goods that will will be there in the morning. (hmmm – quite a mixed metaphors there… any Freudian analyses??) For example when I go traveling, say, oh I don’t know, to Mexico for my honeymoon, I would never elect to pay for an upgrade on an airplane, because I am already plotting out my purchases of artesanias in el mercado.

Hotel rooms fit into the transitory category, so naturally I am never keen to shell out much for them. I know people who love staying in nice hotels and don’t mind paying for it, but for me the benefit is too short-lived. Also the quality of the experience is so subjective – what if I feel fat that day, or annoyed at the person I am with, or it rains on my parade? It is all just too unpredictable. Better the lasting comfort of local handicrafts, I say.

I read recently in some magazine that my way about this is not actually psychologically the best. It said that people who are happiest are ones who spend money on experiences, because it makes them feel that life is rich. Or something. I wasn’t quite convinced. Perhaps this has been my problem all along, but I am definitely just wired for thing-acquisition.

With this predilection, when I do travel and need to find a hotel, it generally feels like a precarious balance between getting somewhere nice and clean and – dare I ask – charming, without paying so much that I can’t afford to leave the bloody hotel room. This dynamic was made even more complicated during my honeymoon, which is is where I have been the last 2 weeks . On one’s luna de miel, you don’t really want to feel like a penny-pincher. Plus Matt does fall in the experience-purchaser category, and hates penny pinching in any case, so I had no ally in the budget hotel-seeking endeavor. For all this we did go a level up in the accommodation scale from my norm. At least it was the off season, and rates were generally low, which helped me justify it. Thank goodness.

For this type of situation, I have to tip everybody off to i-escape.com. An edited guide to small boutique hotels all over the world, this site has been my go-to for accommodations for several years. They do from fancy to boho-econo, and they seem to have a stylish sensibility at all levels that rings my doorbell. For our trip, we found the hep Condesa DF in Mexico City, the truly gracious Casa Oaxaca in Oaxaca, and the old-fashionedly glamorous Hotel Santa Fe in Puerto Escondido. All of these places were super-friendly, well designed, and served delicious food. We felt happy coming ‘home’ and hanging out there during our stays. I even dare say they enhanced an experience that I will remember for a long time.

Everybody knows that New York City apartments are not spacious, and mine is no exception. I’m very lucky for the light, air, and views that my place has. And, at the the end of the day it is still a compact 800 square feet. While anybody outside of New York, and perhaps London and Hong Kong, will go, “800 square feet is the size of our doghouse out back,” I am actually occasionally amazed by fellow New Yorkers (or stray Londoners) going, “800 square feet? That’s not bad!” I console myself, at least, by thinking about the very petite carbon footprint I am making, and repeat mantras about quality over quantity, and how nice it is to be so economical an efficient. There is a sense of minimalism and forced non-accumulation of clutter that appeals to me.

St. James dresser from Restoration Hardware

The sincerity of these attitudes has been tested recently as Matt has moved in for real up in the big manzana. He was sort of half moved in for a while, and even that was a shock to the system, as I had already  filled all 800 square feet quite perfectly myself. I was very happy, in fact, with the number of shoes I had in the closet and books and things on the selves, and wasn’t feeling the particular need for any less. I will admit that his arrival spruced up the kitchen gear significantly (with more than just his blender) and I was very magnanimous about parting with my motley old pots and pans, culled over the years form Ikea and old roomates and much worse for ware. I was able to feel very gracious as I put those babies out on the street to make room for his all-stainless-copper-clad-precision-german-forged cooking weapons, and so that all worked out fine. When it came time to winnowing my very expensive designer jean collection to give him equal drawer space, however, all my magnanimity was used up.

In order to give our marriage a fighting chance, we have therefore been on a mission obtain more clothing storage space. We looked at all sorts of amoir-ish options, but settled on a dresser as the right category of clothing-storage thing. The problem is, we want one dresser that we can both share – a couple-sized dresser, with enough space for two moderately vain, sartorially-inclined people. I am shocked to report that we must be the only couple that fits into this category, because furniture makers do not seem to produce such a thing. After much searching both online and in stores, the exceptions we have found are: 1) an enormous factory storage case, reclaimed and refurbished up in Hudson, New York. Though lovely, this thing was just a little too hulking. Plus we saw it about a year ago, and it is long since sold. 2) Some slick, lovely Italian drawers from Cappellini. They come in all sorts of sizes and configurations and glossy and matte colors, and would make our place totally Milano-fabuloso. The catch? Oh, only the $9000 price tag. No worries though – that sales guy told us he could give us a 10% discount on items in the $10K range. Um… though it is pretty much my dream in life to live in a world furnished by Cappellini, that’s a dream for another day. Moving right along. 3) Restoration Hardware actually has a couple of bigger sized pieces, and while they are mainly olde-fashioned recreations, we both quite liked the St. James 11 drawer dresser.

Number 3 is the winner for us right now. It took a bit to wrap my brain around the ye olde styling and how it will look in our modern-glass-box apartment, but now I think it’ll actually go nicely, in an eclectic sort of way. Two becoming one, I think, has a lot to do with holding out for a good solution, while being open that it might not be the solution you had in mind. Now if I could just do similar math on Matt’s trunk sized amplifier and speaker cabinet that now reside next to our couch…

This is just a quick post to get back on the horse, post-wedding. I hope that my last one, about the crazy rabbit hole of  planning, gave some indication of where I have been the past several weeks. Those final weeks were really a full-on sprint.

And then, all of a sudden, the date arrived. Friends and family pitched in, and all the plans of the past 12 months got put into action. Tents and chairs set out, flowers and candles placed, balloons blown up, signs set out. Guests arrived, music played, bridal party walked, my father escorted, my mother’s lovely cousin O’Shay officiated, Stephanie read, and Matt and I vowed… We did it! Then lavender was thrown, pictures taken, drinks poured, celebration started.

The sun set and the moon rose. Guitars played, lanterns lit, champagne poured, toasts made, food served, cake cut. Matt and I danced, and then everybody danced, and all were merry and bright under the stars in the country night.

It really was my perfect wedding – I could not have asked for anything more. Sigh.

Now that it is all over and went well, I sort of wonder if all the stress and planning leading up to it was strictly necessary. Perhaps not. I almost want to do it again, only to get the planning part better, now that I know what I know. However, on the other hand I am glad that I went all out and a little bit crazy for it, doing as much as I possibly could to consider every detail. Once in a lifetime, and all that.

Since this blog is about purchases, I have no choice to take a page out of Mastercard’s book for this one.

Total wedding bill: Unmentionable.

The companionship and celebration of my closest friends and family on a beautiful weekend in a breathtaking setting while I committed to share the rest of my life with a wonderful man? Truly priceless.

For the most part, I have been trying to avoid talking about things I am buying for my wedding (4 weeks away!) on this blog, because it is such a specific niche of purchases. Furthermore, it is endless, and could fill up posts from here until death do us part. However, since wedding planning is pretty much the only thing that I am doing these days, I don’t have any other material… so, with apologies, here I go.

I don’t know when weddings became such a big industry. When my parents got married, it was in the backyard of the bride’s parents’ home, as it was for most people then. Her mother did the majority of the planning, they showed up, badda-bing badda-boom, and five hours later they were rattling back down the driveway trailing some tin cans behind their VW. Perhaps this is a simplified view with 40+ years of hindsight, but planning definitely does not seem like it was the year-long full-time job it is these days.

These days the bar feels substantially higher. Take a gander through a Martha Stewart Weddings, or peruse one of the highly specialized and highly precious wedding blogs out there, and you know you’re not in Kansas anymore. A humble backyard affair will not cut it – unless, of course, it is styled by a celebrity stylist, who could make it come off as charming and naive… instead of it actually being naive. After all, this is going to be “your big day!” as everybody keeps referring to it, with a big smile! And with 100 plus of your most favorite people traveling from all over to be there, you do not want to disappoint.

The main thing I have discovered about wedding planning is that (like coastlines) it is a fractal-like process. Every bit of it, as soon as you dive in opens a world of questions of equal complexity. You need a cake, for example, so you research and find a nice cake baker. But its not done – you need to figure out what kind of cake, what kind of filling, what kind of frosting, what kind of decoration, what combination of tiered and sheet cake, will you have a what kind of groom’s cake and what will that be, how does everybody feel about cake toppers, and if so what kind and how much do they cost and con they come in time. Then you have to figure out how the cake will be transported and when, who will provide the pedestal for it to sit on, the table to support it, and the knife with which to do the ceremonial cutting. Each one of these questions could be an equally complex operation. You agree to use the cake knife that your aunt used at her wedding, until she back-pedals because she’s afraid it’ll get taken away at security on the flight there. Back to square on with the cake knife. Every step of the way involves endless research, coordination with vendors, and vetting of the proposed solution between a committee of people, including your mother, your father, your fiance, the secretary at work, and anybody else who happens to overhear. When a vendor goes out of stock on something you wanted or messes up an order, well then, just start right over.

This process happens with every item on the wedding shopping list, from big to small. The venue, the dress (the shoes, to veil or not to veil, the hair (down or up, and if up, high or low and how to make sure the stylist doesn’t use too much hairspray??), the make-up, the jewelry, the lingerie, the alterations), the ring, the caterer, the photographer, the dj, the officiant, the invitations, the flowers, the drinks, the decorations, the cake, the bridal party gifts, the favors. I could go on with the parenthetical decisions required. Throw in a couple of unresolved family issues (which, so thankfully, we have not really encountered. My parents are being a-maaaazing.) and I can see where Bridezilla comes in.

I realize as I’m writing this that I’m making this process sound like not much fun. But the thing is, it *is* fun. Obsessive and sometimes stressful, but so fun. When else do you get to design one day so fully, to pack it so chock full of beauty and meaning and special details. When else do you get to have all the people you love in the same place at the same time, and enjoy beauty and celebrate love with them! It truly is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The getting married part is – almost – the icing on the cake.