Manolo for the Brides

Once again, you guys amaze me with your snark and creativity. Last week I hit you with this photo:

And you came up with nine really great captions for it.

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Once again, it’s time to think about what to give the special people in your life for Christmas. With so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to narrow things down. But if you have a movie buff or a couple in love on your holiday gift list, any of these romantic classics (all available at amazon.com) might well be just the thing.

1: It Happened One Night is the screwball comedy that single-handedly destroyed the undershirt industry and made hitchhiking sexy. Sparks fly between Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in this delightful film. If it doesn’t make you laugh, you have no funny bone.

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Friday, November 16 was a big day on BBC Radio 4. It marked the golden wedding anniversary of radio soap couple Phil and Jill Archer on The Archers. Fifty years ago, widower Phil tied the knot with Jill after meeting her at a village fete. While their children have struggled with romantic relationships, Phil and Jill remain constant and devoted. Not only that, they’re still played by the original actors.

Also in the world of imaginary couples on British soaps, Jack and Vera Duckworth on the long-running TV series Coronation Street are also set to celebrate fifty years of marriage. But it might be considered cheating on one level, since the characters didn’t appear on the show until the 1970s.

It’s nice to know some marriages last, despite the fact they don’t even exist.

In the real world of marriage, actress Sarah Michelle Gellar has taken her husband’s name as a five year anniversary gift, UPI announced yesterday. She will now be known as Sarah Michelle Prinze, which is a major step in Hollywood marriages. A source ‘close to the actress’ told USA Weekly:

“On their anniversary, she showed (Freddie) her new driver’s license. It was so sweet.”

I’m sure it was.

On the other hand, fourteen and a half years later, I still have a different last name from Mr. Twistie, and we’re still going very strong.

Every now and again, a story comes along that just makes you feel good. That’s what the recent AP story about Karen Kline and her wedding photos did for me.

Karen was eighteen when she married nineteen-year-old Mark Kline in 1980. The couple had a lot of expenses, including the house they’d just bought, and found themselves unable to scrape up the $150 they needed to order prints of their wedding photos. Kline was heartsick, but made do for nearly twenty-seven years with a single photograph a guest had taken of her walking down the aisle.

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Last week I discussed the question of wedding stress in general terms. All very well and good, but it didn’t contain much practical advice on how to cope when it starts seeming like too much. Well, that’s why I’m revisiting the topic today.

The sad fact is that there is no one-size-fits-all advice for this question because there are so many different potential stressors and so many different ways of coping with them. Still, there are some general notes that can be helpful in a wide variety of situations.

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There are those moments when words fail even me. Finding the photo below, was one of them. And so I ask you, dear readers, to give me your best captions. There’s no prize aside from the fun involved, but I hope you’ll all play along at home, anyway.

Everybody seems to have an opinion on this one. Pretty much everybody seems to think their personal logic on the subject is - or at least ought to be - universal. Way too many people find the opposing view not only incorrect, but offensive as well.

What’s the question? Children as wedding guests.

I’ve wandered around more bridal sites, bridal blogs, and bridal message boards in the last two months than I had in the rest of my life put together, and this is one of the nearly universal sore spots that keeps coming up.

On the one hand, there are those who insist that a wedding is no place for a child and so to allow them to attend will make a mockery of the occasion and all the bride’s hard work will be destroyed by an unruly child. On the other stand those who insist that weddings are about families and families are about children so any marriage that fails to include little Egbert at the wedding is doomed from the outset. I wish I could say this was an exagerration.

Me? I stand squarely in the middle.

I love kids. I love having kids around me. I wouldn’t have missed having the smaller guests at my wedding for anything. One of the best shots in my wedding album is of a group of kids playing ring around a rosie, and clearly having a grand time. An eleven-year-old boy caught my garter with an Air Jordan move that still makes me laugh to this day. I also have fond memories of attending many weddings as a child.

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As you can see from this photograph of a bridal couple sometime in the 1880’s, wedding gowns have not always been white. In fact, in the American West between the 1830’s and the 1870’s the single most common color for a wedding gown was…plaid.

Plaids were fashionable throughout the period, and in a time when clothes were often handed down and remade by other family members, a white dress just wasn’t practical for the majority of brides.

Age and life experience also played a role in brides wearing colors other than white. A widow, for instance, would never consider wearing white even if she was quite young. In fact, etiquette manuals from the late Victorian period generally suggested grey or mauve as suitable colors for the woman who chose to remarry. An older bride would also be steered gently away from wearing white no matter how virginal she might be.

Then, too, there are cultures that think of some color other than white as the bridal color. German and Scandinavian women were usually married in black unless they were fairly wealthy.

Even now, some bold souls dare to choose color for their wedding days. If there’s a color you like and look good in, why not consider wearing that instead of white? You’ve certainly got a wealth of history behind you!

I’ve long been amused by the various traditions concerning luck and lack thereof for brides and grooms. Some make a certain amount of sense, such as a sunny day for the wedding being a sign of luck. Others make little or no sense. Why is it considered lucky, after all, for brides to kiss chimney sweeps? I have no clue.

Just for fun, here are some ways to make your own luck on your wedding day…though I disclaim any responsibility for bad luck incurred or good luck not delivered by following or failing to follow any of these helpful hints, particularly those which directly contradict one another:

It’s good luck if you drop the wedding ring, because that allows the bad luck to be shaken out.

It’s bad luck to drop the wedding ring. Whichever of you drops it will be the first to die.

It’s good luck to wear a silk wedding gown.

It’s bad luck to see yourself in your completed bridal finery before the wedding.

It’s good luck to wear white, which symbolizes joy or blue, which symbolizes fidelity.

It’s bad luck to wear anything black or to wear purple on your wedding day because these colors are associated with mourning and indicate early widowhood.

It’s good luck to wear a veil previously worn by a happy bride.

It’s bad luck to wear your veil with your gown before the wedding day.

It’s good luck for a bride to place a gold coin in her right shoe before walking down the aisle. By walking on gold, she’s assuring prosperity for the marriage.

It’s bad luck to allow the bride to cross the threshold of her new home without being carried. (One assumes this is because the gold coin in her shoe will finally trip her. )

It’s good luck for a bride to meet and kiss a chimney sweep on her way to the church.

It’s bad luck for her to meet up with a clergyman, police officer, lawyer, or doctor on the way to the church. No information was readily available on whether that changed if she kissed any of them.
It’s good luck for the bridal party to see a black cat, a grey horse, or an elephant on the way to church.

It’s bad luck for a pig to run across the path of the bridal party on their way to church.

It’s good luck to feed the cat before you go to your wedding, or if the cat sneezes.

It’s bad luck to marry on the same day - or even in the same year - as your sister, lest both marriages be unhappy.

It’s good luck if your wedding day is sunny, or if it snows.

It’s bad luck if your wedding day is windy, or if it rains.

It’s good luck if a baby cries during the wedding ceremony.

It’s bad luck if the bride cries at any point in the day other than during the ceremony itself.

And if the bride reads the entire ceremony before it happens, the wedding will not take place, so I’m told. Is this because she sees what she’s letting herself in for?