AisleDash

Katherine Heigl isn't moving in with fiance Josh Kelly until after they get married. She said, "I ... didn't want to live together before we were married. I still have enough Mormon in me -- not a lot, but enough -- that I wanted to keep that a little bit sacred."

Now, I am perhaps more liberal than most, but I can't imagine marrying someone I hadn't lived with. I think living with a person gives you a clearer and more honest picture of who they really are, and how they handle stress. Plus, the idea of planning a large wedding, getting married, going on a honeymoon and then learning that my husband is literally physically incapable of putting his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper would have been disheartening, to say the least. I felt like knowing all the little quirks and shortcomings of my spouse to be helped me to make a fully informed decision about marriage. Yes, he would never put his dirty tees in the hamper, but wake the man up in the middle of the night because you had a bad dream about crazy dolls and he is comforting, patient, and kind.

What do you say, AisleDash readers? Are you all for living together before marriage, or does it offend your sensibilities? Did you do it to the disappointment of your parents, or refrain to keep them happy?

I love weddings -- I do, after all, write for a wedding blog. And anyone who has ever met me knows I'm pretty much crazy about my two Basset Hounds. I am therefore the perfect audience for this series of vintage Basset Hound Wedding objects -- they have mugs and mouse pads and coasters and more -- but I'm...not sure I'm sold. I mean, they are hilarious. And I definitely come down on the "yes" side of the "dogs in clothes" debate (my husband is a firm "no," though, which is why our dogs don't have any sweaters). And yet, when I look at these sepia-toned, obviously photoshopped beauties, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, owning them would push me from "devoted dog owner" over to "crazy dog lady." And that's not a gamble I'm willing to take.

I just love this story -- it is so noble, so romantic, and so distinctly old-fashioned. In 1944, when Maj. Claude Hensinger was fighting in WW II, a parachute saved his life. He used it to jump from a plane and land safely, and that night, he wrapped himself in it and used it as a pillow. Three years later he presented it to his girlfriend, Ruth, and suggested she might want to make a wedding dress out of it -- that is, if she would like to marry him. Ruth said yes, made a lovely dress out of the parachute, and they got married. Beyond the sheer awesomeness of the story, I am also pretty astounded that Ruth was able to create such a lovely dress out of a parachute. I cannot begin to imagine what I would have done in the same situation, although I fairly certain my wedding dress would have been something...Roman. Like a toga. Held together by safety pins.

Even more wonderful: later, their daughter and their son's bride wore the same dress.

The dress is on display at the Smithsonian -- as it should be.

Maybe this is only awesome if you were born in the 80s, but I, for one, have developed a full-blown pastry crush on this super-detailed Super Mario Brothers wedding cake. The cake was made by Gateaux, Inc. for a couple named Brent and Annette, and apparently, the very hardest part was finding the princess character to be the bride half of the cake topper. I love, love, love it when people show their personalities, hobbies, and quirks in their wedding choices, but this one really takes the cake (terrible pun intended).

Like I said, the appeal of this cake might be limited to the twenty-something crowd. I have to admit that my mother, for example, would probably give me a quizzical, "that's very...colorful, dear" if I'd this at my wedding. But that doesn't make it any less awesome. There's a full set of cake photos here.

[via boing boing]

So what do you do with your wedding ring after the marriage falls apart? Do you keep in your desk drawer? Throw it over the side of a ship? Or do you get a tiny wooden coffin (with a glossy mahogany finish!) for it, engrave it with a bon mot like, "Gone and forgotten" or the disturbingly vengeful, "Six feet isn't deep enough" and call it a day?

Yeah, I'm not so sure. I mean, a marriage breaking up is an awful, awful thing, but when it's over, there's nothing to do but move on.

I'm not sure that a wedding ring coffin would exactly facilitate moving on for me personally -- although I think the idea of threatening to get a miniature coffin for my wedding ring is sort of funny. You know, maybe the next time my husband asks to have chicken for dinner instead of pork I will burst into tears and bellow, "Well FINE! I'll just get a TINY WOODEN COFFIN FOR MY WEDDING RING IF THAT'S THE WAY YOU'RE GOING TO BE!" I'm sure he would find that hilarious. And then he would have me committed.

And for the record, I would not, under any circumstances do as this woman did and display my wedding ring on a bloody rubber finger. A woman has to draw the line somewhere.

I think I might be a little in love with notattending.com. It's a site set up by two writers, Haje and Kate, who scripted a fake wedding invitation and asks others – including you, if you like – to RSVP as honestly as you want. My current favorite is from Michael Dietz, who says, "you two picked the exact weekend that my cat is getting married!" and later clarifies, "his mom is coming in from California." And really, how could Kate and Haje expect their friend to dissapoint their...cat's...mother.

I am also fond of this contribution from user germanfreek: "I would love to be there, especially to see how much weight Kate has gained, and how much hair Haje has lost since our last encounter. Remember when you hit my car and didn't leave a note..."

Emma Cox and Luke Pittard won £1.3 million in the lottery -- about $2.6 million US -- and had the wedding of their dreams. They even went so far as to dress their family and friends in all-white outfits for the special day. The 150 guests dined lavishly at Cardiff's swanky Hilton Hotel and the bride pronounced the day "fantastic" and said that "This was something which would have been unbelievable if it hadn't been for winning the lottery."

Now, I have a confession to make. Even if I'd won the lottery before I got married, I wouldn't have spent any of the winnings on an extravagant wedding. I would have kept it as small and simple as could be and I certainly wouldn't have purchased an all-white outfit for each of my guests. (Although the mental image of pitching this idea to my shy and modest husband makes me laugh: "That's right, honey, we're buying white outfits for your whole family! Now get me your father's inseam, STAT.")

You've quizzed yourself to see if you're bridesmaid to a Bridezilla, and you've determined what kind of bride you are. (I was a modern bride, which I think makes me sound more polished than I actually am.) Now, how much do you know about wedding invitation etiquette? Do you want to take a quiz and find out?

This is precisely the sort of quiz I wish I could take competitively for cash prizes. As it is now I am forced to ace it at home with only my husband and dogs to congratulate me. Where are my adoring fans, my floral wreaths, my presidential phone calls? And while we're on it, can we make Tetris a professional sport? I could really use a 20 million-dollar contract.

Last month Ilona wrote a great post on getting your wedding dress for less. She suggested renting, borrowing, or buying a bridesmaid's gown. And last week, Kerri wrote a great post on how everything costs more at a "wedding." It was a combination of those two tips that scored me the wedding dress of my dreams for a mere $75.

First, I told all the salespeople that I was looking for a dress for a wedding -- omitting the fact that it was my wedding I was looking for. My husband and I got married at City Hall, and I didn't need an ornate wedding dress. By not specifying that I was actually looking for a wedding dress, I avoided the top tier of fancy, floor-length dresses, and the salespeople showed me mostly tea-length, unembellished dresses. It wasn't particularly important to me that the dress was white, although I did mention that I wanted to avoid black. I told them that I wasn't flashy, that I wanted to avoid going strapless, and that I'd wear my hair down. These things were true for my wedding day -- and they'd be true for any party I went to, too.

Initially, my husband and I met online, through the internet personals. After some emails and a little chatting, we met in person for our first date. I mean, you can't have your first date online, right?

Apparently you can. In fact, you can get MARRIED online. And I don't mean get married to someone you know and love while others watch online; I mean, get married. Online. To another player in your role-playing game, either because you are genuinely in love with him or her, or simply for the fun of it. From wikipedia: "It is interesting to note that in many cases the participants do not know each other outside the virtual community. Some couples may not even know each other's true name, gender, etc. Some do, in fact, extend this union outside the virtual, but many do not."

These weddings have cyber guests, cyber rings, even fake cake and photographs. In essence, they have everything -- virtually.

Susan posted last month about the new Vera Wang bridal capris and the cropped pants received a bit of a mixed reception. I mean, really, who gets married in capris?

Well, my older sister, for one. She got married at City Hall in a pair of white capris that she sewed herself and a white blouse she'd gotten on sale the week before. Afterward, she changed into her "get-away" outfit, which consisted of a pair of camouflage cut-offs and some blue adidas slides. She and her husband got a hotel room, whereupon he immediately contracted a terrible case of food-poisoning and she, five months pregnant and starving, spent the evening alternately calling "you okay in there, honey?" and "you're not going to finish those hot wings, are you?" through the bathroom door.

I loved reading Kristen's and Kerri's proposal stories. This is mine.

A poster on one of the internet forums my husband frequented started a thread asking where he might find a banner-towing plane, because there was this girl, see, and he was fixin' to ask her to marry him. Via a plane.

Marc responded by offering a few banner-towing websites and then commenting politely on the fact that a banner-towing plane might not actually be the way to go, there, and that if he were to ask a woman to marry him, why, he'd take her out for a nice, romantic supper, and then take her out for a nice, romantic walk. He said this because he felt that moment should be shared between two people, not two people and a guy named Steve towing a banner at 3000 feet.

After reading Marc's response in that thread, I couldn't hear the word "walk" or the letters "W", "A", or "sneaker" without mentally smoothing and polishing my skirt and my left ring finger and any possible errant cowlicks. Days that Marc was slow to put on his shoes -- days that he spent in jeans and a t-shirt and NO SHOES, because he WASN'T PLANNING ON TAKING ANY WALKS -- well, those days were about 12 kinds of endless. I mean, a man cannot ask you to marry him IF HE'S NOT WEARING ANY SHOES.

When we got married, we registered for gifts, even though we eloped, which Ilona has told us is an etiquette no-no. And I understand why: no party, no presents. In my defense, though, I had just returned from some time living abroad and had no household goods to my name, and my husband had just returned, from, uh, a many-yeared stint of being a stereotypical single man, and the only real pan he owned was his Hamburger Helper pan. (He called it that because it was the pan he bought to make his nightly Hamburger Helper in. And then I married him and there was no more Helping of any sort Hamburger, and we all lived happily ever after.)

So we registered.

Meg just wrote about using Irregular Choice blue shoes as your "something blue." When I got married, I wore a pair of very pale blue heels. Style-wise, they were perfect and understated and I loved the sly pop of color they gave my wedding outfit. In terms of fit, though, they were hideously, horribly uncomfortable – and our ceremony was only fifteen minutes long! I took them off in the car on the way home and they have never been on my feet again. If I had to do it over again I'd pick Cynthia Rowley or Fifi Annika shoes, I think, which are white with blue soles or footbeds.

And for the record: my dress was new, my lingerie was old (although, really, it was my wedding day, so it wasn't that old) and my something borrowed was the Kleenex that our Officiant handed me halfway through the ceremony. I used it to dry my eyes and then thought, WAIT, we're going to exchange rings in about forty-five seconds, what on earth do I do with the Kleenex NOW? (In the end, I rolled it into a tube shape and flung it into the first row of seats. And now you know the real reason we eloped: if we hadn't, the Kleenex would have landed on my Grandfather, or worse, my new in-laws.)

We talk a lot about wedding dresses here on AisleDash. And we talk a fair bit about good, safe sex practices, too. But we haven't ever combined the two: safe sex and wedding dresses seem like two separate, distinct topics, and never shall the twain meet.

Unless you make a wedding dress out of condoms, of course.

Made for World AIDS Day, the dress was crafted from 12,500 condoms. Each condom was individually colored and stitched. Apparently making clothes out of condoms is more common than I thought: the artist, Adriana Bertini, has a whole website full of condom outfits.