On clothing and not standing around in one sock

We are having a thrilling evening this evening.

First, I could not find the keys anywhere for a petsitting job, so 2 hours went to searching for them. Yup, two hours, just searching for keys.  Did I mention that this is not my week? Also, my check engine light came on.  See, again: not my week.

But right now – right now, folks, I am sitting on the couch while my lovely fiancee flits around setting things up for the big event: trying on wedding dresses.

What? you say. Didn’t you already do this? you wonder. Oh, silly you, just because we already bought one dress (each) doesn’t exclude the option of buying another. Or four others, if you are Turtle.

We got our dresses all altered up and Turtle does not like her dress. If she can’t find something else then she’s stuck with it, and that’s the deal we’ve worked out.  In the meantime, some giant J Crew boxes showed up at our house today, and Turtle washed her hands and feet so that she didn’t dirty the dresses.  Once her appendages had been thoroughly cleaned, we began the process: she with the opening and on-trying, and I with the bemused watching and faithful documenting.

open the box! out will pour hope and glory!

um, maybe instead of hope and glory there's just tissue paper?

box inside a box!

hope and glory? is that you?

Dress #1 - not so much with the glory. interesting back, but it didn't fit quite right.

pretty fiancee! All mine!

dress #2 - so pretty, but way too big, and a little stiff. I got tired of taking pictures, if you couldn't tell.

Neither of these dresses was *the dress* – whatever that means.  So we dug around in the boxes to find dresses #3 and #4, and lo and behold – they were not there.  Turns out they shipped separately.  So with under three weeks to go, the additional dresses will be arriving soon.

In the meantime, something else arrived in the mail!

package for me?

a vest you say? why, this is the wrong color...

Okay, readers, maybe some of you are thinking that you already saw me in my muslin fitting.  So the truth is that I was so excited about my *actual* suit’s arrival that I did not document the thrilling unwrapping process. Sorry to disappoint, but moving on:

I got an email last week that this was done:

photo by MacheteNSons, click image for source

I got it in the mail a day or two ago, and this morning we had a little photo shoot in the sun:

glorious!

beautiful lining! is that mild satisfaction on my face?

There are a few things that need to change, so I’ll be parting with my new-found suit to send it back for alterations.  Guys, I cannot say enough good things about A.J. and Lianna at MacheteNSons – this whole experience has been overwhelmingly positive, and I have been really impressed by the customer services. That, coming from someone who works in customer service, is saying a lot. THANK YOU, A.J. & Lianna.

So the struggle to dress the future Bird-McTurtlesons continues, but we are making progress! Yes, my friends, I truly believe that progress is being made! And I am thoroughly impressed by the ability of some tailors to fit you over the internet. Amazing.

Have you/are you in the process of the/did you struggle with clothing yourself and/or your future spouse?  Did you consider driving all the way to NY in one day just so your beloved could try on a dress she found on the internet? Did you consider scrapping the whole thing and showing up in jeans?  And is there anyone who reads this who is looking for a tailor? Cause, seriously, I love the ones I found.  Lastly: how hot do I look? And how pretty is my future wife? Discuss.

Milestones

Yes, some people wait until they have everything all together to tell you about it.  “Look, my invitations are done! Here are the pictures I took while logging the entire experience over the past four months carefully organized and showing you the whole process! I am so organized and nice and my invitations are pretty!”

I have concluded that am not one of those people.  I am way to excited about each little step to hold off, especially since by the time things are done I am damn sick of them.  I sent the bulk of our invitations yesterday, and as I was standing in line I was remembering other people’s posts saying things like, “I was sad to see them go! Goodbye invitations, I’ll miss you!”

Guys, I was like, “Invitations, you sure are pretty, but GO AWAY!”

Anyway, the whole point of this was just to say that I don’t have much to say right now, no huge posts with our completed guest list or beautiful favors, but I do have a couple of milestones:

1. I have over 10,000 views on my blog.  You guys are amazing.  When I was gone, at least 20 of you regularly looked at my page anyway, even though I hadn’t written a single thing.  At least 20 people out there like me!  And then in real life, people keep sending me messages or seeing me in person and telling me that they really like my blog.  You guys, sometimes it’s really hard to write, or no one comments and I think no one cares, or I think I’m a huge dork for being a “blogger.” And maybe I am.  But thank you thank you thank you for all your support.  I really like writing and you give me a reason to keep doing it.  Thank you.
2. I got my muslin suit in the mail! OMG.  I was going to write more about it later but I’m too excited.  FYI, this is not the color it will actually be, nor will you be able to see my underwear through it, so don’t get too excited.  Just tell me how potentially awesome it is, please.

vest omg!

thumbs up for pants!

the whole deal! in muslin.

It doesn’t fit quite right, but we’re working on it! Hooray!

and you guys? Thanks again for supporting all o' this.

If you haven’t said hi before, say hi! Tell me who you are! Tell me what you like.  And then tell me what you’re excited about this weekend!

Oh, and… I’m going away again.  On Wednesday, when this is posting.  Back on Friday! For serious, thanks for being so awesome.  You guys rock.

Style Me Struggling

If you know me well – and perhaps if you’ve been following this blog at all – you know that I have a sort of ridiculous amount of trouble getting dressed in a very basic way.  I am well known by my fiancee and college roommate for wearing my famous “I can’t figure out what to wear today” outfit: starting from the bottom and moving up, we have slippers, socks, underwear (that’s right, no pants), and my Vassar sweatshirt.  Depending on how cold it is, I might also be wearing a hat.  It’s sort of like this picture, minus the sunglesses, and in just socks, slippers, and underwear.  To be completely honest, it’s usually just one sock.  I’m not sure why.

also, i'm usually not in a car during this process.

Sometimes I think I have spent so long working in the veterinary field because I know what I’m wearing every single day: scrubs.  They are comfortable, they are interchangeable and all match each other, and they require no thinking whatsoever when getting up in the morning beyond, “Is this clean enough to wear?”  Yes, I just admitted that to the general public.

When we were little, my sister and I were polar opposites when it came to clothes. I’m really, really sorry I don’t have pictures to illustrate my point, but here it is: While my sister spent a good couple of months (at least!) insisting on wearing her pink headband and her pink necklace and frilly dress or other nice-looking clothes, I wanted something that was comfortable, and I would happily wear it every single day until my mother made me wear something new.  I didn’t care how it looked, as long as I felt good.  My sister, on the other hand, wanted earrings so badly that she wore the clip-ons until her ears turned red (my mom finally decided that if she wanted them badly enough to put up with that pain all day, she could probably handle actual piercings).  In retrospect, my attachment to comfort rather than style, and my pleasure in wearing the same thing until it was taken away, probably factored into my not being one of the popular girls.

Now that I’m all grown up… not much has changed.  I still don’t want to wear anything uncomfortable – at all.  I find a pair of shoes that fits and those are the shoes I will wear until they are dead.  I don’t do well with heels, no matter how pretty they are.

The problem is, I have no idea what my sense of style is.  Sometimes I feel attractive and confident – but it’s often in completely different kinds of clothes, and I can’t find a pattern, and I have no idea what I want to wear.  Case in point: Today we went to a consignment shop and I bought a very pretty dress.  It looked lovely on me, and I know I’ll wear it a lot.  It is kind of like this one:

see? i can look nice in a dress!

Now, in the exact same shopping trip, I bought pants and a shirt from the guys’ section.  And I look and feel totally hot in them, if I do say so myself.

Here is a picture of me dressed in my (male) friend’s clothes, feeling totally attractive (though I realize I didn’t look as good as I felt – and also this was about 5 years ago):

dressed as my awesome roommate for a costume party in all his clothes - convincingly, if i may say so

I am perplexed.  How is it that I love feeling dykey in my boy’s jeans and polo shirt AND I love feeling pretty in my dress?

I mean, yes, I know that this is totally allowed, but I have no idea where to start looking for something to wear when it’s time to dress up: a button down shirt? A dress? A button down dress?  I can’t figure out what I’m entirely comfortable it  – sometimes it’s the dress, sometimes it’s the pants.

And don’t get me started on shoes.  If I can wear Chacos with it, I’m happy, and if I can’t, then I am lost.  As Kate commented yesterday, “Just because we’re girls doesn’t mean we can’t fail at footwear. Shoes are hard!”

Does anyone else have this complete fashion struggle?  This is why I am wearing a suit and a dress at my wedding.*  How do you know what your “style” is? How many of you spend a good chunk of time in your socks, slippers, and underwear throwing various clothes around the room? What is the key to looking good and feeling comfortable, if it is even possible?

*I ordered those shoes I liked! The ones that you all said you liked too!  But, um, they’re heels, so we’ll see what happens.  They shipped today! Look at me, being all decisive.

So Which One of You is Wearing the Dress? Part I

I have to admit that until our cable company figured out we were getting lots of free channels and took them away, I almost religiously watched “Say Yes to the Dress.”

Click on image for source.

I think it was part morbid curiosity (“My dress cannot cost less than $10,000, and I’d like to stay under $15,000, but sure, I’ll try on that $17,000 dress.”), but also part “wedding dresses are pretty and I want to look at them!”  I was pretty consistently horrified by the people featured on the show with giant budgets and horrible dresses, and an attitude of “this is MY day, and I’m the princess, and thank god he finally proposed” – especially when the “he finally proposed” was the only mention of the partnership they were entering into.  There were some people featured that I did enjoy watching, including women who were clearly in love with their fiances, families supporting each other, and people who found what they were looking for, even if it made their consultants wince. Or maybe especially if it made their consultants wince.

I, however, did not want a wedding dress.

I have worn dresses before. I even think I look pretty in dresses!  I’ve dated women before who said they felt unnatural in a dress, and I certainly don’t feel that way.  But once I started looking at different lesbian weddings, I realized that I really love the look of one woman in a suit.  Even better, in a vest, just a vest. Well, with pants, too, and a shirt. But no jacket.  I LOVE it.  Here are some of my favorite non-dress lesbian wedding pictures (mostly found on So You’re EnGAYged, click on pictures for source):

Photo by FS Photography

Photo by Whitney Lee Photography

Photo by Jen Cleary Photography

Photo by Kelly Prizel Photography

Photo by Erin Chapman Photography

Okay, that last one doesn’t have a vest, but I just LOVE Kelsey’s overalls and the color, so I thought it needed a place here somewhere.

So I spent the first month or so explaining to people that I was going to wear pants and a vest and have pretty flowers and makeup and I was really excited about that. And I was really excited about that.

I was also really excited when we went with Fancee to look at dresses, and when we found one, and when we bought it.  And then I got bit by the dress bug.

I wanted to try on dresses.

I wanted a consultant to bring me things, and to parade around in them and make faces – good or bad – and imagine what I would look like all prettified. I wanted to be the center of attention in some salon! I have no idea where this came from – it still sounds silly to me. Regardless, off we went for me to try on dresses, Fancee and my mother in tow, thinking we were just there to try things on and I wouldn’t like anything.

Oops, I liked this dress. (Personal Photo)

This did not go as planned. More details to come in Part II!

Did you end up wearing what you thought you would wear? What are your thoughts on wearing more than one thing? Did you let other peoples’ ideas of what you “should” wear change your mind?