Weddingbee

I’m so glad I wasn’t the only person who thought it was lame! I’ve decided to go with Youngest Sister Shortcake (YSS) as my stylist, and will definitely blog about my three (amazing) hair trials with her soon!

In the meantime, let me show you my makeup trial!

If you remember, I originally had a makeup artist booked to come do a trial at my house. Unfortunately, her travelling expenses were *coughridiculouscough* above what I was willing to pay, so my sisters and I began to look at alternatives.

One such local option was getting mine and their makeup done at a M.A.C. boutique. The nearest M.A.C. was 20 minutes away (in heavy traffic), well within my travelling comfort range (I had planned to commute an hour both ways on the wedding morning to have my hair done with my AWOL old stylist).

If you want to get your wedding makeup done by a M.A.C. artist, you have two options in my area (I don’t know about eastern or American M.A.C.s):

1) Pay for your trial in purchased products, and have your makeup done by a M.A.C. artist while she is available on the floor. If it gets busy in the boutique, she will have to leave you and attend to other customers.

2)Pay $55 for a private room makeup application. You pay the $55 as a fee, not as products, but you do get a complimentary mascara.

For my makeup trial, I opted for #1, as I had a lot of time, and needed new makeup products. For my wedding day, I’ve opted for # 2, and have booked rooms for the interested bridesmaids as well. If you are considering using M.A.C. for your wedding day like me and Mrs. Lemon, I highly recommend doing option #2, as weekend (wedding days) are usually the busiest days for business!

I was very impressed with my makeup artist, Olga - as a 9-years-and-counting-veteran, not only did she know what she was doing, but she was more than happy to educate me.

COOL TIP FROM OLGA: Use a small, soft eyeshadow brush to gently apply undereye concealer - this lessens the risk of damaging the delicate skin with your finger’s tugging or patting motion!

COOL TIP FROM MY MOM: Use a teaspoon to curl your eyelashes! After placing the concave side of the spoon against and underneath your upper eyelashes, use your thumb to “flick* the spoon out and upward. Position your thumb on the inside of the spoon, on top of your upper lashes, and remember to apply only gentle pressure on your lashes against the spoon - don’t pinch!

For my wedding face I asked for something similar to my everyday makeup (which revolves around a warm palette of neutrals), but fancier (obviously), and something that emphasized my eyes.

NOTE: Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion during your trial! I wasn’t comfortable with the sheerness of the first foundation we tried, as I tend to have uneven skin coloration, so Olga redid my ENTIRE face just so I could try it again with the Studio FX liquid foundation (liquid gold, in my opinion, it stayed on and stayed put all day and night!)

MY FACE CHART:

As Mrs Penguin noted before, in order for your makeup to actually show up in pictures, it needs to be heavier than usual. Knowing this beforehand was crucial, as my makeup was significantly heavier than a normal person would wear.

However, I won’t be a ‘normal person’ on my wedding day -I’ll be a bride - and I’ll get to look like this in photos:

Can I have a woot, woot? I am SO pleased with the results!

On the day of, I’ll also be wearing false lashes, which is great as long as they don’t spider-crawl their way down my cheek during vows!

What do you think? Where are you getting your makeup done?
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(miscellaneous images from knotties kayrose and others, weddingbee, dancing with the stars)

I thought I knew what I wanted: an updo, with a side part and ’sweep,’ volume on top, maybe a chignon, maybe a higher updo. Something pretty, elegant, vintage-inspired, and above all, something that flattered my features.

Like many people, I am very insecure about my looks. Mr. Shortcake can tell me I’m beautiful a million times over, but if I’m having a fugly-feeling day, ain’t nothin’ gonna help.

Unfortunately, today was a fugly day. To me, my teeth looked like horse teeth, my nose was too big, my eyes uneven, my chin weak…I could go on and on. Armed with an arsenal of insults aimed at myself, it was no wonder that I was unimpressed and depressed with my hair trial. However, my mother (who thinks I’m pretty good-looking), made a disgusted face when I walked in the door.

“How much did you pay for that? I could do that myself, for free!”

…and I paid more for the trial at this spa then I would have for the trial and hair combined at my ex-stylist’s salon!

Ignoring that my hair is largely the same texture as the fuzzy, un-ironed mess that I came with (hair product? What’s that?), I think the back of the hair is quite pretty. Harder to ignore is the fact that the curls began falling out less than an hour after the trial…

…and even harder to ignore is the fact that the front is exactly the same as how I wear my hair everyday:

The hair is nice, but the overall feeling (despite my Miss Congeniality smile) I had and have about this hair-don’t is

“meh.”

Here’s the side view. Um, where is the volume I asked for? The hairdresser explained that because my hair was thick, she couldn’t do as nice as an up-do as she wanted…

And the side-sweep? I couldn’t have one, she said, because of my “hairline.”

The front is just SO boring to me - and with my (short, reception) drop veil on, the only cool part of this up-do is covered, so it looks like I’m wearing a bun.

I’m just so disappointed. I didn’t expect to pay a hefty chunk of change for such unimpressive hair and service - I even had to supply my own hair elastics! After three hours, it was already all loose….we’re thinking of not bothering with trying to find other salons in Langley and just doing my hair at home!

What do you think?

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about how much fun flying on a plane will be!

I am such a nerd.

Wish us luck!
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They were the first, and I thought, the only act of premarital kindness I would receive from her, but I was wrong - delightfully so!

My senior citizen friend is the last of a literally vanishing breed of well-bred and well-behaved ladies. Ladies who lunch, and wear kid-leather gloves, and have impossibly perfect handwriting all the time - not just when they concentrate, furrow their brow, and stick out their (collective) tongue.

Maybe it was because I wore skirts all the time, or maybe it was because I wore pearls instead of multiple piercings, but for whatever reason, when my friend and I met, we stuck together like pressed flowers. Two of a kind - “bosom friends” as Anne Gilbert née Shirley would have called it.

I don’t really know why she decided to make me, a co-worker, the recipient of such old-school generosity.

Maybe it was because I didn’t laugh at her addiction to Sex and the City (any other Charlottes out there? ), and made a date to go see the movie with her.

Maybe it was because I listened with wide-eyed rapture to her recalling her own wedding, her EIGHT showers (hello? I need a crystal shower, people!), and adventures as a social butterfly, a bride, then as the leading society matron on the Canadian Prairies.

Or maybe it was because I listened, period.

Behold my something borrowed….

1910 linen handkerchief, hand-tatted (is that the word?) by her grandmother, and used by her mother at her wedding:

Isn’t that UNBELIEVABLE? Look at those details, those tiny little knots and loops:

And so I wouldn’t have to carry the handkerchief down the aisle in my bouquet-clutching hands, she lent me something even more spectacular….

Loosely wrapped in yellowing tissue, nestled in a weathered blue box with a barely discernably crest stamped on its top was this:

A tiny wristlet, covered in real crystals, worn by my friend’s grandmother on her wedding day in 1908, along with a fan/bouquet “made of real ostrich feathers.”

My friend’s mother also wore it on her wrist during her wedding in 1930, with the same fan of ostrich feathers, dyed blue, and to continue the family tradition, my friend wore it on her wrist during her wedding in the 1960s.

But because she never had daughters, I will proudly carry her handkerchief in this beautiful, gorgeous, lipstick and tear-stained purse on my wedding day…

….along with all of the happy hopes of the three beautiful brides who wore it in the hundred years before me.

Thank you for making me a part of that, Barbara.

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SLIDE ONE:


1950s strappy peep-toe heels (image source lost)

Note the flirty peep-toe and delicate ankle straps - combined with a spike heel, these shoes guarantee the survival of not only their own kind, but of other species as well!

Let us return to the rest of the slides after a short break.

* yes, beanchar, now you can go* “

————————————————————

So I found my wedding shoes. At last. They aren’t pink, they aren’t covered in sparkles, and they have a heel (almost 2 inches - Mr. Shortcake will just have to deal!)…and I like them.

Finding a shoe that fit the above criteria was hard enough. Throw into the mix that I have differently sized (9 and a 9 1/2) and uber narrow feet - as well as knobby big toes and high arches - and the search for THE shoe became impossibly frustrating.

Then, on my way to work, I decided to pop into a nearby shoe store, and found THEM.

My 1950s-inspired strappy peep-toe heels with slingbacks and ankle straps.

They’re silver, narrow, fit BOTH of my feet, and, most imporantly, are comfortable. They don’t need breaking in, I’ve already worn them covertly at work, and my feet aren’t bruised, blistered, or beleaguered. AND they were on sale!

If that doesn’t deserve a WOOT! WOOT!, I don’t know what does!

To add sugar to my bowl of choco puffs, my super sweet, amazingly generous senior citizen friend and coworker lent me her mother’s 1930s silver and crystal shoe clips - more on that, and her other random acts of pre-marital kindness later.

Drum roll please!

.

.

.

My shoes!

The clips are much sparklier in person. Is it just me, or aren’t they totally reminiscent of strawberries?

What species did you catch?
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You’d think it’d be easy to choose the ceremony music - pick some favorites, and be done with it, but not so, unfortunately. All my favorite classical pieces are decidely depressing, or way too crescendo-y.

Moonlight Sonata? Let me just adjust my train, sleeping in a coffin totally wrinkled it!

1812 OVERTURE? Yeah! We can have cannons go off when the doors open!

And, I really don’t want something overdone in the wedding world - which makes choosing a song so much harder.

Could you help me find my processional song, readers? I’m looking for dramatic, but not militaristic, peppy, but not too fast, elegant, beautiful and smooth, but not too slow or boring, and something HAPPY. I haven’t found anything yet that really speaks to me, has a crescendo or really moving opening strain, and can be cut down to 60-ish seconds.

LIKE BUT NOT LOVE CONTENDERS:

DELIBES - flower duet
MANCINI - Theme from a summer place
JERIMIAH CLARKE: Trumpet voluntary (the Princess Diana wedding processional)

NO-Gos FOR ME/INSPIRATION FOR OTHERS:

DEBUSSY - Claire de lune
DEBUSSY - Reverie
BEETHOVEN - Ode to joy
BACH - Air on a g string
BACH -Pachebel canon in D
BACH - Jesu, joy of a man’s desiring
BACH - Sheep may safely graze
FAURE - Pavane
HANDEL - La rejouissance
HANDEL - Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
MOZART - March from the Marriage of Figaro
MOZART - Exultate jubilate
MENDELSSOHN - Bridal march
MOURET - Rondeau
PURCELL - Trumpet tune
SATIE - Gymnopedie
UNKNOWN - Prelude to te deum
VIVALDI - Any of the four seasons (we’re using spring for the recessional)
WAGNER - Bridal chorus

Can you please suggest some pretty classical or instrumental pieces for my big walk? I have two weeks to decide and try it out in our church!
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My sweet bridal shower invitation made by Sister Shortcake, complete with strawberry stamps to honor my weddingbee moniker, and the BEST DRESS CODE EVER:

WOOT! WOOT!

When wedding-work is getting you down, what keeps you afloat?
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Thank you so much for your help, Miss Gingerbread.YOU ROCK!

(image source)

How 1950’s can you get? We are SO PUMPED!!

The car’s owner, Rob, is also very excited by the thought of his car being in a 1950’s - style wedding, and told us we could decorate “Walter” however we wanted! Woot! Woot!

What is your wedding transportation?
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For many women, those rights and these freedoms do not come free or easily, but often at a cost.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Shortcake and I were watching Saturday Night Live, hoping that the lovely Amy Adams would bring some comedic crisp to the usually very stale show. In one of her skits, Adams played a marriage counselor determined to psycho-analyze her way into figuring out the dynamics between a newly-married and poorly-matched young couple.

Will Forte and Amy Poehler teamed up to play the young couple, who, like many of us, argued about sex. Unlike most of us however, the two had met on the docks - Forte had “fallen in love” with the Russian “Bogdanna” after seeing the stowaway jumping out of a barge. Poehler as the haggard and underwhelmed Bogdanna spent the skit pleading with Forte to sign her citizenship papers because she had already “give[n] the sex.” Forte, however, was dismissive of Bogdanna’s requests and needs and when discussing the relationship with Adams, continually sugar-coated their relationship with a glaze of lovey-dovey bull sh*t.

For many women, becoming an overseas (or “mail-order”) bride can be an opportunity to escape a life in a developing country that, for whatever reason, is unsatisfying or even oppressing. Marrying into a richer country (like the US, Canada, UK, Australia) is seen as a way to gain job opportunities, to obtain life opportunities that otherwise would not be available in their home countries. If love occurs, good, so much the better.

Defenders of this practice often compare it to other forms of match-making, declaring that choosing cuties from an online catalog is similar to, if not the same as, internet dating sites like eharmony.com, in that the ladies list themselves, advertising their appearance, personalities, interests. Yes, I can see the similarities. But when I look at the ages of these women (often 26 and younger) and at the countries represented by these email-order sites, and think of the standard of living in those countries, I can’t help but be skeptical about these ladies’ motivations. Now, before I continue, let me make this clear, my beef is not with the immigration of these ladies in these marriages - you do what you gotta do - but rather with the men, and their motivation.

They remind me a little too much of the smug Forte.

From www.goodwife.com, one of the leading mail-order bride sites:

“We also have the question of a Western woman vs. a Foreign woman. This is commonly refered to as a Mail Order Bride or MOB….Are there any good women left in the West? Sure there are. Are they easy to find? Not on your life!…We, as men, are more and more wanting to step back from the types of women we meet now. With many women taking on the “me first” feminist agenda and the man continuing to take a back seat to her desire for power and control many men are turned off by this and look back to having a more traditional woman as our partner.



So, what do we as men want in a woman, partner, friend, and wife? Do we want her to “fix us” after we are married? If we were good enough to marry in the first place then what is this bix fixation (pun intended) on fixing us? Do we want her to stop taking care of herself after we are married? (No need to bother looking good now right, I’ve already got him so I can quit trying to look my best and I can gain all the weight I want.) Do we want her to be the boss? Do we want her to put her career first? Do we want to come home to a bag of delivery food? Do we want to change everything about us that made us who we are? Do we want to spend our evenings and weekends taking the latest “relationship test” from some magazine to find out how inadequate we are?”

Wow. So I broke the pencil I was holding while reading that.

It’s chilling enough to read that kind of chauvanistic cr*p, but to then read that “the rates of domestic violence against immigrant women are much higher than those of the U.S. population” - that young women have died at the hands of these “traditionally-minded” men, makes me feel sick to my stomach.

What do you think about mail-order marriages?

Read more:

About mail-order brides and new legislation
Violence against women act
http://www.american.edu/ted/bride.htm
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/anderson/brides/pg1.html
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1390/context/archive
http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/1997/V11n1/Finland.htm
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