Celebrating Shoes and Complexities

Hi. I've been a bit MIA in the last few days and I apologize. I've both been dealing with significant personal issues and trying to process the overwhelming response to last week's "You Won't Find Beauty in the Portraits" article. Since the post got crosslinked on both East Side Bride and Weddingbee, I've been getting a definite range of reactions in comments and emails, all of which were thoughtful and all of which I appreciate. The initial post started out as a "your joy will be beautiful" post and somehow ended up as a challenge to popularly celebrated wedding portraiture, details shots, and "mainstream" blogs. I stand by everything I said in that rant (hoo boy it needed to be said after I read dozens of I'm-going-to-look-awful/need-to-lose-weight posts last week) but it's only part of the story. Because, while I'm entirely fed up with how wedding media began warping my hopes for a simpler, emotion-filled and joy-filled occasion into an opportunity for a vintage-y event that denotes simplicity and carefreeness in its carefully chosen details, I get it too.  Because darnit, I like the details, particularly because they're fun, work the creative non-excel focused part of my brain, and they're pretty.

Yes, even though this blog has focused more on planning angst and big-picture/eye-on-the-prize posts, I like the pretty.

• I like pretty photography (define as you will. I have a very particular aesthetic that may not float your boat, but it certainly floats mine) and I'll be making time for formal portraits. Not a ton of time, mind you, but time enough to have a formal record for our families and family history.
• I'm a little obsessed with collecting succulent inspiration ideas for our So-Cal wedding. 
• I perhaps spend too much time daydreaming about these inspiration boards made by our DOC, Sweet Emilia Jane, for our wedding.
• I love shoes. I can't exactly afford them right now, seeing as how I'm saving for a wedding, but I appreciate a few shoe posts now and then.  

So yeah, I'm the last person who won't get excited about shoes because it's not marriage related.  Personally, I don't care two whits about shoe pictures at the wedding (again, detail shots aren't my thing), but I know I want fabulous, colorful, comfortable, inexpensive (for me), rewearable, shoes.  I choose to spend (some very limited) time on (selected) popular wedding sites because I appreciate the help in thinking about how to make my wedding more inexpensive, sustainable, and yet pretty (and then I run away again very quickly before the aspirationalism and budget envy and body image issues creep in).  Because heck, if it were just me trying to come up with party ideas, I'd be left saying well, um, organic DIY flowers? Does this mean I have to buy vases? What's floral tape? Shiiit.

Those sites have their place. Indie wedding planning sites and communities have their place, particularly as a balance against one or two overriding aesthetic points of view or wedding approaches that don't fit what many of us may really want. More personal-blog contemplative sites have their place as a space to sort it out for ourselves, away from advertising dollars and reliance on "tradition." I'm not really a fan of any of these labels and I'm a big fan of working-it-out-for-yourself, which means there's no category for my blog except perhaps over-analytical-yet-occasionally-superficial-goofball wedding site.

This blog is simply an attempt to make sense of wedding planning in a way that makes sense with the specific life that my partner and I are building. I'm grappling with the institution of marriage and what it means to be a wife and married versus just me. I'm grappling with the wedding symbolism and expectations that feel gendered and constrictive. I'm struggling with what it means to be publicly coupled and how that's shifting people's perceptions of me and us in ways I hadn't anticipated.  I'm banging my head against the wall of our limited-yet-overwhelmingly-huge budget. I'm trying to plan a sustainable wedding and support local vendors. I'm running smack into self-esteem issues that I thought I'd put aside years ago because I'm now faced with the horrific bridal pressure to look the Best You've Ever Looked for the Most Important (and Most Photographed!) Day of Your Life (or what, he or she will run down the aisle in horror because they suddenly realized you don't look like a movie star?) I'm working on finding a synagogue and writing a meaningful ceremony and combining finances and figuring out chore charts and cooking responsibilities and building the healthy foundations of a life together. I'm dealing with family and personal challenges and way too many hours at the office. And in the midst of all that, I'm also struggling with how to achieve a pretty, welcoming wedding with an easy flow and a great party.

This site is a space for my wedding planning, my priorities, my frustrations, my personal bullshit meter, and my wish-I'd-had-this resource gathering (with a slight emphasis on LA couples' needs and general sustainability questions). It's not an indie wedding site or or a budget wedding site or a feminist wedding site or whatever other terms and signifiers we're using to define our various wedding blog communities and their intersections, and yet it's all of those things too. But it's also place to celebrate succulents, shoes, out-of-the-box reception ideas, lower-key wedding alternatives, and the lives that frame our weddings and make them worthwhile in the first place.  It's not an attack on anyone else's weddings or choices.  It's not an attack on the people whose weddings are featured on photo-heavy blogs or on anyone's individual photographic priorities.  And it's not an attack on anyone who is lucky enough to actually be as conventionally attractive as the people whose weddings generally get featured on those blogs.

In conclusion, I like shoes, I like pretty, I'm both conflicted and overjoyed with this process of planning a wedding/marriage, and I really like that moment when I burst into tears at a wedding. Thanks for reading along.