Every Bride Needs a Therapist

I wrote this a while ago, but I just found it again (I pictured it being the introduction to the kind of little gifty book they sell at Anthropologie, maybe one day) and got a little laugh remembering how crazy that time was.

Our relationship started out so easily. It was fun, romantic, pretty normal. We met through mutual friends, wrote witty emails, drunkenly hooked up, then got bagels the next morning. We had six months of exciting weekends, adrenaline on the train from New York to Boston, watching football and doing crosswords, going out in New York, feeling like we were the only ones in the world. When he moved to New York I moved perhaps too much stuff into his apartment lived out of a bag until we moved in together. Then we moved to Brazil, a whole chapter in itself and on July 2^nd, 2010, we were exchanging text messages as I moved through customs on a flight back from London (I know this is illegal, sorry.) You’re going out with your friends? Sure, no problem, I’ll drop my stuff and come meet you. Welcome back to America, and then he was there. In a suit. With my name on a sign, blending in with the drivers. But as I walked over, the sign flipped and it said will you marry me on it. I was shocked, there was a ring, laughing, tears, a BMW Zipcar to take us back to our Brooklyn apartment. Our families were there. We were very, very happy.

Then we started planning the wedding.

I was never the kind of girl who knew all along what my wedding was going to look like. Mostly, I thought it would be a low key thing, and I certainly never thought I would be the first of my close girlfriends to get engaged and have to encounter all of the questions that wedding planning entailed. There are. so. Many. questions. I am not a perfectionist, I never have been. Apparently, though, I was somewhere in the most difficult zone of bride, where I didn’t care enough to really take ownership of the process and I was reluctant about choosing aspects that I didn’t consider important, yet I cared far too much to give someone else the ball (my mother, for example. To say she was ready to run with it is an understatement.)

And so, the next sixteen months unfolded in a way that made me crazy. The thing is, it seems like lots of brides need therapists during the wedding planning experience. I talked to not just a few who found themselves in one moment or another acting so outrageously out of character that they needed to call in someone else to help restore their sanity. Someone who didn’t know their mother, or husband, or mother-in-law, or petulant sister or maid of honor and could objectively remind them to take some good, long deep breaths.

My own moment occurred sometime during the summer of 2010, on the southwest corner of 42^nd Street and Sixth Avenue in New York. My now husband and I had just looked at our first wedding venue together, the Foundry in Long Island City. For whatever reason it included something like me jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs, “I hate the spring!” repeatedly. Apparently, I couldn’t possibly get married in the spring.

I’m normally a pretty rational person, low-key, even. Possibly easy-going and accommodating. This was not my usual behavior.

In the District

We were in Washington, DC this weekend for my friends’ Callie and Rob’s wedding.  It was beautiful, perfect, and extremely them.  She looked gorgeous and ethereal and Rob gave a fantastic toast and they both found time to really talk to all of their guests and dance and have fun.

It was nice to be in Washington, too and to see my closest college girls.  It’s been a long time and I hadn’t realized how much I needed it.  It felt incredible to sit on Emily’s screened-in porch and sip wine and eat cheese and grapes and catch up with each other.  We live so far apart (New York, New Orleans, Charlottesville, and San Francisco) and there’s no question that we have more ways to keep in touch than ever before, but it’s not the same as all sitting there together, trading stories, talking about jobs and relationships, laughing at ourselves from before.

I also have to say that DC, and particularly Georgetown, is one of the most homogenous places I’ve ever been.  Everyone looks the same!

Also, one last thing.  Zach sent me a photo album of Yanni today.  He’s too perfect not to include in this post.

Mr. and Mrs. Goldman, Wooden Tables, and a Smattering of Rio Sand

After moving into our new apartment, Scott and I spent the weekend celebrating the marriage of Michael and Jenna–two of my favorite people in the world.  It was a warm, beautiful rehearsal dinner and wedding.  We danced.  We sang and laughed and mostly we danced.  And Jenna had the most incredibly beautiful, ethereal wedding dress I have ever seen.  More selfishly, it was extremely fun for me to be back with some of my closest friends in the world and Michael’s family, who I grew up with.

Today for Mother’s Day, the Behars and my parents came to Brooklyn.  We hung out at the apartment and then went to a store that Scott and I have been meaning to visit to buy a large dining room table for our new space. I would write the name here, but I want it to be my secret (another selfish indulgence).  There were graceful, heavy wooden planks with so much character, each with its own ancient story.  We didn’t find the perfect thing yet, but we got a good idea of what’s possible in the fluid world of hardwoods and tropical trees.

The last thing that’s been amusing over the last couple of days was that Scott was putting our books on the Ikea bookshelf that we tiredly put together on Wednesday night.  He thought he saw some sawdust and that we didn’t do a very good job.  Turns out our books from Brazil had some sand lingering between the pages.  The detail made me smile. A little bit of Jericoacoara in Brooklyn.

Congratulations, Jake and Shira!

We spent this weekend in Philadelphia, celebrating with Jake and Shira.  Jake is one of Scott’s oldest friends, and their wedding was one of the happiest I have ever seen.  They were both beaming, sporting the biggest smiles imaginable.  The events themselves, the rehearsal dinner and wedding, were extremely fun with good food and lots of dancing, but the most striking part was the warmth that everyone felt.  The families were upbeat and happy, and I think Jake and Shira could have had a blast just their own, with the eyes they were making at each other.  There was just not a single second of self-consciousness or doubt.

As we embark upon wedding season (it started a little last year, but we have six weddings in the next year or so), it’s fun to see the different personalities of each couple and each celebration. With everything that’s going on in the world (I know this sounds so dramatic, but I think it’s true) it’s nice to be able to go to such pure, happy events.