BLOG

I came back from DR Congo exactly a week and a half ago. Beyond spending time blogging about it and the oddball Eurovision tidbits, there has been a rather large chunk of time plugged in to the planning of a wedding; my wedding. Planning started months and months ago, but all the real heavy lifting happened once touching down in Spain, where the wedding was today. Of course, there was the initial work in April, but then after a two and a half week trip to Congo, we were left with one and a half weeks to deal with everything, which basically means listening to Spaniards in all the shops tell you that you're doing everything last minute, lecturing you on this for 30 minutes before you have to basically beg them to sell you some chocolates for after the ceremony. This makes for slow going and I suppose is, "soooo Spanish" if one wishes to stereotype.       But, it all got done. People arrived. Barcelona, Figueres, and Girona were shown. The rain decided to fall, but there was a backup plan and then the dinner was had. The place for the ceremony and meal was, La Plaça de Madremanya, which is a heavenly spot with beautiful rooms and food that is incredibly good.       And that's it. My single days are done. I now have my partner in flight for travel and adventure throughout the world and we are officially, legally stuck with each other for good on two continents, which makes me unduly happy.

Number One Fan and I have been going around, looking at various wedding items lately. While everything in the wedding world is overpriced and is deeply rooted in emotional usury, the worst offenders of the lot have to be the people making wedding dresses. For a long time, I thought that the profit killing funeral homes made off of taking advantage of people when they were in the depths of despondency from losing a loved one, were horrid. Now I'm realizing that those in the bridal business are just as bad if not worse. For, the people working in death are doing a job that most none of us really want to do and there is a cost to pay to have people doing those jobs. Those working in weddings try to wrap everything joy and love and doves and white satin to cover the fact that they're trying to get you to spend tens of thousands of dollars on what may be the happiest day of your life, but one that will put you in debt for decades to come.       So, when it comes to wedding dresses, it isn't the fact that most everything I see is some god awful tribute to lace and rhinestones, but more the fact that everything is so overpriced. An average, basic dress that is nothing special and hopefully not horribly ugly will cost about $500-1,000. There is no reason for this other than the fact it is a "wedding" dress. Make the dress black and put it on the 2nd floor of your average Macy's and suddenly the same dress is at most $200.       It's not like there is any special care that has gone in to these dresses. Once I got tired of looking at what is essentially the same thing over and over, I started looking at manufacturing tags. Sure enough, all of the dresses under $1,000 were made in China or some other country that relies heavily on sweatshop. So in the end, there's what, $50 or $10 or even $5 of expense in these dresses? Naturally, I have no hard figures as no one wants to look in to this because everyone is either too fixated with trying to find their special dress or sell one of these special dresses.       Of course, if you want something fancy like Vera Wang you're talking $5,000 and up. At least these dresses look good, but are they also made in China? If so, how can this be anything but laughable, filthy greed?       Ah yes, there is the other screwy facet in all of this is that you simple cannot try on a wedding dress without an assistant and most likely only by booking an appointment with said assistant. This may seem classy, when in reality all they're doing is upselling you and something bigger and fluffier than you wanted with the, "Oh, just splurge, you only do this once!" Folks, the divorce rate in the US is a bit of 50%, so don't listen to this line of crap.       I don't know what to say and it seems that so many women are hell-bent on paying these outlandish prices for a dress that they wear once that there isn't much that can be done about it. I'm betting that even if Oprah did a special on it, it wouldn't change a lick and it's sad because not only could that money be put to better uses in life, but it could be spent on a better party for the guests. I mean really folks, when it comes down to it the only thing people remember about your wedding is how much they drank and how much they ate and if either of these items were worth the wedding present they gave you. So, feed your guests and skimp on the dress!

Ah, the wedding. Tis the season I suppose. Seems like everyone is doing it, so why not? And I guess that was the hardest part about being at a wedding by yourself and single. You see all these glowing people around you who are married or engaged or expecting their first child. Anyways, I suppose that when you're approaching 30, these things start to sink in more.       But as for the ceremony, it was great. Dinko (the groom) is Bosnian and his wife Ana, is Macedonian. So, the wedding was blend of those Balkan cultures and some American bits thrown in. It was fun to see pretty much all of former Yugoslavia represented and those that were there were smart enough to leave the war conversations out of everything. A very, very good call, since I think 96% of all fights in Balkans start from such talk.