Wedding Bell Views

Chelsea Clinton’s decision to keep her wedding private was totally understandable. She never asked to be in the public eye, and has chosen to live a private life. It was certainly her prerogative to refuse to have her wedding videotaped and broadcast live to a worldwide audience.

I must admit that I do like to watch when certain famous people get married. Take the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, for instance. Now THAT was a wedding! No private, simple affair for those two. I happened to have the day of the wedding off work (complete coincidence, I swear!), and I got up at 5 a.m. to watch the wedding. Armed with lots of coffee and Kleenex, I watched every bit of that coverage. Sadly, that union ended badly, but the wedding was spectacular.

I also like to watch weddings of obscure strangers who happen to get lucky when applying to be on a reality show. I’m the person for whom they created all those wedding shows on cable. The first one I watched, and still my favorite, was “A Wedding Story” which was on TLC. It was very simple. They interviewed the couple who gave their back story, and then the cameras followed them around for a couple of days before the wedding. I absolutely loved it. I don’t think it is still in production, but “Whose Wedding is It Anyway?” (from the viewpoint of the wedding planner), fills my need to watch the wedding plans of total strangers.

I would say that how Chelsea Clinton conducted her wedding was none of my business, but the Clintons and I go way back. I’m practically an old family friend – I once saw Hillary and Bill speak in person in Market Square in Pittsburgh. You know, I did have some small part in contributing to their success. Heck, I’m STILL supporting Hillary for President. Come to think of it, I’m surprised that I didn’t make the guest list for the wedding of their only daughter. But it WAS a small affair – just 400 of Chelsea and Michael’s closest friends- so I was okay with staying home that day, just like Barack and Oprah did.

Nonetheless, if I couldn’t actually watch the ceremony I was still really, really happy to see some photos of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Chelsea looked lovely, didn’t she? The dress, her hair, the makeup all looked just perfect on her. I liked the fact that it was an interfaith wedding and that the groom wore a tallis and a yarmulke. And they looked SO happy. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get a better look at Hillary’s dress, but it WAS Chelsea’s day, and given her penchant for privacy, I was just grateful for the glimpse I did get.

For the record, my interest in weddings of political figures and their children is totally bipartisan. I got pretty excited when Jenna Bush announced her engagement- I hadn’t seen a good White House wedding since Tricia Nixon got married so long ago. Imagine my disappointment when Jenna decided on a simple, private affair at the family’s ranch in Texas. Again, I was very happy and satisfied to see their pictures.

The truth is that I just love to look at wedding pictures- anyone’s wedding pictures. The wedding photos themselves are something to see nowadays. The photographers are suddenly doing all kinds of fabulous, creative, artistic photo shoots. Honestly, though, the pictures don’t have to be fancy to please me, and I don’t even have to know the people involved. I just like to see the dresses and the cake and the ceremony and the party, and all the smiling faces.

Seeing all these photos and watching “Say Yes to the Dress” does keep me up on the latest trends in wedding fashions, which interest me a great deal even though they are of no importance in my everyday life. For instance, it seems like nearly every bride must have a strapless gown nowadays. Some people benefit greatly from a well-placed strap, and don’t the brides today want some individuality? I do like that some bridesmaid dresses now are shorter and/or more individualized in style to each individual woman. Let’s face it, the bride’s dearest friends come in all shapes and sizes, and you really CAN wear some of these dresses again.

Personally, I believe that the best weddings are the ones where the couple do it their way and make it their own. And the best pictures are those where the happiness of the couple outshines everything else in the picture. So my advice to those planning their weddings: Wear the burgundy dress with straps and eat the cake made of cookies, if that’s what gives you pleasure. Remember to relax and have fun!

Oh, yes, and please don’t forget to post those pictures in Facebook so that I can see them.

And the Bride Wore Burgundy

It was all decided. We were just a couple of middle-aged kids in love, and we were getting married. The courtship wasn’t your typical affair- oh, it was an affair alright, there just wasn’t anything typical about it- and we knew early on the wedding was going to be, shall we say, non-traditional. From the self-written interfaith ceremony, to my 18-year-old son acting as Man of Honor, to the chocolate-on-chocolate wedding cake, everything about our wedding was wonderfully unique and special and totally “us.”

My personal contribution to the uniqueness of our wedding was my choice of attire. One day it occurred to me. I knew what I wanted in a wedding dress. I turned to my fiancé, and said with clear conviction, “I want the dress to be red.”

“Okay,” responded my fiancé, as casually as though I had said I wanted chicken for dinner. Of course, this was the guy who loved me for who I was and was determined to make all my dreams come true, even if it meant painting the bedroom red (which he had already done, before I moved in).

Nonetheless, I expected resistance from the masses (i.e. family and friends), but no one seemed to care what I wore to my wedding. Boy, this was a lot different than my first wedding, when I was in my 20’s, and everyone had all kinds of opinions about everything.

Then I embarked upon the mind bogglingly difficult task of finding my wedding dress. Granted, I had some issues, beyond the fact that the dress had to be red (or maroon, or burgundy or wine – something in the red family). I wanted something somewhat formal. I wanted sleeves on my dress, considering that we were getting married in November. To complicate things further I was a plus size woman in my 40’s, and I was on a tight budget.

I know for a fact that plus size people marry and are in weddings all the time, but you wouldn’t know it when you enter the formidable portals of a bridal shop, where I found myself looking at mother-of-the-bride and bridesmaid dresses. Rhiannon, a young saleslady at one local wedding retailer, was actually very helpful. She produced a really pretty, interesting long fitted suit that came in a Cranberry color that… was not made in my size. Why, I wondered? Did the creators of the dress conclude that no large woman should or would choose to wear a fitted dress?

I saw a beautiful bridesmaid's gown that was satin, a-line and trimmed in fur, but in red with white fur I was afraid I would evoke images of Mrs. Santa Claus. I would have felt better if I could have tried it on but, as Rhiannon expected, no store stocked in my size. That's the other thing. Because they rarely carried samples in my size, I was expected to take it on faith that I might look okay in a dress and just order it. Are you kidding me? My wedding dress? I don’t think so.

I was beginning to despair. My fiancé assured me that I would look wonderful to him in anything, even a gunny sack, but I didn’t really want to wear a gunny sack to my wedding, even if it were red, fitted and had long sleeves.

A co-worker knew of a bridal place that carried a nice selection of discounted plus size bridal dresses, but she couldn’t remember the name of the store and wasn’t sure if it was in Steubenville (Ohio) or Wheeling (West Virginia). And there was another place she knew of in Sharon, PA that carried plus size discounted merchandise and that specialized in evening wear. Well, if a field trip is what it took…but I thought it ironic that I lived in Pittsburgh, the biggest metropolitan area in western Pennsylvania, and I might have to travel to Sharon or out of state to get a formal red dress to wear at my wedding.

I decided to go downtown to try the department stores – Kaufman’s and Lord and Taylor’s. And Saks?, asked my fiancé. Well, I just laughed at the thought of Saks. Did I mention we were on a tight budget? I doubted that Saks would have plus sizes, and was sure that anything I did find there would be far too expensive. My trips to other department stores failed to produce a dress. Oh, there was a quite stunning red evening dress at L & T that might have been appropriate if the evening in question was being spent at, say, the Moulin Rouge, but I certainly didn’t want to wear it to my wedding. My fiancé told me to humor him, and we headed for Saks.

When we entered “Salon Z,” (yes, there WAS a plus size section of the store), we turned to the left and there it was. An entire wall of what was my ultimately perfect wedding dress. It was exactly what I had in mind. It was a floor-length burgundy satin dress with a fitted waist, sleeves, and a V-shaped neckline. Better yet, the first dress I tried on, in my standard size, was a little too big, so I had to go down a size. When I walked out of the dressing room, my fiancé teared up at the sight of me. The piéce de resistence? It was on sale. The price of the dress was about a 60% markdown from the original price, but an additional “surprise” discount at the register brought the price to about one-third the original price, affordable for even the tightest budget.

I married my wonderful husband wearing my beautiful burgundy wedding gown on November 29, 2003, almost six years ago. In the end, it turned out that finding the right dress was like finding the right man – it took a long time and some heartache along the way, but when I did they were both the perfect fit for me.