Manolo for the Brides

I’m bringing you this week’s LOVE/HATE a day early because I’m feeling kind of peeved…which should be a big clue into how this edition is going to swing.

I was reading, as I often do in my spare time, articles about weddings and wedding planning when I came across this little gem:

Here is all a man needs to know about an actual wedding:

1. Sit down and shut up.
2. If it’s your own wedding, stand up and say “I do” at the appropriate time.
3. SIT DOWN and SHUT UP.
4. If it’s your daughter’s wedding, sign the checks.

HATE HATE HATE. I’m so sick of hearing that grooms-to-be are too stupid to plan a party and that brides-to-be are too crazed to let their fiancés have any opinions. I’ll be happy when this piece of common “wisdom” finally dies out. It’s happening, albeit slowly — as more and more couples pay for their own weddings, guys are definitely taking an increased interest in where their money is going. Dudes as a group are neither clueless nor “just scenery,” so isn’t it time to stop treating them as such?

Of course, that’s just my take on it. What say you?

This post in honor of De’s best friend, whose groom vetoed her bridal Chucks idea. After reading De’s comment, I couldn’t stop myself from finding pics of wedding parties who opted to wear Converse over dress shoes. I’m not saying that I’m pro bridal sneakers — especially when they’re the platform kind that look like they’ve contracted a plague of rhinestones — but I count myself in the pro All Stars camp.

Seriously, how cute is this snapshot by photog Katy Regnier? From what I can tell, the bride was the only one cool enough for Converse…and purple ones, at that!

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FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m knocked up. There’s a bun in my oven. I am heavy — well, not yet — with child. I’ve got a stowaway in my gullet. There is a person growing in my uterus. Etc., etc. Why am I telling you this? Besides the fact that it’s fun to spill the beans, I can also tie it in nicely with today’s topic. You see, I’m currently trying to get The Beard to write a pre-baby blog, the same way I tried to get him to write a groom blog when we were planning the wedding. That is to say, to no avail.

Which brings me to my main point. There’s a total drought of groom blogs out there. Oh, you get plenty of results when searching for groom’s blogs, but most went defunct long before the associated wedding. I suppose you could argue that there’s just not enough out there to occupy the average groom-to-be’s attention, but no one is saying that dudes should be blogging about bridal shoes, floral arrangements, or table linens. I’d be satisfied with a blog filled with groom-centric grousing about high prices, meddling relatives, and the Electric Slide.

Contrary to what popular culture tells us, not all men are grunting barbarians who think wedding planning is for sissies and girls. As tongue-in-cheek as it is, I don’t like Brideorama’s Top 11 Reasons Its NOT a Good Idea to Put The Groom In Charge of the Wedding list because it promotes unfair stereotypes. Find me one groom-to-be who actually wants his groomsmen in tie-dye t-shirts and his wedding vows to include the words, “Whatever, dude.” Heck, I would have happily eloped, but The Beard wanted a wedding with all the pomp and circumstance!

Grooms should be sharing their experiences, if a survey by Bridal Guide is any indication. According to respondants, 42% of engaged couples plan their weddings together, flatly ignoring the kind of advice my father gave The Beard, i.e., “Shut up and get out of the bride’s way.” It makes sense, considering how many men and women are paying for all or part of their own weddings. If a guy is dropping $5,000 for cake, music, a site, and transportation, he’s going to want to have his say.

After some Googling, I found two active blogs for grooms, one of which is the blog associated with GroomGroove so it doesn’t really count. The other, I Groomzille…You Bride, has been around since July, is written by an actual groom-to-be, and the author is involved in his wedding in a decidedly dude-ish way.

If your guy is at all involved in planning your wedding, why not suggest that he start a blog about it? He could also be a contributing writer on your blog if you have one. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but I really think that we here in the wide world of online wedding writing could use a dose of testosterone.

No, not a lot of duct tape like that, you pervs. I mean there will probably be a lot of duct tape on the man registry* that will precede what some are calling the newest trend in weddings, the man shower. Googling “man showers” — see what I do for you? — brings up plenty of results, which could indeed point to a growing trend. EXCEPT that almost all of the results lead to a single AP article reprinted in papers across the U.S.

The gift-laden dude you see above is Brian Wigand, whose FFIL Jonathan Morris welcomed him into the family by throwing him a man shower as a warm up to, not a substitute for, the traditional bachelor party.

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I want to touch on the topic of shaving. Armpits, legs, and…more sensitive areas get a lot of media play in the world inhabited by blushing brides-to-be, for obvious reasons. Necks and cheeks, on the other hand, don’t spend a lot of time in the pre-nuptial spotlight.

It makes sense if you think about it. There are hundreds of resources that gals can turn to as they prep themselves for the big day, while there are very few places that advise grooms-to-be to do anything beyond “get out of her way” and “show up sober” and “don’t lose the ring.” I’ll admit that I don’t devote a lot of posts to groomcentric issues — this is Manolo for the Brides, after all — but sites like the newly revamped Groom Groove tell me that a whole new generation of dudes is preparing to tie the knot.

For example, Kirk wrote to ask:

Is there a better way for grooms to shave on the wedding day? They’re photographed with better cameras than they’re used to, and even a clean-shaven guy can end up looking like Fred Flintstone when the proofs come back… I know I messed this up at my wedding, with some unclever ideas. I was worried about missing a spot shaving, and thought I should let it grow out a few days before so I could see that I got everything. Well I got everything, but still the dreaded “noon-o’clock shadow” was visible! Was there something else I should have done?

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As a guest, I tend to tune out wedding speeches unless I’m familiar with both the object of the speech (i.e., the bride or groom) and the speech giver. Listening to 45 minutes of daddy waxing on misty-eyed about his little girl’s swimming trophies for 45 minutes a la Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason tends to put me into a fugue state wherein I eat far too much cake and the champagne in my glass keeps disappearing mysteriously.

The bride and groom, however, are typically quite interested in what everyone has to say because they are the ones being talked about! I know that I was particularly looking forward to the best man’s speech at my own wedding because he’s such a tremendously sweet fellow and I was hoping he’d say something nice about me or us. Let it be known that he did not disappoint, and the air was full of Awwws and little sniffs the whole time he had the mic.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to take a stab at wowing the crowd, but he was indeed a tough act to follow. The Beard’s mother told a story about car thievery, and an uncle of mine saw fit to remind everyone that he’d changed my diapers when I was but a wee lass. I even vaguely remember one of my brothers getting on the mic to tell assembled loved ones that he’d met The Beard in Nam and that we’re both “slick ballers.”

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Way back in 1989, the NY Times ran an article about no-frills brides who wore suits instead of the usual gowns. Suits, the author asserts, are for women who want to avoid looking demure or overly fem. Then she goes on to call bridal suits sexy — which reads a bit like a contradiction, but really isn’t. There’s no reason a suit has to be frumpy, after all.

”Wearing a bridal suit portrays a woman as being sure of herself, of having a sense of power,” said Louise Maniscalco, a personal shopper at Barneys New York. ”In a suit, she is dressed the way she wants and not the way tradition demands. It’s having your own identity.”

Many — if not most — brides-to-be reject bridal suits out of hand because wedding gowns are such a huge part of the Western cultural consciousness, but in the years surrounding WWII, suits were de rigueur!

The two happy people in the middle are newlyweds…they’re also my maternal grandparents. They were married in Germany sometime in the 50s, and I’m pretty sure the my gram still has that suit hidden away somewhere in her vast closets. I know for a fact that the suit she wore saw plenty of post-nuptial wear because the children of war didn’t waste a thing.

In these shaky economic times — which are shakier for some of us than for others — I’d urge brides-to-be to consider the classic bridal suit. Suits (even very well tailored varieties) can be a great budget option. They bring with it the advantage of being entirely re-wearable because even if you marry in white, natural fibers can be dyed. Paired with gloves, they are as classy as can be!

I’d venture to say that bridal suits are also a wonderful nod to the grandmothers and great-grandmothers who made the most of what they had and who, without gowns, veils, or $30,000 wedding budgets, managed to look chic and gorgeous.

Fish as gift? Yes, when it’s culturally relevent. No, when it involves dumping a slimy, stinky flounder wrapped in newspaper on my previously clean kitchen table. Personally, I’d be delighted to receive Yuinou if I was the mother of a newly engaged lady.

You’re looking at Yuinou, gifts that traditionally mark an agreed upon engagement in Japan. I first saw them at Wedded Bliss, The Marriage of Art and Ceremony, a traveling exhibit currently at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Yuinou is exchanged for the various purposes. First of all, people can confirm that the engagement is concluded. At the same time, they pray for the conclusion of marriage by doing the ceremony. The engagement will be official through Yuinou. Secondly, a bridegroom side does it to express their gratitude to a bride side, because a bride is considered to be a member of bridegroom side after a marriage. The gratitude is against marrying a girl whom their parents have brought up with tender care.

The contents of Yuinou are important in their ceremonial significance — cuttlefish signifies happiness, seaweed signifies fertility, a fan signifies good fortune, and animal art signifying all sorts of nice things — but the appeal in my eyes is the beautiful packaging.

The examples I saw at the PEM were gorgeous, made as they were of vividly hued bamboo, balsa wood, foil, glass, and braided paper cord. The packaging is so artistically rendered that some newlyweds display the Yuinou in their homes after the wedding.

However, the once widespread and varied Yuino ceremony is being toned down by couples who would rather their parents spent the money they might spend on Yuinou on monetary gifts or contributions to the price of the wedding. That makes a lot of sense to me, but I do hope that the practice sticks around. It seems like such a nice way to bring families together and commemorate the blending of two families.

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CONGRATS, JSTAR! Jstar, who suggested that I call my next book iDon’t: the 12,000,000 most common wedding planning mistakes has won a free autographed copy of iDo. Keep your eyes open for future minicontents because I plan to give away at least one copy of the book each month for a year!

I know a goodly number of you are addicted to the WE channel train wrecks like Bridezillas and ::vomit:: Bulging Brides. As disgusted as I usually am by the brides-to-be on these shows, we can certainly agree on one thing. Getting an inside look at the intimate details of other people’s weddings is a guilty good time.

The couple above? They’re Sarah Lucas and Jonathon Kass. I know that he — a policy analyst and legislative aide to a city councilman in Washington — has major issues with indecision. She’s into boats and prefers to jump feet first into life’s choppy waters. And it took Kass eight months to finally decide that kissing Lucas would indeed be a good idea.

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