toothpastefordinner.com

But there’s one little problem: I don’t have people’s mailing addresses. We’re talking about folks who move every year or two and can’t really be pencilled into an address book. And really, who has an address book anyways? (The answer to that questions is ‘My fiance’. He bought an address book a few years ago and is pretty good at filling it out. I just rely on Gmail’s search functionality).

Yeah, so I had to go and ask my friends for their addresses, which was sort of awkward. Fortunately, I am funny and was able to send this email:

[Name of Future Husband] and I are getting married on October 15, 2008.

In California.

Where it is sunny and beautiful (and usually about 65 degrees during mid-October days, but really freaking cold at night so we have to rent heat lamps!).

We’d like you to come to the wedding.

We will even send you an STD.

That means Save the Date.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

But there’s a problem.

I don’t feel like trying to find all of your addresses on Facebook.

Also, some of you happen to believe in privacy.

When it comes to the Internet at least, because we all know that [name of oversharing friend] does not know the meaning of TMI.

So, you should send me your address.

Also, let me know if you’ve secretly been dating someone for the last six months so that I can write ‘and guest’ on your invitation.

And if you happen to be super-awesome at making origami birds, that would also be nice to share.

Not that this wedding will involve origami birds and potentially invoke memories of reading Sadako Sasaki and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

I’m just looking at options.

Save the Dates will go out in the next week and I’ve already looked in to flights from [city] to San Francisco and they’re as low as $170.

I am not kidding about that.

A round trip flight for 30 bucks more than a barrel of oil.

I know, [friend in Michigan] does not live in [city that is cooler than Michigan]. Sorry.

I’m going to get back to figuring out wedding things (like how many shuttles we’ll need to rent because we’re going to have an open beer/wine bar).

Send me your address!

-Bride To Be

Things to remember: anyone you send a Save The Date to you must invite to the wedding, so be judicious in your STD-spreading.

Uh, no. I don’t need my brand-new-groom to symbolically deflower me in front of the wedding guests. Aside from giving everyone a weirdly intimate indication of what might happen later that night, garters are useless.

Unless they hold a flask or wallet. Then garters are freaking awesome. Except that I don’t plan on being trashed at my wedding. And sorry, girlfriends who I love but am not asking to be bridesmaids, I’m not getting these for you either. So when would I have a chance to use this incredible device?

Maybe for baseball games? Can you imagine how much money you’d save if instead of buying $8.00 beers at the Giants game you brought a flask or two of whiskey? We’re talking about hundreds of dollars in savings if you switch to rum and cokes. Now that’s an accessory I can believe in.

If you’re a Bay Area Bride, you can pick up a garter flask at Dollhouse Bettie (home of crazy-enormous panties I hope to never wear) or Mingle, those of you who don’t live here in the land of protests can stop by the online Juliette Garter Shop.

Unfortunately, the nearest I’ve found is this certificate holder from Weddings by Dezign:

I know that it is shaped so that it can hold your rolled-up marriage certificate, but all I can do is picture it sitting on someone’s mantle next to the urn holding dear aunt Eunice.

Perhaps a better name for this site would have been MorbidWeddingCrap.com. No matter, if you’re looking for a way to forever preserve your marriage certificate in a manner that I find both tacky and creepy, you can pick up one of these scroll-holders for just $20.45 at Weddings by Dezign.

Yes, application fees. The non-refundable fees that locations charge you regardless of whether or not you actually get to hold your wedding at that location. I mulled this over for a while, pondering the other application fees I’ve encountered in my life, the ones for Grad School and College. And…oh, hey! It turns out that my application fees have been limited to applying to enter a school. Those fees are about $50 for each school. This makes sense because universities spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out who best to select for their incoming classes. There are steps like essay-reading and document-confirmation and meetings. Oh Lord, the meetings.

And then there are wedding locations. I’m going to start entering on this page the ones that I find ridiculous. Insane. Unbelievable. Let’s start with the gorgeous Los Altos History Museum.

Los Altos History Museum

This place is “A Community Jewel” and it comes with a price tag to match. The wedding rental rate (for 8 hours on a Saturday) is $4,000. Maybe you are choking right now. Maybe you are laughing about how cheap that is. I choked. Just a little. But the fee wasn’t the kicker because there are a lot of fantastic things included in the day (docent-led tours of the museum, bridal-changing room, chairs, “use of restrooms” [yes, that is a quote], etc.). And the $1,000 refundable deposit didn’t shock me either. After all, it is a gorgeous historic place and if your guests can’t respect it you need to pony up.

What made me gasp with disbelief was the $500.00 non-refundable application fee. $500.00 freaking dollars. Holy crap! Can you imagine if colleges charged 12.5% of the tuition as the application fee? The non-refundable application fee?

If there’s anything that’s really made me sick in this whole wedding-planning journey, it is the amount of deceit and backhandedness I’ve seen in the industry. Maybe I expect a little too much good from the human race. Or maybe I just expect people to have the decency to create rental schedules that actually work.

Dear potential wedding locations: please have the decency to charge me a sensible application fee. I’d never balk at $50 (hey, I know that somebody’s got to pay for that receptionist and the photocopying), but charging $500.00 that doesn’t go toward my rental and I’ll never see again? You obviously need to get a better administrator on board.

“Is this your yearbook?” I asked, confused.

“No, it is a face book. Basically, you can flip through this and figure out who you want to date.”

“Ah.” I was intrigued. And jealous. Why didn’t my college have one of these things? My freshman class was only 650 students, so this could have been accomplished with little difficulty or cost. Looking back I realize that at 18 a lot of guys still look they’re in the midst of puberty, so maybe this isn’t the best idea in the world.

Of course, now the innocence is gone. Now I’m in Facebook and being bombarded with ads (Get some Save the Date magnets! Have you hired a photographer? Here’s some boudoir wear! [seriously, lingerie on Facebook. Ew]), including one that really, really wants me to bare my wedding soul to my Facebook contacts:

Uh, no thanks. Every time I see one of those on a profile I take a look at the countdown and can’t help but think of a prison sentence.

This might have something to do with the fact that I recently visited Alcatraz. Or it might have something to do with the fact that I am going to a bridal show tomorrow. In Portland. Sober.

Wish me luck.

I guess that means this video has something for everyone:

I sort of wish that I was really into light sabers. Or Lord of the Rings. Or the Society for Creative Anachronism. It sure would make wedding planning a lot more interesting. Not that I need interesting at this point in time. I just need a venue.

Unfortunately, the super-nice IT guy who did that work did not install an Instant Messaging system. This was a problem. Instant messaging is a primary form of communication in the office. If someone makes an interoffice phone call to me, I am confused. What is that thing and why is it ringing? I didn’t realize how much I depended on IM until I tried to talk to Kate, my officemate and cube buddy and the only other person in the department. Kate and I have worked together for 3 years now. It has been a great working relationship. Suddenly, we were incommunicado.

That’s right, I couldn’t speak with Kate, the person NEXT TO ME in the cube area, because I didn’t have Instant Messaging installed on my new computer. I then spent the next 30 minutes installing and validating and loading my open source instant messager (I joke about the difficulty, Pidgin is awesome and you should get it now). Just so I could talk to Kate. Well, just so I could talk to Kate about things that were going on in the office. My Lord, people, I think a lot of things about office life that cannot be said aloud. Much like the bridal world, it is unendingly entertaining.

That said, maybe the couple below has the same problem that Kate and I had. Maybe they used to have a long distance relationship. Maybe they are each deaf in one ear and this is how they cover it up. Maybe they are just uncomfortable talking face-to-face.

Perhaps they have horrendous rashes that are being disguised with cell phones. Maybe they are having affairs. Maybe those rashes are from affairs. (Super-long sidetrack here: this reminds me of that episode of The Hills where Lauren checks out Brody’s cell phone and he has all of those numbers from chicks in there including people just named things like ‘Sexy Blonde’ and she definitely (I hope) realizes that he’s not the guy for her. Uh, yeah. I watch the Hills [well, season three]. Except I can’t get the finale to play on my computer. MTV and my computer hate eachother. Now I have to rely on long lines at Target and easily grabbable copies of OK to tell me what happened with Heidi and Spencer [FYI: They are still together, but after each of them leaving LA and staying with their parents for awhile they decided to call off the wedding for now.] and also tell me that Tara Reid is too skinny. That girl can never win. Also, why is Brody Jenner famous? Am I missing something here? Does he emit some sort of fame-aura that I can’t sense?) Yes, I think of rashes and affairs and cell phones and I think of Brody Jenner, ugh.

Whatever the case, it looks like the most awkward wedding vows in the world “Sorry babe, I’ve got to close this deal before I commit to you for a lifetime”. I’d much rather be All Terrain Vehicle Bride than Cell Phone Bride. But if you’re a cell phone bride (or your groom is a cell phone addict groom), you can get this set of cake toppers for just $19.98 per figure at Wedding Star. Of course, if you really want to show that each of you is incorrigible, you could always mix and match cake toppers, pairing cell phone bride with golfing groom.

Now that is love.

Fortunately, Stupid Wedding Crap is timeless and wedding planning seems to take a million years (have we set a budget? No. Has this stopped me from making a list of places in Palo Alto where I’d like to get married? Also no.) So, even if this favor is too late for all of the holiday weddings of the Christmas season, it isn’t too late for all of the brides just getting started on their 2008 nuptials.

These are $2.75 each as pictured above. Of course, you could get your own names and wedding dates put on them:

But then you’d look like a complete tool. “Sam and Michelle, thanks for coming to our wedding and sharing this special day with us. We’d like to give you a fragile, easily breakable item that probably won’t make it back to Des Moines with you. Also, when we visit you next Christmas season we’ll be checking your tree to make sure that you are properly honoring us in your home.”

But seriously, if you’re going to get some custom ornaments, I imagine that $2.75 isn’t a bad price. I have no clue about the cost of shipping over at the Stocking Factory, but I’d like to see you find a non-shot-glass piece of customized vitrian cheer for a wedding.

Part of the sudden fascination arises from the sad fact that Dear Fiance and I are each children of divorced parents and having experienced that we really, really, really do not ever want to be divorced. My own parents have each been divorced twice (for a total of three divorces - that’s some tricky math). So, part of our several years of living together before getting married was to make sure that this was something we really wanted, not just the fulfillment of some societal expectation that two people who like eachother a lot should eventually live together and start making some babies.

But back to that divorce thing. Since divorce has become so common, a lot of folks have starting sending out divorce announcements (I recommend the designer linen papers from Vera Wang - lovely!) and having divorce parties and pretty much doing the wedding thing all over again.

With one vital exception: the registry.

As a person who already owns a KitchenAid mixer and her ideal coffee maker (a Keurig - it is the awesomeness), I find the prospect of a wedding registry sort of weird. And uncomfortable. I’ll be close to 30 when I marry and the only thing I’ll lack at that time is fancy dinnerware. But, do I want to haul around fancy dinnerware for years? Not really. And if I lived as an avid cook and baker for 8 years without a certain piece of enamelware, I can probably go without it now too.

But a divorce registry? Now, that makes perfect sense! Here’s the how (and the why) of making one:

1. Wait until your divorce is final (And I really mean final. You are not allowed to have a Separation Registry, that is cheating.) and your formerly beloved has departed with your collapsible colander, dutch oven, and Spode Christmas gear.
2. Go to your favorite stores and have a ball with that zapper gun. Do not, under an circumstances, go to the Crate and Barrel couples wedding mornings with the waffles and mimosas. Waffles and mimosas might seems like a bright idea, but do you want to get trashed at Crate and Barrel surrounded by a bunch of recently engaged neo-Yuppies? No, you do not.
3. Have a party. Seriously, were you going to straight up ask people for presents without throwing a party? How tacky.
4. On the invitations to the party, mention your registry. Yes, this goes against all wedding etiquette, but this is a divorce folks, it isn’t as though you’re going to have a divorce website (unless you count a Match.com profile as a divorce website, which may be accurate in a variety of cases). Possible invitation wording is as follows:
   You are cordially invited to join
   Jeanne Marie Buchanan
   celebrate her divorce from
   Marcus James Smith

   Please join the happy divorcee on
   Fourteenth of January
   Two Thousand and Eight
   for cocktails
   followed by dinner and dancing
   with hot young men

   Appropriate gifts
   For this momentous occasion
   Are welcome.
   Ms. Buchanan is registered at
   Design Within Reach
   Pottery Barn
   and
   Crate and Barrel
   

And now, I’m off to try on wedding dresses. Wish me luck.