I was not a girl who grew up picturing my wedding. My Barbies had lesbian tendencies because for some reason we never had Kens, and I was much more into climbing trees and riding my bike than engaging in princess fantasies. But I have always wanted true love. And I have worked at it for many years. Over the years a pattern emerged, I dated a guy for 1.5 to 2 years, and we would fight a lot. He usually wanted more love than I was offering, we'd break up and shortly after that he was married. Some of those marriages are already over, but I started to think of myself as a training zone for men, meanwhile my true love evaded me.
After a particularly devastating break-up where I had let my mind wander into the zone of weddings and marriages, I started to take a serious look at myself. Maybe these guys, flawed as they were, were not the problem. I was the only common denominator and I was not good at intimate partnership, try as I did. I had fantasies, but they weren't about domestic things. They were more along the lines of "I want to find a guy who can read my mind." Well, it wasn't that blunt, but after a while I realized my behavior indicated this was what i wanted and I needed to get more realistic. I tried to stay single for one year, and dated a lot, all the while trying to be honest with myself. The most recent ex had been my high school sweetheart, reunited, and I guess after a while I realized that the main reason I wanted to marry him is I wanted to know how the story would end up. I wanted to stop trying, and just live and build a fence or something. I hadn't fantasized about a wedding, or making home, but I didn't really have a replacement version either. I didn't want to be told what to do, or wear or how to be... I guess I was (am) a feminist. But I was fighting with myself more or less.
Finally I started to have some breakthroughs and stuff I never even thought of came my way. Good stuff. Unfortunately now that I am getting married, I am being superiorly annoyed by most of the content out there aimed at brides. It's excessive, sentimental, silly and preys on our insecurities that we are going to be judged. I've more or less decided to invent my wedding from scratch. Most any original idea that pops into my head, someone else has done it and I can do focused searches on how they pulled it off, but I am not looking for ideas first and narrowing it down. I created this blog to keep track of my ideas and track my process. I have not really decided whether to share it with guests, but strangers would be great. I want there to be some surprises at the actual wedding. Let the countdown begin!
Thursday, August 16, 2012
One plate at a time
This is an only slightly edited version of the message I sent out on Facebook to people who responded to this post:
"Click 'Like' if you frequent garage sales and want to help my dreams come true."
14 people clicked "Like" and I sent this message to them. I added the images, but the words are almost unchanged.
Short version: We are looking for dinner plates that cost less than $1 for our wedding.
Long version: You all clicked "like" on my garage sale post without knowing the mission, so feel no obligation if this particular wedding-related scavenger hunt does not excite you. As you may know, Shaun and I are now running a vacation rental on the McKenzie River that is also a great location for parties or other events. We are having our wedding reception there next summer. We are turning it into a magical woodland storybook fantasy world, complete with a kids play zone and gratitude area ... think "Where the Wild Things Are" meets "Alice in Wonderland" meets "Louise Hay Bookstore" :) We had a Mad Hatter Tea party for my birthday one year, and for that I searched for mismatching and whimsical glassware and found it to be quite a challenge.
I found what I needed eventually, but it took a whole long time. I fell in love with the mismatch aesthetic and would like to carry it over to my wedding. So... task No. 1 is I want to find hundreds of dinner plates. No plastic and no clear glass.
If you would like to help me find them, I would be eternally grateful, as would be mother earth. We plan to use durables and have them available for our future renters for their family reunions or birthday parties. We were inspired by our friend's family property down south. They had amassed dinner plates over the years and the collection helped give the place such an amazing warm feeling. You could just imagine all the meals those plates had experienced. I think any solid color with no chips would be wonderful, but if you see quirky patterns, bold colored flowers or anything that says FUN, but doesn't have any actual words on it, please scoop it up if it costs less than $1. Sometimes I find even fine porcelain China for that price at garage sales. I never find them at official second hand stores, who charge $2 or more. If you find some for a quarter, then, heck, you get a profit. But I think me paying $1 per plate streamlines the process. I will come pick them up anytime you want to tap out. I have a few other things on my wedding secondhand wish list, but the plates are the biggest challenge and the most essential to our vision, I think.
I have been to many beautiful weddings and tried to suspend my thoughts of waste, but after my own parties that had paper plates, I always have this sadness getting rid of the disposables. We would not only use the plates for our events, but if anyone else wanted to use them for their events, they could. We know renting is also an option, but our first choice is mismatching so we have this collective project and the solid plates in perpetuity. A big part of our intention for our wedding is community building.
Other things on the list: parasols, bohemian lanterns, gold baroque frames and mirrors.
From Etsy
Text message me photos of your finds. And of course, helping with the wedding is the surest way to get on the guest list. We plan to live in Eugene basically forever, and want the wedding to be about our present and future, not so much to be in obligation to everyone we've met in the past. This is another reason we are structuring it so that lots of people can help and instead of gifts we are asking guests to help send us to the Dominican Republic to build a house for a family that lives in squalor. It would be easy to make a "Portlandia" joke, but we did a lot of soul-searching to come up with a way to structure our wedding that is still in line with our values.
My hope is you find this a fun challenge and want to help us reach the goal. It would be nice to get this off the list early in the process. Eleven months is a long time to get everything together. Thank you in advance for reading this! I would appreciate any number of plates you can find. In my experience, the loneliest plates are priced the lowest. Let's give them a new sense of belonging :)
"Click 'Like' if you frequent garage sales and want to help my dreams come true."
14 people clicked "Like" and I sent this message to them. I added the images, but the words are almost unchanged.
Short version: We are looking for dinner plates that cost less than $1 for our wedding.
Long version: You all clicked "like" on my garage sale post without knowing the mission, so feel no obligation if this particular wedding-related scavenger hunt does not excite you. As you may know, Shaun and I are now running a vacation rental on the McKenzie River that is also a great location for parties or other events. We are having our wedding reception there next summer. We are turning it into a magical woodland storybook fantasy world, complete with a kids play zone and gratitude area ... think "Where the Wild Things Are" meets "Alice in Wonderland" meets "Louise Hay Bookstore" :) We had a Mad Hatter Tea party for my birthday one year, and for that I searched for mismatching and whimsical glassware and found it to be quite a challenge.
I found what I needed eventually, but it took a whole long time. I fell in love with the mismatch aesthetic and would like to carry it over to my wedding. So... task No. 1 is I want to find hundreds of dinner plates. No plastic and no clear glass.
If you would like to help me find them, I would be eternally grateful, as would be mother earth. We plan to use durables and have them available for our future renters for their family reunions or birthday parties. We were inspired by our friend's family property down south. They had amassed dinner plates over the years and the collection helped give the place such an amazing warm feeling. You could just imagine all the meals those plates had experienced. I think any solid color with no chips would be wonderful, but if you see quirky patterns, bold colored flowers or anything that says FUN, but doesn't have any actual words on it, please scoop it up if it costs less than $1. Sometimes I find even fine porcelain China for that price at garage sales. I never find them at official second hand stores, who charge $2 or more. If you find some for a quarter, then, heck, you get a profit. But I think me paying $1 per plate streamlines the process. I will come pick them up anytime you want to tap out. I have a few other things on my wedding secondhand wish list, but the plates are the biggest challenge and the most essential to our vision, I think.
I have been to many beautiful weddings and tried to suspend my thoughts of waste, but after my own parties that had paper plates, I always have this sadness getting rid of the disposables. We would not only use the plates for our events, but if anyone else wanted to use them for their events, they could. We know renting is also an option, but our first choice is mismatching so we have this collective project and the solid plates in perpetuity. A big part of our intention for our wedding is community building.
Other things on the list: parasols, bohemian lanterns, gold baroque frames and mirrors.
From Etsy
Text message me photos of your finds. And of course, helping with the wedding is the surest way to get on the guest list. We plan to live in Eugene basically forever, and want the wedding to be about our present and future, not so much to be in obligation to everyone we've met in the past. This is another reason we are structuring it so that lots of people can help and instead of gifts we are asking guests to help send us to the Dominican Republic to build a house for a family that lives in squalor. It would be easy to make a "Portlandia" joke, but we did a lot of soul-searching to come up with a way to structure our wedding that is still in line with our values.
My hope is you find this a fun challenge and want to help us reach the goal. It would be nice to get this off the list early in the process. Eleven months is a long time to get everything together. Thank you in advance for reading this! I would appreciate any number of plates you can find. In my experience, the loneliest plates are priced the lowest. Let's give them a new sense of belonging :)
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