When I was but a wee lass — this was in the 80s — Barbie wore clothing that looked nothing like the clothing I saw on your average adult. Heck, her clothes were brighter, quirkier, and more frilly than anything I ever saw on a model, rock star, or cartoon character. I don’t think I have to tell you how badly I wanted kid-sized versions of Barbie’s wardrobe.
I guess my tastes haven’t changed all that much, because I think this might be my new favorite wedding dress:
The bride is one Princess Lasertron, aka Megan, aka the maker of fine felt flowers and other cool stuff. Her fabulous custom dress was created by Joi Mahon of Dress Forms Design, a private design studio in Sioux City, Iowa. And the photographs (see more here) were taken by the talented Becky Novacek.
While this dress isn’t exactly wedding-y, I think it’s divine!
Oh, one more unrelated thing! Go have a look at the WaPo article that Jennie linked to in the comments of this post. How do you pull of a sane, stuff-free wedding on public property where weddings are verboten? Read the article to find out!
The Wash Post article was really interesting — a protest is OK, but not a wedding? Bizarre! But overall I was really turned off by the author’s snotty tone (in fairness maybe it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek). I also wasn’t sold on this whole concept of the anti-wedding as a way to avoid wedding-planning madness. It seemed as though in trying to buck every wedding convention imaginable, the planners and the bride and groom spent just as much money and did just as much work (if not more) as a couple who had a more traditional ceremony followed by BBQ in someone’s backyard. IMHO, if you devote your life to ignoring or overturning every “convention” you see, you are still organizing your life around “The Man’s” expectations. How is that liberating?
I have to agree with you, Melissa B. The anti-wedding seemed to involve just as much legwork — and probably just as much stress — as a wedding-wedding. The article definitely illustrated another extreme…one that could easily be as stressful as the other extreme, i.e., wedding for 500 with all the trimmings. The real anti-weddings, IMO, are the ones that take place down at the local pub or feature home-cooked barbecue and bluegrass or are otherwise small, informal, easy to plan, casual, and fun.
I agree that it sounded like way too much work just to make a point. It also sounded like the comfort of guests wasn’t a huge priority. At least one seems to have balked at the idea of the scavenger hunt. Most people aren’t crazy about being stuck outside in bad weather without a backup plan. I kept wondering about grandparents and other family members who might be less agile and less willing to put up with being hailed on.
There was an online chat that kept raising the point that it would be even more anti-WIC to just have a quiet, tasteful, intimate wedding.
Exactly, Mary! I think the diver wedding NtB blogged about on 9/1 was a much more fun and personal “anti-wedding” than the self-conscious, hyper-planned protest wedding in the Washington Post article. They planned the whole thing in 5 days and did it in the way that was most meaningful to them. The diver wedding wasn’t about responding to what other people are doing or looking down their noses at anyone else, it was just about the two of them and what they wanted on their wedding day.
I’m with you guys. The anti-wedding was all about loudly rejecting all convention for the sake of rejecting convention at the tops of their lungs.
I’m all for looking at convention and ignoring the bits that don’t make any sense or make you uncomfortable. Don’t want to toss your garter? Then don’t. Don’t want to wear white? Wear the color you’d rather wear. Don’t want to carry flowers? Then don’t bother. Prefer a sundae making station to cake? Go for it. That sounds fun.
You don’t have to stage a protest to have a wedding that isn’t completely determined by the WIC. You just have to think about what you want your day to say and not worry about conventional expectation.
And I agree that it sounded as though everyone got pretty stressed out creating the anti-wedding that was supposed to circumvent the stress of planning a more conventional wedding.
Oh, and this dress is perfect for a wedding that’s about personal expression over expectation. At least, if it expresses the bride, which it looks like it does in this case.
Meanwhile…..I continue to find Princess Lasterton’s wedding photos on the net and continue to wish that were *MY* dress to wear *EVERY* day.
My envy, it knows no bounds :P.
At first I thought this article might be about the couple I saw at Mt. Vernon this past weekend. Mt. Vernon (George Washington’s estate) does not allow weddings anywhere on the grounds. She wore a white, princess style gown with a small tiara. He wore his dress uniform. They were accompanied by a man carrying clerical garb and a woman with a camera and a backpack.
When I saw them wandering through the entrance building to get to the grounds, I assumed they had paid some event fee to have a ceremony there. I found out later from the tour guide that they had lied to the ticket takers, saying they only wanted to look around for a little while. By the time the staff realized what they were doing, the ceremony was finished, and they were married.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt turned off by the WaPo article. So, in order to avoid making a wedding a display of conspicuous consumption, you turned it into a display of moral elitism? Where’s the true meaning of marriage and partnership in that?
In other news, Princess Lasertron’s punky Barbie confection (yes, this dress deserves to be called a “confection”) looks like it would be sooooo much fun to dance in…
Amen on the WaPo article: it was extremely self-congratulatory in flavor, and for why? The people involved ran around and got stressed as much as any bridal participants, and they ended up spending three times what I spent to get married. I’m sure there’s a lot I left out, because I was young and taking care of it myself, with help from some friends, but it stuck together for more than two decades. It was a lot of work, and people enjoyed it. How is that bad? As for not participating in the Wedding Industrial Complex, that’s easy: don’t. See how easy that was? There are hundreds of folks eloping, or going to the courthouse to get married. They didn’t buy into the WIC, and they didn’t need to make a big ol’ flapdoodle about it in the paper, either.
The whole thing smacks of, “Lookit me, Ma! Lookit me!”
Oh, and Barbie is my clothing and vocational heroine. Astronaut, veterinarian, Marine – Barbie did it all! With a pony! And a convertible, and a beach house! And she did it in pink, and in high heels. So: love the dress! I would dress like Barbie every day if I could.
I was horrified when I found the “Barbie works in McDonald’s” set, but I tell myself it was just a part-time job after school, and not the lowering of aspirations that it seemed.
LaBellaDonna…..my Barbie McDonalds, I decided, was fully automated, so my Barbies and Kens (all renamed once I got them of course, to more fitting names) ate there, but none worked there.
Also, I kept losing the little food pieces. Ah old toys of yore.
I had a Barbie hot dog stand — those mini bags of potato chips and individual hot dogs and buns were so awesome. I decided early on that Barbie had purchased it for fun after making millions of dollars as a private detective/surgeon, so no one actually worked there, they all just made their own hot dogs.
Barbie kinda rocked. She’s so much cooler than those horrible Bratz dolls.