While My Husband Gently Sleeps: Another Wedding Photo Barrage

First: I don’t mean to get too personal with a glimpse inside our wedding night(!), but this shot was too hilariously timed.

My sister Quin did my hair, while my best friend Elizabeth did my nails (which I’m admiring here). I surround myself with a stunning array of talented people!

This is like the part in Gone with the Wind where they try to lace Scarlett O’Hara’s corset tight but it just won’t go! I supplied the same measurements for both my reception dress and ceremony dress, but I must say, the reception dress felt oddly more snug.

I made my own bouquet. Everyone should do this! I simply never became at peace with the disparity between wholesale flower prices and retail flower prices (let alone florists’ fees — flowers are inherently beautiful and static. How hard is it to array them to display their natural advantage — i.e., beauty??). The key is lots of flowers, beautiful colors (loved these purple dendrobiums) and a well-soaked block of circular floral foam in a bouquet holder. I ordered my stems at Sam’s Club (they delivered to my door; too much hassle otherwise). I also splurged on some “florist’s secrets” like moisture lock spray, good flower food and the aforementioned foam.

This is what I wrote about my dear friend David, who officiated! “The officiant is a primary care resident at University of California-San Francisco. He first met the bride when they captained competing academic bowl teams at rival middle schools in Augusta, Georgia. The two attended the same high school and found themselves pitted against one another in marching band competitions, policy debate tournaments and Chinese essay competitions. (The bride is half-Chinese. Her paternal grandparents owned an expansive sorghum liquor business in Guizhou before they fled the country when Mao Zedong seized their distillery during his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The officiant is from Harbin, China with recently naturalized parents.) Their fierce extracurricular rivalry transitioned to a collaboration when both chose to attend Yale University for college. When the officiant declared his major of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and the bride chose a major of film studies, their competitive days officially ceased and gave way to an enduring friendship.”

Another quote: “The wedding was scheduled for Halloween partially as an homage to the aforementioned Liza Minelli impersonator roommate. The bride has fond memories of their modest shared dwelling, which was adorned with rhinestone-encrusted skulls year-round. The selected date also enticed the couple for its social media hashtag slogan potential, including: ‘Hallowedding,’ ‘Memento Mori Me,’ and ‘Daylight Savings Tying the Knot.’ Hallowedding was used as the title for their Youtube-uploaded save the date video, which features the bride in a designer wedding dress and a mashup of the theme song from the TV show ‘The Munsters’ and Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.”

“Thus, an idea was hatched: She would design a new dress and have it fabricated overseas. Unfortunately, she lacked experience in the fashion and garment fabrication worlds. But she was excited for the challenge. She began to study recent bridal fads and planned to lean heavily on trusted design silhouettes for her creation.”

This is my beautiful mom! I turned to her on advice about having a designer dress “copied” by Chinese seamstresses. Per my submission: “The bride immediately consulted her mother, who holds a Ph.D. in art history from Bryn Mawr, as well as a juris doctor from Harvard Law School. Her mother had transitioned from academia to law upon becoming exposed to issues surrounding intellectual property protections for artists. The bride’s mother assured her daughter that copyright law concerning garments usually does not provide meaningful trademark protection for wedding dress designs. This would hold true so long as the dress in question lacked unique printed patterns and did not feature non-obvious design elements.”

Did I write about this elsewhere? It feels like I did. Apparently there is a tradition for the newlyweds to touch their elders’ feet just after the wedding. Seems relatively innocuous, if difficult in this type of dress …