I feel a bit out of the loop, but I just discovered Etsy, an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade. Etsy lets you shop by color, place, time and material. It's a few months old. Oodles of neat handcrafted stuff at great prices. For those of you getting hitched, they also have a big wedding section with lots of stuff you'd like to make yourself, but lack the time, skills, or supplies.

As a recent bride, I can attest to the ridiculously high prices of wedding bands. (Sorry, you want HOW much for a platinum band? Ok, let's see that white gold ....) Want a reasonably priced, ecologically friendly alternative to your local jeweler? Try greenKarat, which has artisans producing recycled gold and platinum rings. The platinum cost only $350. No kidding. [link via the TreeHugger Holiday Gift Guide, also a useful holiday tool, via notmartha]

Tooling around the internet looking for ideas for wedding ring engravings, I found this site which offers really cheap wedding rings. I thought I'd glance through the gold options, just to see different styles, and discovered that now you can have the Precious as a standard wedding band option.

Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Because nothing says love like the root of all evil, the attempted conquering of mankind, and eternal darkness and misery. And enslaving hobbits. It's good to know what marriage means to you.

Another weekend afternoon of quilting madness! I spent most of the day cutting rectangles for flying geese, and doing math problems. This led us to determine that, the last time we went to purchase fabric for the square geese parts, math failed us (again) and we bought too little. My sister and I made a little emergency trip to Quilter's Palette for more speckledy fabric, as well as a new blade for Mom's rotary cutter. It was getting a bit dull after so much use.

Mom & Jenny sewed like crazy, completing the last of the patchwork squares. I tried out Mom's sewing machine to do one, and realized I'd better not use it anymore. I'll get spoiled, and then I'll want one just like it. YUM.

One of Jenny's first squares.

chopchopchop

My mom and I had our first big quilting day during the weekend's blizzard. We took over the kitchen, made a huge mess, ripped out seams, and sewed like mad. Here are some documentary shots of our day:

Our dueling sewing machines:

Artsy sewing machine photo:

Mom's nimble fingers sewing a square:

Tiny ironing boards rule!

I love this shot of my mom, looking so focused as she works:

Some finished squares, on very bright beige carpeting:

My mom bravely agreed to help me make a quilt which will be used as our wedding canopy, also called a chuppah. Here's most of the fabric, before we chopped the majority of it into little bits. We were supposed to do that, you understand. More in-progress pictures to come.

I'm really enjoying these academic books on weddings. This week's overwrought offering is Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique by anti-marriage advocate Jaclyn Geller. Her thesis:

Major life choices are the result of multiple influences, most of which are unstated or stated in complicated, indirect ways. Marriage, in particular, is a decision unlike any other--a decision with an elaborate social context. It is overdetermined by family pressure, legal sanction, and the deluge of consumer images linking wedlock to female happiness and self-worth. I hope ... to substantiate these beliefs and dissuade many would-be wives from draping themselves in white and walking down the aisle. (71)

Geller knows her stuff, and has dug up some fascinating facts, anecdotes, and statistics. She also refers to films, television, fiction and non-fiction texts, and historical precedent. There are a number of truly entertaining passages in this polemic. Here are a sampling:

In reference to John Mitchell's book, What the Hell is a Groom and What's He Supposed to Do?, she notes that the author suggests grooms "indulg[e] their fiancees as if these women were adorable, silly, slightly vicious pets" (120). She also calls the endlessly obsessive "marital narrative" of invitations, flowers, photographs and such a "romantic vortex in which [a future bride] can easily lose herself" (275). In one of my favorite passages, she describes the yichud, or post-ceremony seclusion of the newly married couple that is traditional at Jewish weddings, a "miniorgy of heterosexual affirmation" (286).

Essentially, Geller's point is this:

In order to shape a meaningful history different from the history of those who came before us, women must relinquish the sentimental excess of the current wedding ceremony and let go of marriage, the institution that has sheltered our female ancestors, sometimes granting them safeties and protections but always furthering their subordination. An epoch of equality will only come to fruition when this ceremony, which enforces gender difference, is abandoned. By denying ourselves the short-term rewards of the nuptial rite, resisting its temptations and relinquishing the opportunities it provides for narcissistic self-presentation, we can begin to construct a vision of female selfhood untouched by the marital agenda. (293)

I respect Geller's strength of will and the power of her convictions, but, boy, this book is a riot. If you're wavering about whether getting married is an unfair thing to do--because some people can't marry, because it perpetuates the myth that marriage is the best bond possible between two people, because you think it relegates your friendships to the back burner--this could be a dangerous but worthwhile read for you. But as for me, I giggled and snorted a lot, and read passages aloud for their entertainment value.

Hurrah! No more trying on stupid dresses, because I have found it!

I may have sniffed a bit, but I didn't weep when I saw myself in The Dress for the first time. On the other hand, it's mighty fine, and at that moment I finally truly felt like a bride. The whole wedding is now a tangible thing, which is both hugely exciting and scary as all get-out.

For any Chicagoland brides reading this, I purchased my dress and took it right home with me, from Here Comes the Bride in Addison. The women who worked there were ok, if not super-friendly; I'm glad I brought along an advocate to speak to them for me. They do, however, have a big selection, even in sizes for real humans!

I had a better experience at Wedding Belles, and had been planning to return there in mid-September, but then I found The Dress. The women at Wedding Belles are kind, fun, and endlessly patient, and their selection was amazing. I found several dresses there I liked very much, but nothing I loved. Still, of all the places I went, I would recommend it most highly.

I really felt strongly that I didn't want to order a dress and await it breathlessly for months on end, but should that be your intention, Gigi's Closette in Glenview has a great selection, and the woman I worked with at Volle's was extremely nice.

Ironically, in a single week I checked out the absolute best book about modern marriage I've read to date, and also the worst. Well, ok, the second-to-worst. That wedding traditions book was far more dreadful.

First, the bad: The Conscious Bride sounded like a thoughtful book of anecdotes by women who had experienced something other than unending joy during their wedding planning. Instead, the author (who only appears to have interviewed a small group of women) includes excerpts from interviews, then offers her own commentary and analysis with a mixture of New Age therapy buzzwords and Greek mythology. I managed to skim about 10 pages before flinging it across the room.

Here's a sample of this woman's bizarre writing, from the first chapter:

Congratulations! If you are holding this book in your hands, it is because you have recently become engaged. Either a proposal was offered to whcih you responded with a "Yes!" or you decided together that it was time to take the next step and move your commitment toward marriage.

This is the first line of the book. Bearing in mind that she continually refers to her audience as "the bride," I guess this means there are no women in her universe who propose to their men.

During my wedding journal I realized that the loss, confusion, and depression that live in the wedding's underbelly have been excluded from the bridal affair.

Wow! I didn't know weddings had underbellies. Is that like a reverse bustle? Good grief.

Then we have the ethereally beautiful A Walk Down the Aisle: Notes on a Modern Wedding, by Kate Cohen. This book could not be more different from The Conscious Bride. Cohen is an intelligent, eloquent woman, and rather than whining about how no one understood how alone she felt while planning her wedding, she explores the mature feelings of confusion, happiness, exasperation, fear, love, and ambivalence she felt when planning her marriage to her significant other.

The best thing about A Walk Down the Aisle, for me, is the way it addresses the issues many women today are coping with. For instance, the author and her boyfriend had been together for years before marrying. They lived together. They had thought a lot about the meaning of getting married before deciding to do so. The issues in this book are far more serious, and relate much more to what it means to be married, not just to get married, than any other book I've found.

Here's a section which I found particularly illuminating, since it summed up many of my own feelings about why I found I wanted to be married to my then-boyfriend. While shopping with her boyfriend for a new car, Cohen felt annoyed that the car salesman tended to ignore her, because her role in the transaction wasn't clear.

"Until then I would have been amused by his confusion; I would have enjoyed wearing the disguise of that hard-shifting, poor-handling word, girlfriend. I would have loved the fact that he couldn't properly categorize me. But now it frustrated me. Didn't he know how important I was? Couldn't he tell I was Adam's life partner, his better half, his ..."

"It was then that I yearned for the word wife."

The marriage vows Cohen and her husband wrote are so moving that I reproduce them here:

We promise each other: I will turn to you when I am in need, and care for you when you are.

We promise each other: I will take strength from who you are, forgive who you are not, and remind you who you want to be.

We promise each other: I will try to remember, whether sunk in sorrow or distracted by the day-to-day, what I feel at this moment--my sense of good fortune, my sheer joy at being with you.

We say to each other: Knowing my family and friends surround me, knowing who I am and who I want to be--with this strength and certainty I say to you: I have only one life, and it is only so long, and I choose to spend it with you.

My most recent foray into research on weddings is Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. The occasionally inaccurate references to the Disney version of the fairy tale made me wonder if the authors had ever actually seen it, and the book itself is very dry and academic, but overall not a bad read. On the other hand, the authors offer some excellent insights on the difficulties of the lavish wedding.

The lavish wedding has far more significant consequences when it comes to ideals of female beauty. ... [I]t now permits -- and practically requires -- a woman to make her face and body a "project" in order to be beautiful on her wedding day. ... The question remains whether today's woman is able to realize the ideal of being beautiful on her wedding day without subjecting herself to impossible demands for perfection.

My wedding research is uncovering new, hilarious articles every day. Thank goodness for Lexis-Nexis. From the New York Times, on June 6 of this year, we have "Recipe for the New Perfect Wedding: A $5,000 Cake and Hold the Simplicity," by Cathy Horyn. A few seminal quotes:

Far more troubling to her is the message that the media, and the wedding industry, now give young women. ''The message is: 'Spend time on yourself, not on your moral or intellectual development, but on displaying yourself,''' Dr. [Katherine Jellison, an Ohio University history professor] said.

However, wedding professionals in the trenches tend to view this development more harshly. ''I wouldn't want my clients to hear me say this,'' a retailer said, ''but I think it's because we've raised a generation of spoiled brats. Everything is about them -- 'me, me, me.'''

A very astute and succinct comment. Also, here's the real damage of the Big Wedding:

The average American couple spends $22,300 for their wedding, according to a 2002 survey by Fairchild Bridal InfoBank. In New York and Washington, the average is $35,000 (and, in reality, say caterers, closer to $50,000). Even though more and more couples are paying for their own weddings or pooling family resources, credit management companies have seen a rise in wedding-related debt.

And Ms. Barrett, of the Bridal Mall in Connecticut, said: ''I think some of the franticness I'm seeing in brides is because they know they're overextended. Their credit cards are maxed out.'' [Barbara Barrett, the owner of the Bridal Mall in Niantic, Conn.]

I wish someone could explain to me why web sites that advertise tiaras and veils have so many pictures of depressed-looking models. These women look suicidal.

Here we have, "These arranged marriages make me sad," "I know you had a stripper at your bachelor party," and, "My diamond is too small. I hate you."

As if the books I've been reading about the history of American weddings haven't been convincing enough, here's a great example about how we brainwash innocent little girls into believing that a bride always wears a poofy white gown and a shiny tiara. Check out the Princess Tea at the bottom of this review for a visual representation.

Not that I didn't see the Princess Diaries 2, and enjoy it, but the message I took away from the film (granted, I'm an adult) was not that a girl's value is only how impressively she gets married off. Actually, that's the polar opposite of the message I took home. I can only hope most little girls learned the same lesson.

However, I did fall desperately in love with the gorgeous lace veil worn by Anne Hathaway in the wedding scene in the movie, which goes to show that even adults can be gullible twerps. Here she is, in an image borrowed from anne-hathaway.com. The veil was approximately fingertip length, or maybe I projected that as it is my preferred length, and was anchored with the aforementioned tiara. I like tiaras. Honestly. Just not quite this big.

Leave it to NPR (and my stellar fiance) to point out Ugly Dress.com. Mm, fabulous ideas! Just kidding. The people who forced others to wear these monstrosities were clearly unhinged.

Looking for a nauseatingly twee introduction to wedding traditions? Look no further!

A charming Victorian social custom grew out of this heightened interest in the bride's wardrobe trousseau: the trousseau tea. ...There, amid bracing cups of Assam tea and trays of petits fours and meringues, the bride not only exhibited her gifts, but was coaxed to show off selections from her newly acquired wardrobe.

Stewart's A Bride's Book of Wedding Traditions spends a lot of time on charming Victorian traditions (she appears to be utterly enamored of the Queen herself, having written other books about Victoria) and with the ancient tradition of kidnapping women in order to marry them.

In addition, It's All About the Bride. Brides should have as many attendants as they like, even at a tiny wedding. They should feel free to wear yards of tulle and cathedral trains, even if they wed in their parents' garden. Pages may be employed to hold up said train. Gah.

Perhaps all this venue-hunting is nonsense. We have two perfectly acceptable choices that we wouldn't even need to scope out!

Destination wedding: In Vegas, at Star Trek The Experience. [thanks, Jenny!]

Locally: The Bristol Renaissance Faire. [thanks, Kate!]

I can see these options will require serious consideration.

Wow. Check out this amazing creation from an old InStyle photo shoot. Now if I could just find it in a color other than black ....

In other news, I'm lusting after Paper Source's invitation options. We may end up with something similar to this accordian book kit. Perhaps I will need to own a Xyron to accomplish this. I'm crying on the inside. Honest.

This is only funny because my mother and I are contemplating beginning the hunt for The Dress soon. See Cathy attempt the same feat.

Check out our first gift! Who knew getting married was so lucrative? (Just kidding, I think everyone knows that. I'm that much closer to my Kitchen Aid .... )

Thanks to my eminently stylish sister & brother-in-law for this gorgeous addition to our kitchen.

For those who haven't heard yet, the big news is out! I'm engaged!

I'm afraid the pictures don't do it justice, but here they are anyway: