“Don’t Bring Sand to the Beach”

“You wouldn’t want to bring sand to the beach” this is what my supervisor said to me when I was contemplating scrounging up a date or two for the two weddings I had this past Saturday. Yes two. On the same day, at almost exactly the same time. Two hours apart. And I’ve known about this dilemma for a year and a half! Somehow two of my good friends (who don’t know each other obviously) managed to pick the same date over a year before the big day. And knowing that far ahead didn’t make it any easier to figure out what to do. I kept hoping one would be a morning wedding and one would be an evening wedding. But no, they were both afternoon weddings with 5pm reception times.

But I did manage to hit the two weddings with one stone, and by stone I mean smoking hot shoes. Ok, actually I had two pairs of shoes, but in my defense I had originally packed a pair of flats as a back up pair, but then at the after party I had to take my heels off and I had forgotten flip-flops so suddenly it looked like I had just changed shoes just for the after party:

Anyway, so my crazy plan to hit one ceremony and one reception actually worked out beautifully. I saw the ceremony of one and arrived part way through the cocktail hour of the second. I was disappointed of course to not see both ceremonies or both receptions, but this was the best solution I could come up with!

As for the sand at the beach comment-I think my supervisor and I have different experiences at the beach-usually I’m under an umbrella with SPF 70 on… And then at the weddings I discovered everyone had already combed the beach and there wasn’t a single or non-engaged man to be found. (Which reminds me that I think men should wear engagement rings as well, though apparently some of these men were even “pre-engaged” and in that case maybe they ought to just carry the damn ring in their pocket).

Mostly I wanted the sand to keep me company on the two-hour drive between the ceremony and the reception. Instead it was just me singing along loudly to my iPod (which maybe explains why I didn’t have company in the car). So at work today I offered to show my boss pictures from the weddings, but she just wanted to know if I’d hooked up with anyone. I informed her that unfortunately every guy I checked out was spoken for. Her response was “Well, think of it this way: maybe you ruined a marriage. Maybe some guy had his eye on you and is thinking about you now, you know?” Startling comment for a wedding reception. I’m not really sure the appropriate response “I should hope so!” or maybe “I should hope not!”

The Land of Frump

This entry is a little out of the ordinary for me, but as my friend Catherine pointed out this post fits my travel theme if you realize ”I didn’t pack enough sanity for ugly dress shopping, or that my clothing taste was obviously better preserved than any other fellow shopper/traveler” :

Why do mother of the bride dresses have to be frump-tastic? I’ve been shopping with my mother trying to find her a dress for my sister’s wedding. I’ve often noticed that mother-of-the-bride and groom dresses always seem to be very similar at weddings. I thought this was a result of personal choice, but as I’ve been shopping I am realizing that there isn’t much variety out there. The styles favored are jackets which could never be removed because often the dress underneath looks unfinished (aka spaghetti straps just tacked on to hold it up). The colors are always muted: champagne, pink champagne, black, brown, boring. Explosions of sequins seem to be the only thing used to decorate the dress. Is this lack of creativity supposed to symbolize the mothers stepping out of there children’s lives and fading into a background of frump? Why should women have to give up their sexuality just because their kids are getting married? With all the money spent in the fashion industry these days, why can’t just a little be spent on MOTBs?