What Recession?

Good god, if I didn't know any better I would think it was the gay 90's again...

Apparently, Wedding masters The Knot are launching 75 new wedding websites " to offer the most robust local resources available for today's couples tying the knot. "

According to their announcement:

"At a time when the economy is pinching all advertising budgets, The Knot is focused on adding value for our local advertisers by maximizing their exposure online," said David Liu, CEO of The Knot Inc.

I checked the list, and naturally, Winnipeg is not on it. (sigh.)

I guess the idea is to help people keep their budgets down by giving more detailed, local oriented feedback and planning, but I have been looking at wedding photos online for 3 months now, and the more pictures I look at, the more directions I feel pulled in. Now The Knot is adding more than 1,700 real wedding photos, and I shudder to think how long it will take me to look through them, and how many new ideas will crop up in the process!

I feel like I went from not-even-interested-in-getting-married to bridezilla in under a minute. This vortex has a strong pull. Feminists, beware.

Maiden voyage

Initial thoughts.

OK, I am a writer, but I have never blogged before. The whole enterprise intimidates me, as I am on the tail end of a generation whose worst nightmare was having their diary read by anyone. I know, I know, this is a not a diary, and these days, my worst nightmare is not that my diary might be read, but how boring people would find it. But, I procrastinate.

This is a blog about my impending (ahem), upcoming nuptials. My wedding is planned for a little over a year from now, and the stress has begun.

Here's the thing, it is not the bridezilla-stress made iconic by shows like, uh, lets see Bridezillas, for starters. Its not the idea of a perfect wedding, or a perfect space like in Bride Wars, and it is certainly not a worry about the guy and whether he's the one for me, like in the...oh god, there is not enough time in the day.

No for me the stress is getting behind the idea of a wedding in a way that is not a total compromise of my feminist ideals. My partner and I are adults who been together for 7 years, lived together for four, and we are entering into a legal and romantic contract with our eyes open, our expectations realistic, and despite this clinical explanation, we are very, very in love.

He wanted to get married. And so did I, in a way. But we put it off. And off. And off. There were lots of reasons, I could fill 10 more blogs. But one of the reasons is the fear of becoming part of the consumer wedding machine, of losing my identity and, perhaps worst of all, compromising my feminist ideals in pursuit of some fairy tale wedding, which I don't really believe in, and I know will have no bearing on my actual marriage. (Marriage? What does that have to do with a wedding.)

I gotta tell you, I am don't see myself tripping down that particular rabbit hole, at least, not consciously. But I have decided to keep this blog as a way of tracking my research (yeah, I'm doing research about it) and share my pro-feminist wedding plans with anyone who is interested.

And also as practice with this whole "blog" thing. I figure I should give it a try. Since it really seems to be catching on.