A Big Fat Wedding Post January 28, 2008

There will be no more references to the post below. Part of me feels like I made a mistake even putting it on the blog. But another part of me is all it’s my blog, I can post whatever the hell I want, I can abstain from posting whatever the hell I want, I don’t owe anybody anything.

I especially don’t owe a damn thing to someone who wrote nasty things about me and that includes a link to her blog.

Quite frankly, she doesn’t deserve the traffic.

So, um, moving on.

I drove out to New Jersey on Saturday to be a productive bride.

Tangent: M should really take away my keys to his car. While in the parking lot at Starbucks, I accidentally hit a barrier and now M’s front license plate is mangled. While backing out of a parking spot at the bridal salon, I hit the pole of a stop sign. I apparently have reverted back to driving like I did when I was seventeen and would try and make secret deals with the town mechanic to fix my car and not tell my dad.

Anyway, the bridesmaids dresses have been chosen. At one point, there were fifteen of us in a dressing room, debating the merits of a champagne sash versus a sand sash to go with a chocolate brown dress and everyone was kind of looking at me to make a decision and if I haven’t told you already, decisions are not my strong point.

So I did what any responsible, mature bride would do: I kicked everyone except for my mother out of the room and I started to tear up.

My mother, being my mother, rolled her eyes and said something along the lines of “Clinky, just pick a damn color.”

And I did. Chocolate brown dress with a champagne sash it is. (The reverse of what is in this photo, though my sister will be wearing this exact combination since she’s the maid of honor.)

I also had a consultation with my florist, during which a very bizarre exchange occurred.

I was speaking with the assistant at the shop, giving her the relevant information (date of the wedding, how many people in the bridal party, etc). She told me about her own wedding, which was a small backyard affair.

“Sometimes I think that’s the way to go,” I admitted.

“Yeah, well, with your last name you can’t really do that. I mean, the wedding is kind of a glamorous business meeting for your dad, you know? A chance for him to show off.”

I was pretty taken aback. One of my bridesmaids was with me and she piped up. “Actually, I don’t think that’s it at all, thanks.”

I wanted to tell Little Miss Florist Shop Assistant that, while my parents are paying for some of the wedding, M and I are taking on a lot of the expenses on our own (including the fucking flowers). That she clearly doesn’t know my father if that’s what she thinks of him. That she really shouldn’t judge people that she only thinks she knows (cough, cough, COUGH).

Ahem.

As Molly, Peter and M have all said - people are going to judge no matter what. Their perceptions may be off, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to let it roll off my back; paying attention to it just feeds the beast.

It’s a good life lesson for me, actually. I can’t spend my life fighting back against the snarky bloggers and Florist Assistants of the world. They don’t matter. However, being who I am - no matter what - does.

So, I found my dress. December 9, 2007

I don’t know what I was so afraid of.

I was literally shaking as we parked my mother’s car (far, far away from every other car in the lot; I spent half of my childhood walking across parking lots because my mother has a fear of rogue shopping carts or flighty drivers denting her vehicle) and headed towards our first appointment.

I could give you about a million reasons why, none of which are particularly logical.

Mostly, though, I guess I was just fearful that I wouldn’t find something that spoke to me. Something that made my mother, my sister, my grandmother and I all cry. Something that made me feel like a bride. Something that made me look like a bride. Something that was worthy of this step I’m going to take in July, the hugeness of which tends to get lost in the details sometimes.

I chose to go dress shopping in New Jersey because people are nicer there. I love you New York, but you are sometimes full of snots. Especially in your bridal salons. (Hey “TrueNYer”: Commence rant about how I am so not a real citizen of this city because I dared to get my gown in another state. A state without sales tax on clothing.)

The good people of New Jersey proved me right - the women at the bridal salon were warm and welcoming. They were open to my ideas but also offered suggestions based on my body type and the overall style of my wedding. They made me feel comfortable. Comfortable enough to, oh, prance around in nothing but my boy shorts, which may have been a bit too comfortable but hey. Apparently I’m comfortable almost naked in a room that is half full of strangers.

The first two dresses were…okay. Seriously, just okay. In the way that a slightly worn cable-knit sweater and jeans and your boots and those earrings you always wear are just okay to wear on a Wednesday when you’re not doing anything after work. You know?

And then my mother - of course, because her style is second to none and she knows me better than anyone - pulled a dress off the rack and said “try this.”

And, lo. Every single one of us cried, including the salesgirl, who either got caught up in the moment or will clearly go above and beyond for a commission.

The dress is gorgeous. Elegant, sophisticated and, um, it gives me a waist the size of Victoria Beckham’s. I’m not sure how and I’m not sure if I want to find out how but let’s just pretend it’s magic and move on.

I want to post a picture. I want to post a picture so bad and if I were reading this post on someone else’s blog and I got this far and the bitch started talking about how she didn’t want to post a picture because it would not do her dress justice I’d probably want to smack her. At the very least.

It’s just that THE INTERNET DOES NOT DO MY DRESS JUSTICE. Sure, it looks pretty on the designer’s website but it does not look exquisite and I don’t want you to be all “wow, that Clink has no taste.”

I tried on a bunch of dresses after The One - just to make sure, you know - but I couldn’t stop staring at my dress on its hanger as I tried on others. Kind of like when you’re at a bar with a nice enough, cute enough guy but every time Mr. Nice and Cute goes to the bathroom or turns away, you make eyes at the gorgeous guy in the corner and you both know that you’d rather be with him.

People, I even tried on a Monique Lhuillier. I have worshipped at the Temple of Lhuillier for a very long time and, don’t get me wrong, the dress was beyond beautiful.

And yet…still not as beautiful as mine.

So, we have a dress. A dress that is so worthy.

And now, of course, I want that dress to be taken in when it arrives in a few months, so let the dieting begin.

Um, I guess sharing that pint of dulce de leche with M on the couch while listening to Christmas music in our newly holiday-ized apartment wasn’t exactly the best start, but hey. We had something to celebrate.

I found a dress.

Update: Ok, so if I post a picture, you all have to promise me that you’ll remember that the dress looks about a thousand times more stunning in person/on my body. Also, ignore the hideous veil and jewelry but feel free to envision my arms just as toned as the model’s. Deal? Deal.

I love the lace. I love the fact that it’s not too much lace. I love the sweetheart neckline (so do my boobs). I love that I can add little organza cap sleeves if I want. I love the back (mine has a bow right at the ass, so cute.) I love everything about it - especially how it makes me look and feel.

I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well. October 25, 2007

I have a confession: M and I aren’t perfect.
 
Perfect for each other, yes.
 
Perfect? Absolutely not. 
 
I’ve stopped writing about the difficult times. Mainly because they’re few and far between but also because…Well, I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Because I’m afraid of being judged? Because I’m afraid to share more now that I’m less anonymous? Because now that we’re getting married, I’m afraid that every tiny argument can be seen as a chink in the armor of us? 
 
It was Sunday, the day before my birthday. I woke up with a mood as grey as the sky. Something about twenty-six really got under my skin. I had one day left as a twenty-five year old and I was apparently going to spend it snapping at M and sulking and in general being a not-so-pleasant person to be around. 
 
M, bless him, tried his best. He tried to make me laugh. Failing that, he tried to get me to talk. Failing that, he got a bit frustrated. He’s human. And I had been pushing his buttons all day, dragging him down into my black hole of a bad mood. Misery does love company, yes, but even more than that, misery loves a good fight.
 
I won’t go into the details – that’s between the two of us  – but it escalated. Escalated to the point that I did something I’ve never done: I grabbed my stuff and bolted out of our apartment, letting the door slam behind me, not bothering to lock it.
 
In New York, you can be alone both nowhere and everywhere.
 
I cried once in London, while walking down the high street. It was homesickness, if I remember correctly. Three people stopped me to ask me if I was okay. By the time I got back to my flat, I was smiling. London cared, London took care of me. 
 
New York could give a shit. 
 
I walked to the fountain at Columbus Circle, one of the most underrated spots in the city - especially at night - and took a seat between a disoriented bum and a beautiful teenager sketching evening gowns.
 
I was iPod-less and phone-less and money-less and crying, wiping the snot onto the sleeve of my red hoodie, sitting knees to chest. Suddenly embarrassed, suddenly very sorry, suddenly feeling very stupid and yet still too full of pride to go back. I chided myself for letting my emotions get the best of me, for not being rational, for being such a bitch. A foul-tempered bitch.
 
I fight like my mother and my sister. We’re feisty, we’re Greek, we go for the jugular. If we’re angry - no matter if it’s justified - we’ll tell you everything you don’t want to hear about yourself. We’ll spot your weakness and go in for the kill. This is an attribute that is going to make my sister a stellar divorce attorney in just a few years. However, it’s not something I’m proud of and I definitely wasn’t proud that day, sitting in front of the fountain, mulling over the things I had said.
 
I saw Cameron Diaz first, walking with an actor I recognized from Alias (IMDB says: Bradley Cooper). I welcomed the distraction that came with passing judgment (skinny but not too, a bit of a flat ass, skin looked fine, overall very pretty).
 
Then I noticed a familiar face crossing the street towards the fountain – the stubble, the mess of brown hair, the black jacket with the collar, the one I love. The ice in my veins – ice I had worked so hard all day at keeping in place – melted.
 
He came and found me.
 
He sat down next to me. We just let each other be for a short while, sitting in complete silence, facing forward. The water drowned out the rest of the city, which is the reason the fountain is my favorite place to think. You can’t do anything but.
 
I could be remembering it wrong, but we reached for each other’s hand at almost the same time.
 
Somehow, some way we got from there to a perfect pre-birthday dinner. A perfect after-dinner. A perfect after-after-dinner. A perfect actual birthday. We built back up again after a not-so-pretty crumble.
 
It’s why I’m marrying him.
 
Because we’ll fight - hopefully not often, but it’ll happen. In fact, I’m wary of couples that don’t ever fight, not even just a bit. There are times when the connection, or the communication, they’re just not going to be perfect. There are times when things aren’t going to be easy.
 
But we’ll always find a way back to each other, M and I. And that’s what makes me believe in us, with ever fiber of my being.
 

So lucky. October 18, 2007

 

I know that this probably isn’t going to help my unofficial “I’m not materialistic! No, I swear!” campaign but coming home to the above tonight was a pretty damn awesome surprise. Especially after a very long, very stressful day.

It’s less about how those boxes are filled with fine china and more about the fact that my extended family never ceases to amaze me with their love and generosity.

***

Moving on. Things You Will Never Hear Me Say: Wedding Edition

“Actually, I think I really want a winter wedding. Like, in January. When it’s freezing outside. Hopefully it will snow.”

“You want to wear a pink tux, M? Fine with me.”

“I hope I don’t lose a POUND before the wedding!”

“I really wish my mom had more opinions. God, she is no help at all.“

“Our wedding website isn’t really all that great. I didn’t put much thought into it.”

“No candid photos. I want everything to be posed.”

“Oh, I’ll be totally fine if it rains. Rain is good luck!”

“Cry? When my dad walks me down the aisle? Why would I do that?”

“I want an updo.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool that we’re going to Hawaii for two weeks. I mean, whatever. I’m not really all that excited.”

“I think that the wedding is going to be pretty tame. I mean, my family isn’t really fun-loving at all.”

“The tasting is going to suck. I hope we can get it over with very quickly.”

“I’m not really sure if I should be marrying M.”

And one non-wedding thing you will never hear me say: “I’m not going to miss Joe Torre at all. It’s not like he was my third grandfather or anything.”

Hi, I’m alive! October 15, 2007

Woo!
 
Though, really, I shouldn’t be. Especially seeing as I left work early on Friday, writhed around in bed with severe stomach pain, chugged some Pepto and then…ate Mexican food for dinner.
 
What can I say? I like living on the edge and also, guacamole’s siren song is impossible to resist.
 
Luckily, many of my symptoms have subsided and fully functional Clink is back in action. My uncle, the doctor, is monitoring the situation and seems to think that everything is fine thus far.
 
(Now watch, I’m going to totally die tomorrow and you’ll all be like “that idiot should’ve gone to see a doctor. She gets no sympathy from us.”)
 
Anyway. This weekend was so wedding-licious I can’t even stand it. I seem to be back in the wedding-planning swing after having been apathetic during much of the summer (must’ve been all that sangria I drank).
 
On Saturday morning, a few of my bridesmaids, my mother, my sister and I ventured into the garment district to try on bridesmaids dresses. Initially I thought that I wanted the girls to wear an array of dresses in the same color and fabric but different styles. That is until everyone tried on the sweetheart neckline dress in chocolate brown with a light pink sash and be still my heart, all of them looked breathtaking in it. So, um, yeah, that “an array of dresses! My bridesmaids will be individuals!” idea is hanging on by a thread, dependent on what the rest of the bridesmaids think. Seriously, little known secret: a sweetheart neckline looks amazing on everyone.
 
Though - gah - is $270 entirely too much to ask? My bridesmaids seem okay with it but part of me feels a bit guilty, even though it’s over $100 less than I was asked to pay for the wedding I was in. I should probably go consult my wedding guru (”Hi Martha Stewart? It’s Clink.”)
 
Sunday, M and I met a potential photographer in a Starbucks near our apartment and I think we both left with a little crush on him. He’s personable, talented and absolutely on the same wavelength (also: hot; bonus for the bridesmaids). He’s shot at our reception site before and says that Greek weddings are actually his favorite because, in his experience, Greek weddings have the most personality (if he was saying that just to butter me up a bit - it worked). Also: he costs about half of what the other photographers we’re considering cost. It’s like he hasn’t yet realized that, yeah, hi, you work in Manhattan and that in and of itself means you can charge an exhorbitant amount of money to photograph a wedding.
 
We might meet with another photographer just to say that we did but, really, I think we found The One.
 
Who says this wedding planning thing is hard? Puh-lease. (Brushes shoulders off.)
 

Bridesmaid-friendly Bride. September 23, 2007

Confession: The first section I flip to in the Sunday Times is the weddings section.

M wonders why I bother, as I clearly must be a little masochistic to read about - and ultimately compare myself to - the Ivy League-educated brides and well-heeled grooms and the elaborate celebrations of marriages that will never know the meaning of the second half of “for richer or for poorer.”

My response is something along the lines of “yeah, yeah, I know…but omigod, baby, I have to tell you about this couple.”

I’ve become wedding drunk recently, which is a pleasant surprise. Between moving, and starting a new job and M starting law school, the wedding momentum had slowed and I had a slight fear that it would never pick up again. That I would become an apathetic bride, taking the opinions of others and making them my own just because it was easier, in general feeling a bit “meh” about the whole ordeal.

Ha. Silly me.

We went to Hooters for lunch today and, as M watched the Patriots on one of the non-plasma screens in the corner, every once in a while mumbling about the loss of his beloved DirecTV and thus the NFL Sunday Ticket due to the move, I pulled out my wedding notebook and started making lists: rehearsal dinner lists, to-do lists, shot lists for the photographer.

That got me to about halftime. And then I started to sketch bridesmaids dresses.

Ah, bridesmaids dresses. Before I got engaged, those two words would elicit a shudder from yours truly as I envisioned my own $400 Vera Wang bridesmaid gown rotting in the back of my closet, never to be worn again.

I’m serious. I cannot envision another time in my life when I will have an occasion to wear a floor-length, light pink gown in unflattering satin (Hi, I’m Satin and I’m going to showcase ALL THE BUMPS YOU MIGHT HAVE and I’ll maybe even showcase some new ones, you know, just for fun, MUAHAHAHA).

So, I am well-versed in the plight of the bridesmaid. I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of a bride with a vision and I’ve decided to make it as easy as possible on my girls. I want them to have a dress they can wear again - a night out, a cocktail party, something - and I want it to flatter their individual bodies. They’re all thin, they’re all gorgeous but the body types - ranging from reed thin to svelte curves - are varied.

That Vera Wang gown? The one I spent $400 on (sorry, I just need to state it again because $400? REALLY?)? It didn’t fit me well. You see, I have a chest. And a chest + low cut gown + too low cut for a strapless bra = necessary “pasties” and necessary “pasties” = fear of popping out at any moment and inadvertently stealing the bride’s thunder (unsurprisingly, M loved me in that dress so maybe some day it will be worn again, as very fucking expensive lingerie).

I was uncomfortable the whole evening in that dress, and therefore I didn’t have a blast. I had a decent time, when I wasn’t pulling and adjusting, but my mind was always on my chest instead of, you know, the wedding.

Therefore I’ve decided to find a line of gowns that come in the same color and fabric but different styles: halter, strapless, etc. In fact, I made an appointment in October for a few of the girls who live in the city to try on some dresses so that we can get the ball rolling. I don’t want them to look like an army of well-dressed handmaidens; I want them to look like individuals. Individuals in dresses that flatter their respective body types, something I wish my friend - when she was a bride - had taken into consideration.

I will probably turn into a minor bridezilla about a few other things but bridesmaids dresses isn’t going to be one of them. Besides, if my girls aren’t worried about how they look in their dresses, there will be more time for adoring me and isn’t that what the whole day is about! (I kid, I kid.)

So, I think I’ve got a healthy approach to the dresses but, if you’ve been a bridesmaid and you’ve got something to share with this bride - either something positive and sweet that you suggest I incorporate or a horror story - do share. I’ll file everything away into an “Unofficial Guide to Being a Bridesmaid-Friendly Bride.”

Doozy. I just like that word, doozy. Doozy. September 20, 2007

Oh crap, y’all. I am tired. Also, tired. Maybe even tired.

We’re only three days into this week but already it has been a doozy.

Do you want to know how crazed I am? I will tell you how crazed I am. In fact, I have the perfect example:

I worked a 14 hour day, a 14 hour day spent mostly on my feet, operating a camera and searching deep into my soul for reservoirs of sunshine and light because when you interview talent, you have to give them energy to feed off of and good lord did those fuckers suck me dry.

Needless to say I was exhausted when I got home. Exhausted and not even hungry for the pico de gallo I made yesterday or the cupcake I got at work and OMIGOD, A FIRST. Exhausted and and not hungry and DENIM-LESS, lest we all forget. In other words, a mess.

I collapsed on the couch to watch the premieres of America’s Next Top Model (shut up) and Gossip Girl (shutupshutupshutup).

About an hour later, M came home from the library. He opened the door and I heard him say my name very tentatively.

“I’m in here!” I called from the living room.

He entered, a bewildered look on his face, holding my keys. My keys, which I left in the front door.

Hi, I’m Clink and I live in New York City and I LEFT MY DAMN KEYS IN THE DAMN DOOR. (M thought that something happened to me when he saw my keys and he later pointed out five gray hairs that he believes sprouted at that exact moment.)

So, I’ve lost it. All for real and official-like.

And now it’s almost midnight and it’s time to read a few articles in the new Sports Illustrated and half-watch an episode of Family Guy that I have seen a zillion times and then pass out but I just wanted to say hi because sometimes I feel like my blog is my child and when I don’t post, it’s akin to it not have eaten all day and WHAT KIND OF MOTHER AM I, I WOULD STARVE MY OWN CHILD?

Being work busy is so not interesting, I know, and I apologize. Being wedding busy is so much better and I’m wedding busy too! I mean, we found a photographer. And she is all about the photojournalism which, HEART, because there is nothing more vomit-inducing for this future bride than a plethora of posed photos. So there’s that at least, the promise of candid, spontaneous pictures to capture a day I am paying a shitload of money for but probably will not remember much of.

It’s almost the weekend right? RIGHT? I seem to have forgotten what day it is but I can sense the weekend coming soon. Hallelujah, y’all.

TGIF. September 7, 2007

It’s Friday. FRI-DAY. (Don’t you think that Friday should be FRYday and we should all be required to eat French fries? That, my friends, is a world I would like to live in.)
 
It’s so sunny and beautiful in New York, the type of weather that makes you want to kiss the shiny buildings and splash around in the Hudson and pat yourself on the back for choosing to live here.
 
Today’s the first day that I am the boss as my boss is out of town and guess what, bosses get asked a lot of questions. I’ve had to pause about five times while writing this to answer questions and it should make me feel powerful and important but really I just want to say “um, I’m writing a blog post here, can it wait? Like five minutes? Until after I’ve had my coffee? At the very least?”
 
Sigh. This boss thing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
 
This weekend M and I are driving up to New Hampshire (do you know that one of my major weaknesses is geography? Well it is. I didn’t know West Virginia was a state until I was in college. COLLEGE. I thought it was, um, just the western part of Virginia. Feel free to throw things like stones or tomatoes at me). I don’t really know where New Hampshire is, is my point, but I’m excited to go there. Even if the forecast calls for ninety degree weather AND intermittent thunder storms.
 
M’s friends from college live up there – in a huge house, the mortgage for which is less than we pay in rent – and they’re throwing a barbeque for the three couples in the group who have recently gotten engaged. I’m excited. Anywhere that allows me to play the bride card with reckless abandon is somewhere I want to be.
 
Speaking of that bride card, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the details of the wedding. The little things that will make it stand out. Lately, my focus has been on favors.
 
Now, I’ve received enough crappy frames and clusters of Jordan almonds to know that I want something different. I don’t want people to feel gypped. I want them to leave with a small token of our appreciation for not only celebrating with us, but for navigating New York City and paying New York City hotel and parking prices to do so. And also, for giving us gobs of money.
 
Initially I thought of a candy buffet, inspired by Martha Stewart (when you’re planning a wedding, she is your goddess no matter how you felt about her before the wedding or how you’ll feel about her after). Guests would receive (adorable! Personalized!) boxes which they could fill with a variety of candy.
 
But M and I are less candy people than we are cookie people. We’ll be all “meh” at the idea of a Snickers but present us with a few dozen chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven and you will barely have any left once we get through with them.
 
So now I’m thinking, cookie buffet. And now I’m also thinking, put my family to work. The women I’m related to are fabulous bakers and each of them has a specialty. I want to present each of their specialties on a gorgeous platter with a frame that says Aunt Tia’s Famous Blackbottoms or Yiayia (that’s grandma, in Greek) Sofia’s Incomparable Greek Sugar Cookies. It just feels more personal, more special. I may even have to make some of my delicious homemade Oreos.
 
I don’t know. How boring is that? I just wrote about FAVORS. Omigod. I tried for a while to ixnay the eddingway stuff but, yeah, it creeps back every now and again and I am powerless against it. (*Pulls out Future Bride card, waves it around, shrugs*)
 
If any of you have received any inspired favors – or have been to a wedding with a great detail, such as a basket of flip flops on the dance floor so that women can abandon their heels and shake their thangs comfortably – I would, of course, love to hear about it.
 
So I can steal all the ideas and pass them off as my own, MWAHAHAHA.

V.I.B. August 17, 2007

I went to a bridal expo last night. 
 
I did not seek out the bridal expo. As with all things that one should be wary of in life, the bridal expo aggressively sought me out via emails from some “future bride” list that I apparently stumbled onto (The Knot, I blame you) and phone calls from one of M’s friends – a fellow bride – who heard a rumor about “free drinks” and “lots of swag” and thus convinced me to attend.  
 
I could sum up the experience by saying this: we walked in at 6:37pm and walked out at 7:28pm and were sitting in a bar, two rounds each in front of us, by 7:36pm. I exaggerate not.
 
The minute I was handed my V.I.B. sticker (that’s Very Important Bride, duh), I knew I should’ve turned around and walked out. However – as I am very, very good at ignoring my gut instincts (it’s an art, really) – I did not. And before I knew it, BrideFriend and I were quickly escorted from the peaceful lobby of the hotel into a ballroom that… 
 
Well, there’s no good way to explain it. The best picture I can paint is this: you know when you’re walking through a department store to get to the rest of the mall? And inevitably you have to walk through the cosmetics section, because the cosmetics section is usually the part that connects the department store to the rest of the mall? And suddenly you go into ninja mode as you are forced to dodge aging women who took their make-up cues from a pastel clown as they try and spritz you with “this season’s hottest scent”?
 
Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Times five hundred. Except, instead of perfume, you are bombarded with pamphlets (tuxedos! Limos! Cake! Zoom tooth whitening system?) and it’s kind of like a casino in that it is designed to keep you in at all costs. And there is NO BAR, as we found out after a few laps around the perimeter. We even eventually asked one of the women running the expo about, you know, whether there was any place to get a glass of wine or eleventy thousand and she looked at us as if we had just asked if we could eat her arm, as we hadn’t had lunch and were kind of hungry…that’s how horrified. 
 
There were brides everywhere: fat brides, skinny brides, young brides, old brides. And all of them were pushing and pulling and basically acting the way you expect people to act during a riot or a Barney’s warehouse sale.  
 
“This is, like, our Bridal Class of ’08,” BrideFriend said to me, wide-eyed, as we got jostled near the Fortunoff booth. 
 
“I weep for the future.”  
 
Ultimately, we did what any self-respecting anti-brides with slight claustrophobia would do: we quickly hit up all the tables that were handing out free gifts (I now have enough Redken hair products to keep an entire southern sorority coiffed for two semesters) and then we got some cake (delicious! Though when is cake not delicious, I ask you? Or am I just very liberal with how I feel about cake?) and then we stood awkwardly against a wall while waiting for the bridal fashion show – the “highlight” of the evening - to begin. 
 
“So. Um. Yeah, this fashion show should be, um, interesting and, um, I’ve never really been that into David’s Bridal but, um, I hear they have good bargains and…” 
 
“Do you want to leave?” 
 
“I thought you’d never ask.” 
 
We ran out of the ballroom like we were being chased, which we probably were, because those tuxedo guys were aggressive. We made a beeline for the first bar, even though we happened to be in Times Square, threw our 547 (approximate) bags in a booth and begged the server to bring us drinks (and fried food, natch) as fast as he possibly could.
 
I was overstimulated for the rest of the night, unable to focus on even The Fashionista Diaries or Big Brother (that’s when you know its bad). I know that this all sounds dramatic – I mean, it was a glorified trade show for brides, no one should have left feeling like they’d just been through a warzone – but for someone who values her personal space and her unbruised skin and the fact that no means no (I’m looking at you, tuxedo guys), it was kind of a traumatic experience. 
 
However, as I emailed to BrideFriend this morning, we may never be the same, but at least we got some free cake out of it.  

Registered. August 8, 2007

I resisted registering for a while. Something about it just seemed so inorganic – choosing things to have other people buy for you. I mean, ten year old Clink would’ve been all about it, but twenty-five year old Clink was a bit hesitant.  
 
Besides, I’m Greek and therefore ethnic: it’s all about money in an envelope. 
 
But then people, mostly non-Greek people, started asking. “We want to get you an engagement gift, where are you registered?”  
 
So, Monday night, M and I curled up in bed with his new MacBook (codename: Albino Baby) and got to work. 
 
Rather, I got to work and M watched ESPN and periodically commented, when asked, about whether he liked the cake stand with or without the glass dome (“What kind of cake are we talking about?” “OmiGOD, nevermind.”) 
 
After hours (literally, hours) spent on www.potterybarn.com and www.bedbathandbeyond.com, I was spent. And also, excited. Because I had cobbled together (with some help from the fiance) what our future is going to look like: the Emma collection of dishes in our cabinets, a silver KitchenAid stand mixer on our countertop, high thread count sheets on which our children will be conceived (that was one way to get M to participate in the bedding discussion: “We will be having sex on these so I’d like your input, please.”)  
 
Plus, being an amateur baker (currently an abstinent baker as HELLO MY THIGHS ARE NOT GETTING ANY SKINNER AND IT IS LESS THAN A YEAR UNTIL MY WEDDING), I got to pick out various bakeware to pad my collection (I may or may not ever make mini-quiche or mini-tarts but DAMN it I want the mini-quiche/tart pans, just in case).  
 
But therein lays the problem. When you’re picking out things that will ultimately go on someone else’s tab, it’s easy to choose something you don’t really want or need. Like the ice cream/sorbet maker I initially added to the registry because really, Clink? You’re actually going to mix ingredients and wait for them to freeze instead of walking your ass down to the bodega to get a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Phish food? REALLY?  
 
(I took the ice cream maker off.) 
 
Also, I’m nervous about picking things out and still liking them in a year. I am notoriously indecisive (I am a Libra, after all) and I’m afraid that once the gifts start rolling in I’m going to look at the plates/bowls/wine glasses and wrinkle my nose and ask M to remove them from my sight because what the hell was I thinking? 
 
But, for now, I’m feeling confident in my choices. I’m feeling confident in having chosen a wide array of stuff to segue M and I into being a married couple, complete with matching table settings and serving trays and enough pots that we may actually be inspired to cook every once in a while.  
 
It’s weird. But a good weird. A we’re-getting-married good weird.