shiny is good

In wedding news, after a lot of work, invitations are out. We got our first wedding gift, a stock pot. It was especially exciting for me because I'd gotten envious of the numerous Crate & Barrel and Bed Bath & Beyond packages for another woman in the building that are periodically stacked up by the mailboxes, taunting me. She’s still winning, but at least we're in the game now.

I have a shower coming up so last night I added some things to our BBB registry and had to chuckle at the insane array of silly gadgets. However did we eat fruits and veggies before we had plantain presses, cherry pitters, apple corers, mango splitters, avocado slicers, strawberry hullers, bean peelers, pickle pickers, and chile twisters?

After a rather obsessive search, I finally found a pair of earrings for the big day. I knew that I was unhealthily preoccupied with finding the perfect pair, but what can you do? I even started working on designing a custom pair with someone on Etsy, after falling in love with some earrings in a Chanel ad, but it was just too complicated and expensive. I couldn’t decide if I wanted a touch of green in my earrings or not and I didn’t want anything too cheap and disposable or something I’d never wear again. Ideally, I wanted earrings nice enough to pass down as an heirloom, but real gems, they cost the big bucks.

“Bridal jewelry”, like anything else wedding related, is quite the racket. In my exhaustive search, I frequently saw the exact same pair of earrings on multiple sites at widely varying prices. But finally I found a very pretty pair that have the right amount of sparkle and a vintage look. Yay!

And on a final note, I thank my lucky stars that Husband to Be is fully involved in wedding planning, as apparently this is a rather rare occurrence. Many women online talk about how little their fiancés care or do to help out and how they either just sign the checks, or even worse, how the women try to downplay or hide just how much money is being spent. It just boggles my mind that this is still considered solely the woman’s domain and how some men just want to show up and not have any input in what kind of food they’re having or music that’s playing or anything else.

HtB doesn’t have any opinion on what kind of flowers we have but just about everything else is a joint decision. How can it not be? This celebration is supposed to be a reflection of who we both are, not just whatever princess fantasies I may have been harboring since a tender age. I resent the larger implications that getting married and throwing this one big party is a woman’s peak experience in life, the ultimate validation of our existence, whereas for men, meh. They could take it or leave it.

Off of soapbox now. I think all the estrogen of online bridal communities can make me a little tetchy sometimes.