You can't escape...the nuptual industrial complex

Getting married comes with many new, and mostly unpleasant experiences. As soon as you set a date, you are suddenly exposed to the most ruthless, well-oiled commercial machine in the world: the nuptual-industrial complex.

I am truly amazed at the thoroughness of their attack. We started receiving wedding-related junk mail almost immediately after I bought my dress (coincidence? um...no). I wish that I had saved some of it and scanned it, because there were some real gems. My favorite was the chair cover brochure. Did you know that this was a thing? I mean, it never occurred to me that chair covers were a wedding accessory(tm), much less than there would be an entire company devoted to renting them out. The most amazing part was the cost--$2 per chair cover. That is the same amount I'm paying to rent chairs. And man oh man, are they terrible looking. If there is something fuglier than a chair cover, I'd like to know what it is.

Anyway...I have no idea whether this junk mail will ever stop. I mean, they apparently have no idea when my wedding date is, because they keep sending me information about venues--despite the fact that any self-respecting snooty country club event planner would laugh in my face if I expected to rent their space one month before my "event". Maybe I'll lose them when I move.

By the way, by far the creepiest part of the wedding industrial complex is on facebook (of all places). The instant I changed my relationship status to "engaged," I started getting ads for wedding junk in my sidebar, and even in my news feed.

Facebook is watching me.

I'm thinking of "facebook eloping" just to put an end to the visual spam.

Weddin'in--aka: Lovefest 2008

So Ross and I are getting married this May. We were engaged last August, which qualifies us as having a "short" engagement. However, on this end, it seems to have dragged on for-freaking-ever. I've officially crossed "wedding planner" off of my list of potential careers when I grow up. 8 months ago, Ross told me that he wanted a real wedding. 4 months ago, he decided that maybe a trip to Vegas might have been more fun.

But we have reached the home stretch, and it is starting to feel almost "fun" (not so much that I feel like removing the quotation marks, but more fun than it has been). Six months ago, everything was far far away and entirely hypothetical, so it was difficult to really get excited about preparing for it. But now that the time line is measured in weeks (5 of them) rather than months, it is much easier to think of the endless errands in terms of planning a party (a big party...with beer...and tamales) rather than an abstract THING that sucks up big chunks of time with no reward. That is not to say that life is all skittles and beer--I spent most of the day Thursday driving to a dress fitting on the other side of Detroit (those words make me shudder, truly), and last night was spent cutting, gluing, and tying teeny-tiny pieces of ribbon (more on that later). But the end is in sight--and it looks like a rockin' good time.