From LA To New York With Love

By the time this post is published I will be drunk with a slice of New York pizza dangling from my non-manicured fingers.

I will have successfully pulled off a dance routine to Lady Gaga’s Poker Face with my new husband as our first dance, and it will be questionable as to whether my mother and I are still on speaking terms.

Although I can’t predict the future, my sixth sense is telling me that despite the fact that alcohol is prohibited on the beaches in California, my mother will most certainly be in the front row with her white plastic cup that dons red wine stains.

I can’t say I blame her.

Weddings and wine go hand in hand.

Holy Fuck there are a lot of details when planning such an event.

Of course I didn’t have any sort of wedding planner, and therefore nothing was planned accordingly.

The questions and suggestions never seemed to stop. The day after I got engaged I received a call from my mother asking about rice. Yes, she was wondering what everyone would use to hold the rice that they would later throw at us as we walked down the aisle after saying those two glorious words.

I had no fucking idea about rice.

Or what the hell to do at all.

People will offer you all sorts of advice for planning your wedding. Especially when you’re on a budget.

Making your own invitations seems to be at the top of that list.

I really, really wanted to take that one for our team. I wanted to be excited to buy pretty paper and a glue stick. However, I have the attention span of two-year old, not to mention things are not straight when I cut them. I am not allowed to wash the dishes in our house because I go too fast, don’t pay attention to detail and often put things away with food chunks on them.

So there wasn’t much of an argument when I explained to the husband that under no circumstances would I be able to focus long enough to do homemade invitations. He agreed and we paid out the ass for something that totally could have been made by somebody better than me.

Other things that require you to pay out the ass for a wedding: Photography, Hair and Makeup, DJ and The Dress.

Our photographer is a sports photographer I met while working PR in the athletic department at Oregon. He does freelance work so I told him that we would totally pose while playing volleyball on the beach or run down the aisle if it would help him get shots he’s used to taking.

He gave us a deal. Which is to say that we still paid out the ass, but it didn’t bleed. So that was nice.

As for my hair and make up. I don’t know about y’all, but I am not paying the girl at the MAC counter to make me look like, well, the girl at the MAC counter. It didn’t stop said tramp at the MAC counter from giving me the stink eye when I explained to her that I needed waterproof mascara and a lip liner so that I could complete my wedding make-up kit. I swear she looked at me like I had just committed 8 of the 10 sins enshrined in the MAC book of Jesus.

She promptly handed me her card, telling me that she’d be around ALL day on Saturday and please, please, please would I come by because you really need a professional to do the make up. For the photos and all.

I just stared at her painted-on eyebrows and penciled-in Marilyn Monroe lip mole and walked away.

What she didn’t know was that I had already been to the Chanel counter to get foundation and some foundation primer that will allegedly keep me looking photo-ready the whole day.

I spent more on makeup for the wedding than I did on the flowers, but it was still a lot less than having it professionally done. Well, that’s the story I’m using.

And rather than pay someone $300 for an up do, I also did my own hair. A lot of people tried to tell me that I wouldn’t want to deal with it. A lot of people don’t know that putting rollers in your hair while drinking champagne with your favorite girls is way better than sitting in a salon with strangers for three hours.

The dress came from this cute shop in LA with prices that didn’t make my tummy hurt. I found a simple dress and ordered it six months before the wedding. Four months after I placed the order, I came home one day to a box on my porch. It was one of those rare days where rain poured for hours on end, but I wasn’t at all concerned with the box because I thought it was a bathing suit I had ordered.

Seeing as it was raining and I had no intentions of going to the beach anytime soon, I tossed the box aside for a few days.

When I finally got around to opening it, I quickly realized it was my dress. My dress that sat in the rain in a box on my porch for anyone to take.

That is what happens when you order from a store that has prices that don’t make your tummy hurt.

The dress survived and in the end, so did I.

There I was, holding a bouquet of flowers from Costco standing on the beach as the sun set, wearing $12 mascara and a fake diamond bracelet getting ready to dance the night away to my iPod (no, seriously, you can totally plug an iPod into a speaker and call it a DJ) happier than I have ever been.

And then my mother reached into her purse and dug out the rice that had fallen out of the plastic bag she bought at Trader Joe’s on the way to the ceremony.

(OK, she was actually stopping for some Two Buck Chuck, but still).

Tagged as: marriage, planning, wedding