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Racing
toward love Strapped! Mommy
Diarist The
Guilty Bride Introducing
… IndieEtiquette Bride,
Unhinged When
Wedding Dresses Attack! Book
Review: The Artful Bride The
B-word My
Best Friends' Weddings When
Bachelors Go Bad O
Brother Wed Art Thou The
Mythology of Marriage A
Marriage of My Own Why
I Popped the Question My
Wedding, My Way Happily
Ever After Am
I Really That Single? -----------
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SUMMER 2004 | Is it so wrong to want a cake plate? What about matching cake pans, an electric hand mixer, and a double boiler? Is that, like, wrong? Once you have all that gear, is it so wrong to spend a whole afternoon baking a devil's food cake with marshmallow frosting that requires you to stand over the stove with the mixer on high speed, splattering boiling-hot corn syrup and egg whites all over your forearms? Is it wrong to then go out to three different stores to find the special little Cadbury chocolates that look like robins' eggs that they sell only at Easter and to arrange them in a flower pattern on top of your magnificent cake, which rests upon its sparkling pedestal? Is it wrong to then take pictures of the cake and spend a good five minutes just gazing at it, joyfully, reverently, imagining the delight of your dinner guests when they get a load of your magical, wondrous, unbelievable cake? Because when I did this a few weeks ago and plopped it down on the table after dinner--voilà!--and my boyfriend, O., announced that I'd made it from scratch, our guests just looked at me blankly for a moment before someone said, "Uh, since when did you become Southern?" Then they all laughed. I blushed. It was not how I'd pictured the moment. I felt as though I'd been caught enacting a dirty fantasy. And actually, I had been: You see, O. isn't my boyfriend anymore...he's my fiancé. We're getting married in August. The cake plate, the cake pans--all wedding gifts. And the role I was so eagerly trying on that night? Gracious hostess, princess bride, devoted wife. Nothing I've ever done has given me more of a thrill or caused me more shame. I don't know which is worse: the baking or the wedding. Growing up under the tutelage of women who had only recently had their consciousness raised by Betty Friedan et. al., I was constantly reminded to avoid the sinkhole of domesticity. "Never learn to cook, girls," one of my friends' mothers used to warn us. "Because if you do, that's all you'll do for the rest of your life." Still, that doesn't fully explain my discomfort. With college, graduate school, and 10 years of a publishing career under my belt, I'm unlikely to find my options reduced to a skillet and a spatula anytime soon. And while "Consumerism before feminism" could easily be the motto of the exploding domestic porn market and the wedding industry (or as O. calls it, the Marital Industrial Complex), that's a battle I've been fighting (and losing) with myself for years. Barneys would be a lot poorer and Planned Parenthood a lot richer if I always put my money where my ideals are. My queasiness isn't intellectual; it's gut level--the kind of self-doubt I haven't felt since I was 11 or 12 and gradually stopped hanging around with my grade-school best friend. I didn't feel like I was being mean; our friendship had just cooled. But I remember having some kind of semipublic showdown with her one day. She cried and asked me why I didn't like her anymore. I don't remember what I said to her, but I do remember that in the middle of our fight, she got so upset she threw up her lunch in the hallway in front of everyone. I remember, too, how my own heart and stomach ached as I was torn between wishing things could go back to the way they were and wanting to escape her, wanting to grow up and move on. Before I met O., I hadn't given much thought to what my wedding would be like. I spent way more time imagining my childless, friendless spinsterhood: the heavy drinking and smoking, the gaudy out-of-fashion outfits, the too-youthful hairstyle, the smeared makeup, the lapdog who would gnaw on my body once I died, alone. I pictured myself 40 or 50 years down the road, drinking cosmos at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle hotel, listening, with a tear in my eye and a courageous tilt to my chin, to the piano man singing Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady." There were other versions of dotage, ones in which I had a child out of wedlock and lived, like Kate and Allie, with my best friend; ones in which I moved to the country, rode a bicycle, and wore funny hats; or went to Paris to write novels and have a salon, like a straighter, more attractive Colette. I'd grown attached to my infinite spinsterhoods--even the one with the smeared lipstick (I love the louche dissipation of it). It wasn't that I was against marriage. I was just open to the possibility that it wouldn't happen for me. I knew that for a white, educated, middle-class woman like myself, the statistical chances that I would marry were very high. But I figured that when you're playing musical chairs, someone is gonna be left without a seat when the music stops. Maybe it would be me. Okay, and maybe it wasn't as neat and logical as that. I was in a miserable relationship for most of my twenties--a weeping, tense, charcoal-dark mess. The one thing we had in common was our work ethic: We worked very hard at righting our perpetually capsized little boat. We slaved away at it for eight years--more. If we'd had a song, it would have been the drone of the Wicked Witch's guards in The Wizard of Oz as they marched around her castle: Oh-wee-oh-aohhh. Still, we didn't question the wisdom of our project; we just kept heaving our pickaxes at it. And to keep those questions at bay, I came up with elaborate explanations for why it was okay that we were so cruel to each other (we were honest!), that we had so little fun (a real partnership is not about champagne and bubble baths!), and why we both had so little urge to marry (wedlock is an iffy prospect--a 50 percent success rate at best; weddings are consumerist schlock!). Even after I came to my senses and broke it off, all the years I'd spent brainwashing myself against love and marriage didn't evaporate overnight. Plus, I had become a single girl in an age of single-girl power. As has been drummed into our heads over the past few years, my generation is delaying marriage and motherhood like no other. After years of dreary coupledom, it was exhilarating to launch myself into my newfound independence. I wanted to toss my cap in the air like Mary Tyler Moore: "I'm going to make it after all!" When I was lonely or found myself dumped by some man or disillusioned with another, I'd give myself a little pep talk: The fact that most of the guys I dated turned out to be assholes only confirmed how smart I was to break up with them. Singlehood equaled unlimited potential; couplehood equaled compromise. Marriage was not an ultimate good; if you go into it for the wrong reasons, it's a living hell. And motherhood, as far as I could tell, was like crack addiction. It was a high, for sure, but one that would destroy your career, your body, and all your relationships. Maybe it was for the best that I was on my own. I was, after all, a pretty happy girl. Why mess with success? And then I met O. Since then, I have been struggling not to feel like a hypocrite as I cast aside all my antiromantic beliefs and break every rule I ever made for myself. I had always said that if I did marry, I wouldn't want an engagement ring but just a simple wedding band. I would wear a red or pink dress; no white gown. And I wouldn't starve myself to fit into it. I would not have bridesmaids, but if I did, I would not make them wear matching dresses. I would plan the whole thing in a few weeks--none of these yearlong engagements. I would have the wedding at my apartment, maybe, or at my parents' house. I'd invite fewer than 50 people. The whole thing would cost a thousand dollars or so, not counting my dress. So it has come as somewhat of a surprise to me that I am wearing a large, sparkly diamond on my left ring finger. After a nearly 11-month engagement, we will be having a weekend-long affair at a fancy inn. It will cost considerably more than a thousand dollars, and there will be way more than 50 guests. My three bridesmaids will be wearing matching chiffon and satin dresses. I have joined a gym and spend seven or eight hours a week there, winnowing myself down to an acceptable bridal weight. And my dress? White. Not ivory, not eggshell, but pure, virginal, bridal white. With a train. And a veil. A long veil. When I describe the event to people, I always try to make it sound like I got pressured into it. "I'm the only daughter of an only daughter," I'll say, shrugging. "I have a big family. I'm the first granddaughter to get married." People will nod, yes, of course, big wedding--makes sense. "My grandparents are getting old," I'll say, "and you never know how many more events we'll have together." Never mind that my grandparents are all pretty spry (knock on wood)--I'd rather conjure up images of walkers and oxygen tanks than admit I'm having a big white wedding because I want to. But that's the truth: It's as if I've found my calling. Ever since O. proposed, I've found it hard to think about anything but him and our wedding. I float through each day on a cloud of white tulle. At night, visions of centerpieces dance in my head. And when I can't fall asleep out of sheer anticipation, I watch O. sleep and marvel at my luck that I found him--so sweet, solid, funny, smart, and handsome. He gets flushed, like children do, when he sleeps. His skin makes me think of ripe fruit, of nectarines, of peaches, of cherries. I want to eat him whole. I want to embrace the world. I want to tap-dance down the street and sing show tunes from the rooftops. I've never been happier...and that makes me sad. Was I lying to myself all those single years? Am I betraying myself now? Or am I just growing up and moving on? In search of some answers, I called up Allison Moir-Smith, a Brookline, Massachusetts, therapist who runs Emotionally Engaged, a premarital counseling service for brides gone wild--the cold of foot, the sick of heart--and described to her my own feelings of loss and shame. "I see that with every bride I work with," she tells me. "We're the third wave of feminism. We've all worked so hard to create a clear sense of who we are independently, and then we embrace the entire traditional package of not only marriage, but weddings and all the hoopla surrounding it, and it's a jolt to our systems. We're angry at ourselves that we buy into the commercialism, and we're sad that we're not 'better than that.'" But, she says, the point of a wedding is precisely that humbling effect--that it brings you in touch with the aspects of humankind that haven't changed much over the years. "It's personal, and it's not personal," she says. "You're entering into something that's about you and your fiancé on one level, but it's also about this much larger archetypal experience." Further, all the moments of alienation from your friends, family, fiancé, and self are integral to that experience. "You go through the drama and the angst about the registry, the dress, but it really is never about the wedding details. It's about the psychological process of leaving your old life and beginning this new life," she says. "It's a time of connecting to yourself in ways that you couldn't if you just chose to cohabitate for the rest of your life, because you have to engage with all these problems of culture and history." Grappling with the wedding, she points out, you are also forced to confront how you will maintain or reshape traditional roles in your marriage. O. and I made a solemn pledge as soon as we got engaged: no wedding fights. We lasted barely two weeks before we had a huge blowout about the engagement ring, followed by ones about the guest list, the attendants, the honeymoon, the registry, the bachelor party, and most recently, dance lessons. But through these arguments we've begun to figure out who should take the lead in which areas, how we'll make financial decisions, when to indulge each other and when to be tough. And we've learned what our Achilles' heel as a couple is. As O. puts it, "that you're psycho and I'm lazy." Or in other words, the wedding is forcing us to figure out how to create an equitable division of labor in which I don't feel like an overwhelmed hausfrau and he doesn't feel like my indentured servant. "There really aren't any rules in our generation," Moir-Smith says. "You have to create your own marriage, and that takes a lot of imagination." And negotiation. Realizing all this brought the famous Devil's Food Incident of 2004 into sharper focus. Sometimes a cake is just a cake, and sometimes it's a big fattening sign of change. I wasn't just showing off my new cake plate that night. I was showing off O.--what a great a husband he'll be, what a good wife I'll be, how we're balancing the pulls of tradition and modernity. In the process I let slip something that's not necessarily politically correct: Though our relationship is egalitarian on most counts (decision making, housework, finances), sometimes we like to play the me-Tarzan, you-Jane game. A nice afternoon for us is one in which I roast a chicken while he watches baseball, occasionally strolling into the kitchen to get a beer and smack me on the behind. Later when we eat dinner, he'll ask for seconds and smile at me and say over and over, "I'm lucky." I'll fill up with tenderness and pride. I love O. for recognizing my smarts, but the fact that he enjoys my cooking gives me a different sort of kick. So I'm making peace with myself about my matching baby blue toile apron and oven mitt, the fact that I could spend an entire day talking to my florist about dahlias versus clematis, and the Ken and Barbie aspects of my partnership with O. I suppose I've proved myself capable enough in the world that I can be the girly girl at home every once in a while. Perhaps O. isn't alienating me from my true identity but bringing me closer to parts of it I denied in the past: the trusting parts, the nurturing ones. When I think of it this way, my old life--with my crummy ex-boyfriends and undernourishing home life--was more of a betrayal of myself than my new one. My maid of honor, Stacey, my former partner in single-girl-hood, graciously assures me that I'm not a hypocrite. She characterizes my old views as a "failure of imagination"--I couldn't imagine a man I would want to marry, so I thought I didn't want to marry. "I can say this because I'm single," she tells me. "Maybe the big white dress is a state of being. I don't think you can really wrap your brain around it until you're there. Until then you think, What's the big deal? Because you've never had a relationship you wanted to celebrate before." And so we're going to celebrate. With rings and bridesmaids and crying relatives and drunken friends and armfuls of flowers. And cake--devil's food--covered in mounds of white marshmallow frosting. Nothing has ever felt so right. ----------- This article originally appeared in Elle Magazine. ----------- Rachael Combe is a writer and editor in Manhattan. She and her fiancé will tie the knot--and cut the cake--in August, 2004.
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