Weddings

Although I know that many women will deny this, I think the girls are always a sucker for a wedding. The first weddings I can remember attending were those of my uncles when I was not yet ten years old. Everyone was happy, and the brides looked like to princesses to me. It was not until my late teens that I got to participate in a wedding. It was the wedding of my beloved aunt, eight years older than me, it was 1972 and the man she married is today a special uncle. My bridesmaid's dress was a mint green dotted Swiss and I thought it was so beautiful. So much so that several months later I wore it to my SR prom and it is packed away to this day in my attic.

Then came the weddings of friends and more special dresses. I never came close to "27 Dresses", but I have saved them all. I'm a complete anti-clutter person but these parts of my life are taking up space. Even when I didn't have a main role in a wedding I can remember the the care I took in finding the right dress to cut the cake or register guests.

I remember the weddings of the daughters of our Presidents. Lucy and Lynda. In 1971when Tricia Nixon got married I can hear my then teen aged friends commenting on how their father's wished they could they could give them a wedding like that one. Fact is until seeing these weddings, I thought they were all in churches with a reception in the fellowship hall. A cake, nuts, mints and punch were served and they were all fabulous. My own was even like that. It was not until a friend married a woman from Long Island in the late 70's that I ever went to a wedding with a sit down dinner, a band and alcohol. It was in the late 70's that I first went to an outdoor wedding where the bride had flowers in her hair. I came to realize that wedding options were limitless.

In the getting close to 40 years since my own wedding, I can honestly say that I have attended at least a hundred weddings. Many simple, traditional and lavish, I never left one of them saying "That wedding sucked".

I applaud all the brides for striving to make their wedding days as special as them. Oh sure there were and forever will be, the trends. We've gone from throwing rice (bad for the birds) to bubbles. It has a been a long since I've seen the newlyweds drive away in a car with a "Just Married" sign or tin cans strung along the rear. Can't even remember when I've seen such car in passing. Today exits are much more sophisticated with the limos to carry them the first miles to their wedding night before they jet away to an exotic location. We are so polished now!

In my day (gasp, that makes me sound like a fossil) wedding invitations were purchased from stationery stores. They were engraved in a lavish font and pretty much had the same wording. The names, times and places only changed. You had choices of colors white or ivory. I am proud to say that in 1977 I was one of the first to include my future in-laws names on our invites. Since then the options became more creative and with the advent of the computer the individuality of the bride continued to soar. Through the years I have seen some of the most beautiful and creative invitations, but I still find the old school ones the most elegant.

Wedding dresses continue to be white or ivory for the most part. Today it is unlikely that you will see a bride without a strapless gown or her hair pulled up in a flattering way. In the eighties most brides wore floppy lace hats with long curly hair underneath. I kind of think that the bride styles of the '70's and '90's were not as structured and they were the times of "anything goes". I have never seen a bride who wasn't beautiful.

In our sophisticated times weddings have become certainly more expensive. Think of the days of nuts, mints, cake and punch and how that was fine. Brides and bridesmaid dresses cost less than a hundred dollars. Shoes were dyed to match each dress. In this day shoes do not necessarily need to match and bridesmaids can sometimes pick their own dresses. There are the Bridezillas who demand that their attendants lose weight, get a tan or be at their beckon call through the process.

Destination weddings have become quite the rage in recent years. I do understand that the wedding is about the couple who are about to commit to a life together and doing this in a beautiful and exotic place is enticing. However, I can't image getting married without loved ones who would not have the physical and financial resources to get them there.

I look forward to seeing the wedding trends to come. As my "Friend" Monica once said it...."What little girl does not put and pillowcase on her head and pretend she is a bride"?