Baby, Baby, it's a Wild World

I spent this weekend at Lake Lure to celebrate the wedding of my college roommate.  Since Lake Lure was the home of Dirty Dancing, we shook our stuff to nearly every song on the soundtrack at the reception.  But we also danced to musicians that we loved in college like PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens, and Nine Inch Nails. 

Jumping up and down with the bride made me feel like we were twenty-one again.  I thought back to all the nights we spent at the kitchen table in our tiny apartment drinking cheap Sangria and talking about men and relationships.  I’m glad that life doesn’t allow for crystal balls, but if I could go back and slip myself some wisdom, here are the things I wish I could tell college Brooke:

Revel in the little moments and appreciate their particular magic for what it is.  If you had a great time at a house party holed up in the corner talking to the bearded man in the Fedora, fabulous.  Please do recount every detail to your mom about his love for Faulker if it makes you giddy.  Just don’t agonize over whether he’ll ever call you.  That’s a waste of precious energy you could spend with your tried and true literary loves that patiently pine for you from your book shelf.

Your value isn’t contingent in their approval.  Maybe you toiled over making the perfect dinner for your third date and it went mostly untouched on their plate.  Maybe when you took a guy to watch a meteor shower on top of a mountain they were wishing for a woman that wasn’t you.  Maybe they were weirded out that you left a poem in their car.  It doesn’t matter.  Eventually you’ll find a man that will support you at poetry slams, chow down on your Pinterest baking adventures and be amused by your odd date ideas.  The people you meet along the way are all just a part of the journey.  Hopefully you’ll have some fun while you’re figuring that out and use whatever inevitable heartbreak that occurs in a way that’s productive. 

Don’t be petty about the magic other women possess. In college, there was a blonde photographer in my residence hall that was put together in a way that seemed simultaneously disheveled and immaculate.  Her name was Anna.  The boys in our poetry workshop always seemed to be either drinking in her aura, her lithe figure, or reeling at the power tucked inside her pen.  She’s the only woman I’ve ever called the “c” word.  I was petty because I was intimidated by Anna’s confidence and poise.  Almost a decade later, she published one of my poems on a website she produced.  Anna’s still moving and shaking in ways that would make a younger, less secure me envious—but now I’m finally able to appreciate her for the powerhouse she is. While she is out backpacking in Colorado, I’m executing my own mischief.  Her ability to do great things does not diminish my ability to do the same.  This is a lesson that is difficult for a lot of women, but once we get over it, we can do so many more great things as a team.

Know that other women will sometimes treat you the way you treated Anna.  If you don’t deserve someone’s harsh words or unfair judgement, don’t take it personally.  Be classy.  Keep moving forward. 

Cherish your close female friends.  Ashlee and I have a lot of good memories.  We painted goddesses on a picnic table that we used to eat from in the kitchen.  We drove to Tennessee so that she could break in her new camera with pictures of places she had never seen.  She taught me how to make the perfect home fries, showed me how to contra dance, and introduced me to folk artists like Greg Brown.  As I grow older and my friends are busy with work and other adult obligations, it feels like the opportunities for those female adventures grow smaller.  It makes me understand how important it is to prioritize time for those things—especially now that the women I love the most are geographically farther away.  It shouldn’t take something like a wedding for me to make time to make new memories.

Indulge in things that feed your spirit.  Stay up for more late night conversations. Laugh more. Dance more. Kiss more.  But use more discernment about who you give your inner resources to and how you share them.

Lastly, remember that time is the most valuable gift you can give someone.  Eventually, our time runs out.  Make it worth it.

Engagement Excitement and Tips for Wedding Planning Sanity

I’ve been a negligent blogger.  Days after creating this site, my partner in crime proposed that we do life together.  Planning a wedding quickly became a time intensive priority.  Now that a good hunk of that has been taken care of, I’m back to our regularly scheduled programming and am excited to share some things that I think might make your life easier if you find yourself in the same boat.  After the Supreme Court decision last week made same-sex marriage legal nation-wide, I imagine those numbers will be jumping up—and I’m excited to celebrate that, too.

The good news: Engagement is a time to celebrate your love with all of those in your life that have helped support it and see it grow.  From the first phone call to tell your family or friends to the walk down the aisle, the memories you’ll make both with your partner and your larger support system are overwhelming in the best possible way.  You’ll grow closer to your partner and learn more about them on a wholly different level than you have before, because planning for a lifetime requires honesty and vulnerability.  You have an excuse to do things that normally might seem indulgent—like sample cake from every bakery in a drivable radius if you so choose and take an obnoxious amount of pictures where you do the sappy things you might normally tease other people for doing on Facebook.  During the engagement period, you get a free pass.  This is also a time to further explore who you are and what that means for your partnership.  If you live alone, this is likely the last time you’ll have this much space and time flying solo.  As an independent woman and an introvert, I’m using that opportunity to wrap my head around what I need to maintain in terms of autonomy while still learning to love selflessly.

The bad news: Because people want to support you and often do so by way of offering advice, people will project their own experiences and expectations onto you not realizing that the “one size fits all” mentality doesn’t work with things like weddings and marriage.  It’s often with good intention, but sometimes you have to learn what to take to heart and what to toss to the side.  Society at large also has a way of looming large over plans.  I think if you’re at all familiar with women’s television programming, Pinterest, or The Knot, you’ll likely know what I mean.  Those expectations can drain both your emotional resources and your bank account if you let them.  More on fighting that later.

My unsolicited advice for maintaining sanity, by way of anecdotes (take what you need, leave the rest):

Think about what grounds your union and share that with attendees.  If it’s spirituality, make sure that’s reflected in your ceremony.  If it’s something else, emphasize what that something is for you.  Mr. Banned-to-Be and I are from different faith traditions that both fall under the banner of Christianity and decided together to have a Catholic ceremony.  While I’m not Catholic, there are some things about our ceremony that we have still been able to really bond over.  For us, one of those things was the Prayers of the Faithful.  We chose to write a prayer that focuses on things we both believe in deeply—including hopes for a more equitable education system for our youth and improved race relations in our country via all of us learning to better love our neighbors of all identities.  A friend of mine that met her partner while studying environmental sociology recently had a ceremony where an emphasis on sustainability was weaved throughout from their diamond-free rings to the plants given as wedding gifts.  Your wedding is about your partnership, but your partnership is made up of the things you and your partner hold to be true and meaningful.

Cut costs by choosing not to spend money on the traditions that don't resonate with you.  Flowers are beautiful, but I prefer to see them outside instead of on my table.  As such, my bridesmaids and I aren’t carrying bouquets.  I’ll be carrying a book of poems I already had instead, playing off of the tradition of carrying prayer books or a Bible.  That’s easily hundreds of dollars chopped off the top.  If something doesn’t speak to you, don’t let your wallet yell at you because of it. Replace traditions that don’t feel right to you with things that you’ll remember later.

What is sacred to you is just business to someone else.  People have found ways to monetize your romance.  People you’ve never met will fill your head with grandiose ideas about your attire, fondue fountains, or whatever else it is that they may be selling that will distract from what's important.  It’s okay for you to shut them down at the pass.  At David’s Bridal, when my consultant began by trying to tell me about how brides could open up a credit line, I told her very firmly, “I appreciate you doing your job and telling me what you’ve been asked to tell me, but I do not wish to hear more because I will not be pursuing that as an option. I want to stick to something within a set budget.  As such, please do not show me any dresses over $x.00 amount of money.”  I have found that people will generally work with you and will tell you up front if you can’t, saving you the time and energy.  The same thing applies to friends and family. If you need shopping partners, give them a run down on what you will consider in advance and what your vision is so that they are on the same page.

Repurpose what you already have.  Mr. Banned-to-Be and I enjoy visiting wineries and learning more about different grapes and regions.  As such, we regularly find ourselves in possession of wine bottles and wine corks.  I’m using those to create our centerpieces and will only have to buy a few things to finish pulling off the look.

An open mind will save you money.  If you are wedded to the idea of things being just a certain way, pun intended, there’s less possibility to pench pennies.  (Not to imply that there’s anything bad about knowing what you want!)  I went to multiple bridal stores to find my wedding dress, which was fun until it was frustrating.  While running errands at the mall, I happened to pass a prom/evening gown store that was having a liquidation sale.  There was a white dress in the window.  It wasn’t my style, but it made me wonder if there was anything inside worth looking at.  Low and behold, I locked eyes across the room with the dress I’ll be wearing down the aisle.  It isn’t a conventional wedding dress, but it’s elegant and it fits my personality in a way that other dresses did not.  Bonus—it was also a lot less expensive.  Something similar happened with our wine.  While at a grocery store, we picked up a bottle of a wine we enjoy for an upcoming beach trip on a whim.  At the register, it rang up for only $3.00—less than half the regular cost of the wine.  We had the same thought—let’s go ransack the shelf for every bottle that they have. There was only enough for a little over a case because they had decided to not to carry the company anymore, but that was a case we didn’t have to worry about paying for full price later on. 

If you have any money or sanity-saving tips, I’d love to hear them!  Drop them here or tweet me @BannedBrooke!