Pieces of Anna

Just married D and I got married on June 9, 2012 in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Piers Park, East Boston. During the days leading up to our wedding, the rain did not let up. Everyone was worried that our outdoor ceremony would be rained out. Everyone, except for me. I was convinced that the sun would come out on our wedding day - and it did! Our ceremony in Piers Park A long time ago, during our venue search , we came up with the idea of having an "urban beach" wedding. I would say that our wedding came pretty close - the ceremony was in front of a gazebo on a pier jutting out into the waterfront, with a marvelous view of downtown Boston. Also, I just realized that the roof of that gazebo kind of goes with my dress - surprise bonus points! And speaking of the dress , I ended up wearing a Betsey Johnson number that required exactly zero alterations. You know you got the right dress when it fits you like a glove. We wrote the entire ceremony ourselves and i...

Since I wrote this post some time ago, I had to follow up. Because this photo almost made me spill tea all over my keyboard. Yes, that is a cake. Found here .

In my search for the wedding dress, I tried on many dresses and looked at many, many more online. In the beginning, I considered some actual (though hardly traditional) wedding dresses . But once I realized that even short wedding dresses cost a small fortune, my search shifted to more affordable options. I knew that bridesmaid dresses come in almost any color, and they are generally within a more affordable price range. The problem (and I was aware of this from the beginning but pressed on anyway) is that in my opinion, bridesmaid dresses are designed to be unflattering. It seems that the wedding industry has designated the bride to be the star of the show wedding, at the expense of her closest friends, who are often forced to wear matching dresses in unflattering fit and color. I'm not saying that this is universally true, but that's what I have noticed often happens at weddings. Still, I had to wear something to my wedding (although I did threaten to show up in a white bi...

This weekend, I had my first breakdown over the wedding. After I finished crying, I thought to myself that it's ok, it is perfectly normal to cry over wedding planning related stuff. Everyone does it. Or, I should say, every bride does it. I have yet to see a man go into a hissy fit over the color of the napkins, for example. Even my favorite sane wedding blog tells me how ubiquitous wedding stress is. But it was exactly this line of thought that made me stop and question the validity of this assumption. Why IS it expected that a bride will stress and cry at some point in the wedding planning process? Why is it NOT expected that the groom will do the same? It's a wedding for two, after all. (Yes, I am aware that my statements apply to heterosexual weddings only. But that's only because I don't really know what the society expects in terms of wedding breakdowns when it comes to same-sex couples.) My own tears were spilled over nothing particularly important. In retr...

Remember how I said that we are diving right into wedding planning already? Well, it turns out we had to slow down a bit because making decisions together is a much slower process than me making a decision on my own. So while we are trying to agree on the guest list, the budget, and the venue, I figured that I might as well start planning the one part of the wedding that I have complete control over - my wedding dress. Although I don't have a specific kind of dress in mind yet, I do have some ideas on what I want and what works for my body. For starters, I would like a short wedding dress. As in above the knee but not shameless-hussy-type short. And this eliminates a whole lot of options. It seems like most wedding designers don't really consider a little white dress as a feasible wedding dress option. A reception dress? Sure! An engagement party dress? No problem! But no one actually gets MARRIED in a short dress, right? Grrr. Anyway, even taking all those "additional ...