Bridal Ranting, by Proxy

Hi all. So, the lack of blogging has been due to the fact that I've stupidly added a wedding, of the express-planning variety, to my "to do" list since early February. It's going well, if by well one could mean there's no dress yet, my shawl is only 80% done, but we do have a paid contract with an officiant, so the signatures will happen and a legal marriage will result - I may just be wearing jeans and our Best Man might too, as the bridal shop lost his measurements. We'll coordinate our t-shirts.

In trying to go with "informal" and "low key", I meant to go with only one attendant each, but that expanded to two as I couldn't bring myself to flip a coin between my sister and my might-as-well-be-a-sister best friend, so I have two bridesmaids. In theory, we all have purchased dresses, and while I left it to the two of them what they want to wear, they kaiboshed my "alternative" wedding idea by actually agreeing on colour, fabric, AND style for their own dresses.

So, based on that last sentence, you have to read the following realizing that my sister draws on those around her for her material, but may be fictionalizing details for humour's sake - her dress is NOT my fault. Other than the short timeline leaving its arrival in question, that was my fault. Actually, it looks quite good on her and on her co-conspiritor-of-honour, I'm more confident of that than I am of mine looking good on me. Here you go, a transcription of Sissy's rant from her stand-up gig last week at Rebel's Rock.

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Last time I was here, I talked about how I'd been out of comedy for a bit, recovering from the shock of getting married, (12 years) and it got me thinking about marriage, and what makes a marriage. Kind of dumb considering how hard it is to get OUT of one that all it takes is one day to get into one. You stand up and make an ass of yourself in front of friends and family in some godawful white merrangue that makes you look just like your wedding cake, some dude talks, you sign your name and bang, you're married.

Even doing like our friend Kerba did- shack up, lose track of time and let the government declare you married so they can screw you that much harder come tax time, seems pretty simplistic.

I think either of those things are the beginning of getting married, but they're really just the start of BECOMING married. Becoming married is the part that happens slowly, like, over years, long after the wedding guests have stopped even sending your Christmas cards. Marriage happens one fight over your monster-in-law's insults, one pre-colonoscopy enema, one exploded bathtub at a time. At least, those were some of the milestones in our house...

You change gradually, bit by bit from getting married to BEING married.

When you're a new bride, for example, you go through this nauseating period where you practice signing your married name on everything, even if you've just become the new Mrs. Lipschitz. You flash the ring like you're the frickin' green lantern and you keep a house that would make Martha Stewart want to throw herself off a bridge in shame instead of the other way around for a change. But over time, you change.

By the time you're ten years in, and own grown up shit like a minivan and a dishwasher, you've figured out that if you add a glass of milk, technically a peanut butter and banana sandwich covers all four food groups, and is therefore an acceptable Sunday dinner. You've gone from being mortally embarrassed that your mother in law found a pubic hair in your bathroom cup to secretly being pretty proud of yourself in a slightly perverted way when shit like that happens.

In the early days of being a new bride, I remember slipping quietly out of bed in the earliest, gray hours of morning just to brush my teeth and comb my hair so I could slip back into bed, and my new husband could see me wake up beautiful every morning.

These days its more like trying to stay awake just a few minutes longer than him at night just so I can fart and shove his head under the covers. ('If you love me breathe deeply!')

And one day it hits you, you're not just becoming married anymore, you ARE married.

I had one of those epiphany moments a couple of weeks back, the dawning that your partner knows you better than anyone else on earth...you see, he was at work, and I was waxing my legs...

Sorry, I know some of you are eating

Ok, I'll back up a little first...over the years of our marriage, we've collected some pretty strange things, and among them would be our two cats. The first one, the big one, is very low maintenance. I'm not sure she's even moved off the living room chair since my son was born. I vacuum her once a week, that's how mellow she is. But my other cat was born under my desk three jobs and seven years ago. I bottle fed him from three days old, and he's totally imprinted on me. He follows me around the house like he's on a string. It sounds sweet, but any woman who's ever tried to put mascara on with a cat butt right in her grill knows why this isn't as cute as it sounds...

So waxing my legs. Shuttup, the weather's getting nice, you'd be more grossed out if I didn't...

Had all the cold wax strips laid out neatly on the counter, sticky side up, when cat couldn't bear to be apart from me for one second longer and did that sit on the counter and purr so hard he drools thing, got up to give me the tail to scratch and....aaaahhh! Thing on my butt! Thing on my butt!

And all hell broke loose. Terrified cat with two sticky cold wax strips tearing through the house, and it's old married housekeeping in our house, not newlywed housekeeping, so the more he runs, the more stuff sticks to the mess on his butt, he's picking up dust bunnies, action figures, goldfish crackers (because for some reason there are always goldfish crackers on the floor in the dark corners of my house) and he'd getting more and more terrified the more he runs. I finally trapped him in the downstairs fridge. But the 'yep we're married' moment came when I called sweet hubby to tell him what happened. You see when you've been married long enough, you sometimes forget to explain things in the detail that you should, because you assume your partner already knows everything you know. My husband, bless him, didn't miss a single beat when I phoned him at work to tell him he had to stop at the pharmacy to buy calendula oil on the way home because I'd inadvertantly waxed the wrong pussy.

On the subject of marriage, since I saw you last, my sister has decided to finally get married to her long time spousal euphemism, and I guess I didn't wreck enough of her stuff when we were kids, because I'm still on the hook for being a bridesmaid. To make matters worse, she's set the wedding date for April 25 of THIS year. Actually, I think being a bridesmaid is something we inflict on those girlfriends who have managed to really piss us off over the years, because there's a lot of sucky things about being a bridesmaid. You have to stay sober, at least until its all legal apparently, and you get assignments, like wrangling emotionally incontinent relatives so the bride can freak out in peace. This is my assignment, and I'm the exactly wrong person for the job. My approach to the emotional incontinence of others tends to involve things like chloroform and broom closets, but because I love my sister, just this once, I'll do as I'm asked. But I still get to bitch about the dresses.

Now, everyone already knows that the whole point of the bridesmaid's dresses is to make the bride look good, but when you're built like a hobbit, or, let's be honest, when you're built like TWO hobbits standing very close together, you'd rather be stuck in a revolving door with a spear through your head than be stuck in a dress shop filled with size 8 samples and a snotty salesclerk telling you that with less than 8 weeks to go you're not going to be able to order anything in time, so you'll just have to buy off the rack. Now the other bridesmaid is the same size as me, technically, she's just a foot taller, but neither one of us is exactly 'off the rack' material. So the selection was ultimately made by asking the snotty salesclerk to bring out everything in the store that would also fit nicely over a Xerox machine and we narrowed it down from there. So black chiffon it is. People say black is slimming, but unless it's very, very dark, there's only so much camouflage you can count on, even from black. Our helpful sales clerk also whispered to me like she was sharing some of the ancient lore of skinny folks that there was this helpful exercise you could do, to help slim your butt and hips. Apparently if you sit on the floor with your legs in front of you and 'walk' on your butt, over time, this is supposed to lend itself to a firmer, trimmer derriere. Again, I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty self aware. With a butt like a park bench, how far do you think I'd have to go? Let's see, I live in Burlington, the wedding's in Waterloo in four weeks, if I leave tonight and butt-walk the entire way there, me and my slim new tush might just make it! If you have cause to head in that direction before the end of the month and you see me scootching up Highway 6, show your support, honk and wave. They guy next to me driving the world's slowest pace car will be my husband....

But I digress, it's a done deal. Black chiffon for an April morning wedding! So get your cameras ready, 'cause on April 25 I'll be the one plowing up the aisle looking like a pygmy gothapotamus in full sail. /endbigfatjewishathiestweddingbit

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