Altared Page 9

  Even on nights when I found myself with perilously little wedding planning to do—the cake was now ordered, the invitations chosen if not officially purchased—I could scrounge up something to worry about as I sat on the sofa with my binder. I could spend hours, for instance, compiling beauty tips from bridal magazines, even though they were the same beauty tips I'd read a trillion times in women's magazines (apply two coats of mascara; blot your lipstick) with the bonus implication that this was your one big day ever! What you looked like would never matter as much again! So why not shell out a few grand on a laser treatment, get the extra-expensive foundation primer that doesn't seem to do much, spring for the hair extensions?

  One thought began to haunt my days and nights: What if I got a zit that day? I was fairly prone to them. What if one showed up that day? WHAT WOULD I DO?

  I never did come up with an answer. I simply lived in dread.

  This OCD phase went on for months, my greatest pleasure in life checking off another wedding-planning step. Then came my bachelorette party.

  Now, I don't mean to disparage it: My friends worked hard on it, and I'd approved all the plans months earlier. We were holding it in June during a visit home sans fiancé—the wedding wasn't for another five months, but we wouldn't have time for it then. When I got to my party, I couldn't help feeling that I was at the wrong place. It was as if a stranger had been the one to approve those plans. A stranger with a nearly-100-percent-checked-off wedding-planning list. A stranger who was totally okay with an afternoon bachelorette party that involved a lot of Pampered Chef kitchen gear (complete with special bridal apron), white wine spritzers, and do-it-yourself mani-pedis.

  Though it wasn't even so much the party itself—most of it was like an old-school slumber party, except we were grown-ups so we paid a massage therapist to show up for some rubdowns, which I must admit were great. What got me was the way everyone oohed and aahed when I opened gifts like bath towels and the way people wouldn't stop asking me about the goddamn wedding, like it was the only thing in my life.

  And then it dawned on me: That's because I'd asked for bath towels on my registry, and because the goddamn wedding was the only thing in my life.

  I'd asked for it all, and I wasn't sure I wanted any of it.

  When I returned to New York, I stopped obsessing over my wedding-planning binder. Hell, I stopped looking at it, period. Weekly reminder e-mails from the wedding Web site TheKnot.com (telling me exactly how long it was until my wedding date and which essential tasks that meant I should be doing) dinged my in-box, and I deleted them with only a cursory glance. I was well ahead of schedule anyway, I told myself. I deserved a break. Until, of course, the reminders started to mention things I hadn't done, like finalize the caterer's menu or choose favors. I deleted those, too, as if that would delete them from my brain.

  Then the bills started pouring in—we owed the rest of the $5,000 for the reception space, $300 for the cake, and a several-thousand-dollar amount for the caterer (exact total to be determined when I actually committed to a menu). Dan, the one with the checkbook, stayed on top of these things, unfortunately. I couldn't stay in denial, couldn't put them off. Those three zeroes on the end of the check to the Chicago Historical Society knocked me dizzy as I put it in an envelope, sealed it, and mailed it under the watchful eye of my fiancé. The cake bill, I couldn't help noticing, would buy me a couple of good pairs of jeans, an exceptional pair of shoes, or several trips to a couples counselor (especially one covered by insurance). The caterer remained the one realm where I had total power—I was in charge of finalizing menus, so I could decide not to.

  I ignored the caterer's calls, and, incidentally, we tried a string of marriage counselors in addition to ordering the cake. All we got was an old woman who asked us if we were achieving orgasm (listen, lady, if there's something to achieve, I achieve it) and a man who had the nerve to tell us we were getting old (Dan was now thirty-one; I was twenty-nine), so we might as well settle for each other and make things work.

  And then we gave up on the counseling. We had a wedding to plan—there was no time to keep up these awkward first dates with ineffective therapists.

  Time was, after all, of the essence at this point. We had to order invitations. TheKnot.com had been saying so for weeks. It was pretty insistent about this. Even worse, the personal e-mails from the nice man at the invitation store were saying so. And they were pretty insistent, too. The last one went something like, “If you don't confirm your order by this weekend, WE WILL NOT HAVE THEM ON TIME. Unless you've changed your date, in which case, please let me know.” He was a soft-spoken, painfully polite man, not someone who would use all caps willy-nilly. He meant business.

  And so it was that I decided to sit down with Dan that crucial invitation-ordering weekend (not a second before) and say, “We should have a destination wedding, I think.”

  “We should,” he agreed. I was shocked at how easily this went.

  So shocked, in fact, that I said, “Or maybe we should just have the wedding like we planned.”

  “No,” he said, “we should have the destination wedding.”

  “You're right.”

  “Really?” he said. “Maybe we should just have the wedding like we planned.”

  “No,” I said. “Destination wedding.” I was so confused; who wanted what here? No matter, I thought. I had won, hadn't I? “No more of this silly froufrou stuff we didn't want,” I said, genuinely excited about this new plan. “Just us, our families, and a few friends, on an island.”

  “Where?”

  “I don't know, the Bahamas. We've never been there. It's like a fresh start.”

  “The Bahamas it is.”

  And so we ran from the invitation man, from TheKnot.com, from the remaining preparations and the elaborate planning I'd already done, from the thousands of dollars in deposits we'd put down. From the fact that we both knew I didn't want this wedding. We dashed off a letter to all the folks we'd sent save-the-date cards, telling them to use the date now for whatever they wished but to get ready for a damn good time in the Bahamas… someday … soon.

  I told my parents, who were incredibly supportive and understanding, because that is their thing—I was relieved to find the mom I always knew receiving the news, rather than her crazy wedding-gown-and-veil-fixated personality. Dan told his parents on the phone and reported that the news had gone down eerily smoothly. I suspect both sets of parents knew something had been amiss for a while, and had been married long enough themselves to know there was nothing they could do to fix it.

  Months passed, brochures were collected, budgets were made, questions were batted away with “we're working on it.” A destination wedding was not had. It was not even planned.

  Then I went to that final dress fitting, and came out with yet another plan: We would get married in Manhattan. We were now moving into the city from New Jersey. We had purchased a condo on the Upper West Side at my insistence, as part of our fresh start, our attempt to bring my diverging identities of Dan's Fiancée and New York Writer Girl together. Clearly, this was my problem when I was lying to my fellow bride in the dress shop: I had not yet reconciled my identities. But this new wedding plan, by God, might just do the trick.

  What better way to celebrate this new life together than to get married in a small park, then hold an intimate gathering at a classy restaurant? Why, New York was full of parks and restaurants! How hadn't we thought of this before? We would declare our new identity to the world: Here we are, Urban Power Couple! Surely this was what I wanted. I loved Nora Ephron movies, after all.

  But that was just the problem: No matter what wedding I thought up, I seemed to be simply recycling some ready-made fantasy sequence. I was positive I wanted a life in New York—that was the one thing I'd figured out in this mess—so I was trying to make my wedding a part of that. But as it turned out, I couldn't find much time in my New York life to research those parks and restaurants. I threw out a Google search here, an e-m
ail there, but when I didn't get immediate responses, the planning ground to a halt yet again. I printed out a few restaurant reviews, but never got around to visiting the places.

  Dan, incidentally, said he'd go anywhere, at any time, and pay anything I needed to get this thing done. He even went so far as to pick an October date (nearly a year after our original date) and write it on the calendar, which his mom found out and helpfully mentioned in her Christmas newsletter to friends and family, which happens to include my parents, who went nuts to hear there was a wedding date they didn't know about.

  That incensed me, but what bugged me even more was Dan's total capitulation to my demands. I know that seems irrational—ask for what you want, then get pissed when you get it. But suspicion clouded my every thought as he suddenly reversed his earlier wishes to have kids soon, to get a house with a yard and a dog, to have a wife who'd take his last name. Every time he gave in, I didn't think, “Yay!” I thought, “Really?”

  He reminded me of myself, a few years back, when I would say or do anything to stop him from talking about us breaking up to see other people. When I would wish he'd be more affectionate or wonder about our future or just hope we'd go out to dinner instead of staying in to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation … but I would swallow those thoughts, hold my breath, smile, and enjoy Captain Picard's latest adventure for fear of tripping a discussion that would lead to our demise.

  I hated myself then, and thinking of it now made me hate him, despite all of my love for him.

  In the end, getting away from that former me, in all her forms, became the priority. She would never know who she was or what she wanted—she would only ever know how to be what everyone else wanted. And the path away from her happened to lead the wrong way down the aisle. So that is where I went.

  Calling off your wedding sounds big. I would use it sometimes (and still do) to give people a thrilling little snapshot of me: Instead of being Dan's Fiancée, I am now the Woman Who Called Off Her Wedding. It makes me seem brave and independent and modern. And I like that better than being the girl who did everything she was told.

  But the act itself felt more like a billion tiny, excruciating steps—the exact opposite of those brainless, satisfying steps to planning a wedding—every one of which required me to stop, catch my breath, have a sob, look around, find no one there to comfort me, and then do it all over again. Telling my parents, packing up my stuff, moving out of the condo into a low-rent studio in the East Village, explaining the situation to everyone… months of exhaustion. Throwing away my wedding binder for good? My one big moment of relief.

  One task sticks in my head as virtually impossible— and I mean physically impossible: taking off my beautiful 1.5-carat solitaire-and-white-gold engagement ring, the one I had once literally quivered with excitement to show off, and handing it to my ex-fiancé as I left the condo. Another task remains impossible: taking my wedding dress out of the closet and figuring out what to do with it. It hasn't left its black garment bag since that final dress fitting.

  What if that dress is right, I am wrong, and I could've had a life as beautiful as my gown portends? I realize I'll never know, really. But I do know that I'll never wear that dress, in that form, at any wedding. I also know, as it turns out, that I don't reject marriage wholesale, because part of me is still that romantic who believes in a kind of true love. The kind of love that's truer because both people know themselves, each other, and how insane a proposition marriage is—because they know the artifice of weddings and the institution itself are built to tell us what to want every step of the way. The more you're thinking about hors d'oeuvres, the less you're thinking about your own and your partner's unwieldy life appetites; the more you're thinking about satin and tulle, the less you're thinking about losing your own identity to this union; the more you're thinking about the reception space, the less you're thinking about where you and your partner are in life, where you're going together, and whether you want to be any of those places.

  I'm also starting—slowly, carefully, mindfully—to envision the wedding I might have someday: an intimate crowd, for sure, that includes my wonderfully supportive family and those amazing writer-crowd people who have become the best friends of my life; a cozy, quiet, cool reception space, probably in New York, definitely with kick-ass food and wine; vows that say something along the lines of, “You're the best friend I have, you've seen me at my craziest and still seem to like me, and you inspire me to be a better person, so, hey, let's give this ridiculous marriage thing a go.”

  Oh, and the dress? I have this little silvery white, Marilyn Monroe number in mind. And I'm confident I'll find a way to get exactly what I want.

  etiquette & registry

  manners and the marrying girl

  elise mac adam

  When I got engaged, I was excited to get married. I loved my fiancé, but something strange happened. I began to have wedding nightmares. My night sweats had nothing to do with second thoughts or waning passion. My dreams stemmed from the sinking feeling that I wasn't the kind of girl who could pull off a wedding. In the dark I would obsess over family dynamics, thinking of the many ways I could offend or alienate my dearest friends and family members at my upcoming nuptials.

  Would my friends hate me if I didn't invite any children? Would I fail the Mrs. or Ms. test when addressing invitations to people I didn't know and get accused either of being conservative or inflicting my liberal politics on people? Was it rude to accept generous offers of assistance? Or was I supposed to gently demur? How could I decline when I needed help quite urgently?

  Then I remembered Miss Manners and her Gentle Reader, the salutation which she had used since her first etiquette column was published in 1978.

  There was salvation. Rules, the more rigid the better, would rescue me. Faced with two families and the threat of embarrassment, I embraced the rules and mowed through my engagement like a visiting diplomat. I was a nervous student, consulting books while I composed invitations, planned the food (in spite of the fact that we served Italian food, and etiquette books tend to offer menus that can only be described as New England Civilized), and negotiated guest list intricacies. I set out to be as rigorous as possible. I didn't care if my rigidity seemed eccentric. Paying attention to rules that no one else would notice felt virtuous, like running extra miles or forgoing an ice-cream sandwich.

  It was a crutch, sure, and it only took a few weeks to learn that adopting stiff policies was going to make me utterly insufferable if I didn't bend—without giving in to decadence, of course. Learn, then, from my near follies.

  LESSON LEARNED # 1: INVITATIONS— DON'T WRITE THEM ALONE

  How hard is it to compose an invitation? It's a happy missive, usually greeted with smiles. In an urge to embrace everyone equally, I set about composing something all-inclusive, naming all parents. I submitted a few versions to my then-fiancé, my future mother-in-law, and my mother for approval and sighed with relief. Everything I wrote was satisfyingly traditional, verging on bland. What possible issues could there be?

  Famous last words. My future mother-in-law preferred that she and her husband's names appear in the strict construction that only uses the husband's first name. My mother was quite emphatic that I use her whole name.

  Such small details on a piece of stationery that only the most extreme nostalgia maniacs don't throw away, but so important. I examined scads of etiquette books and came up with solutions that included putting each set of parents' names in the format each preferred (symmetry be damned). I tried to unearth novel solutions (as if novelty would have helped), and I got more and more anxious, fretting about displeasing my fiancé's family and wounding my own.

  And then my future mother-in-law, with one swift stroke, pulled the plug on my angst. “I like the traditional way best, with just the bride's parents' names. Those others just look so cluttered. The old-fashioned way just seems nicest. Don't you think?” There is nothing memorable about my wedding invitation (except perhaps th
e gray ink), but I can't think about it without being grateful to my mother-in-law's preferences and the peace I found in so-called stodgy tradition.

  LESSON LEARNED # 2: COMPULSIVENESS DOESN'T ENHANCE THE THANK-YOU NOTE

  My etiquette love occasionally took masochistic turns. I couldn't stop measuring myself against a rigid standard and quickly became demonized over things like thank-you notes. Of course they had to be written, but I had to turn them around in twenty-four hours or else I'd wake up composing them before my alarm started blasting. In at least one instance I wrote a note before I had even figured out what the present was: “Thank you so much for the toucans. I can't wait to use them.”

  Even my friend, beside whom I always fall short when it comes to efficiency, was forced to comment. “My parents got your note before they even knew the present had been sent. Are you getting enough rest?”

  Not really. But I couldn't put on the brakes. Etiquette had me in its stranglehold. If I wrote the notes, and wrote them quickly with some degree of charm and inventiveness, I would forestall the threat of alienating anyone. Even putting stamps on my thank-you notes made me feel so pure and accomplished for having written them that I was almost at a loss when I didn't have to scratch one off. Fortunately, other tasks bubbled up to give me the opportunity to feel virtuous, or at least distracted.

  LESSON LEARNED # 3: SEATING PLANS ARE WORTH THE SUFFERING

  The exquisite agony of thank-you-note writing was matched only by the pain of the seating plan. Reviled by many as annoyingly fascistic and parade-dampening, the seating plan exemplifies etiquette's invisible powers. Happy are the nuptials where there are no guests who could possibly be at odds with each other or capable of being insulting. At my wedding, we had a few cases of more than simple distaste, one long-settled but still bitter divorce, and one pointed “everyone would be happier if you kept these two apart” scenario. (I also had to put a fair amount of work into diluting what threatened to become the Dud Table.)