An Introspection Regarding Burpturd Behaviour

In an earlier post, I'd brought up a few possible reasons why brides become "burpturd brides", which is my hilariously silly term for "bridezilla". It's a bit crass and rude, sure, but all in good humour, I think.

I'm sure you've figured it out by reading between the lines, but I am deathly afraid of being thought of as a burpturd bride. I don't want to cause a fuss, I don't want to put my foot down, I don't want to be demanding. I am terrified at the prospect of someone even thinking anything that resembles: "ugh, bridezilla".

There have been a number of incidents where that fear popped up as an issue, and the one I'll use as an example is the hiccup regarding the Dorothy shoes.

The poignant part of that post is that I was going to wedge a chunk of newspaper into my wedding shoes just so that they could fit "well enough" for me to walk down the aisle. I really was! I had the paper in my hand, all scrunched up and ready to go! I absolutely did not want to return them and I did not want to call them to let them know something was wrong. My first instinct was to jury-rig it into being functional, even if it couldn't be perfect.

Initially, I blamed that behaviour on, well, myself. Sheer laziness, for one thing. It was going to be too much trouble to go to the post office to send the shoes back, too much trouble to negotiate for replacement shoes to be sent to me before I send mine back (as I needed them for a dress fitting and it wasn't clear the new ones would make it in time), too much trouble to solve the problem. And for another thing, it was probably my fault anyway for not sizing my feet properly.

It didn't occur to me until after I'd written that hiccup post that, hang on, was it really just about all that? Or was there something else I'd been smashing down and ignoring since the moment I said "yes" to Blake in a room full of candles and flowers?

As I eventually concluded, I was also terrified at the possibility that someone at Shoes of Prey - or literally anyone else - would think I was a burpturd bride.

This is, as you've likely already spotted, a completely irrational thing to worry about, because the shoes just don't fit! They need to be fixed! There is nothing overly burpturdy about wanting shoes that fit! Stop being ridiculous!

But then, it was the same with the flowers. My florist came back with an in-progress photo of the flowers I've ordered, and while she nailed the bridal bouquet, a few of the other items weren't 100% to my liking. My first instinct? To make myself be okay with them, because clearly I'd fucked up when putting the order in somehow! Those flowers don't really look that odd poking out of the posy, do they? They're fine.

If you're starting to feel a bit of sympathy for Blake, good.

I am so bad at giving anyone negative feedback on something that is subjective. Add on the fact that I want to be remembered by everyone as "that really cool laidback relaxed bride we had at the end of 2014" rather than a "bridezilla", and it's almost enough for a weird internal meltdown. I also like deferring to expertise so when suppliers come back with something I don't quite like, I blame it on my own bad taste. My first instinct is never to demand they change or fix it right away, it's usually to hem and haw about how it's really not that bad and maybe it's not them, it's me!

I'm getting a bit better at asserting my preferences. My parents, through repeat discussions on the Chan-Clan-household-mandatory-text Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, have long instilled in me a belief that there is a way to be assertive without being rude or demanding, though I don't always bother with that unless the occasion calls for it. Well, those skills are certainly being used to their maximum these days. I mean, I will go burpturd on a vendor or supplier if warranted, but 100% of the time it's a last resort. As I've been taught, any one can yell or demean or criticize to get the outcome that they want - and it probably works very well! But my conscience drives me to try to be a classier, more understanding customer. Shoot, if I were a vendor, whose bouquet/makeup/hair/dress/photos is going to get more time and effort from me because I want to put in more, rather than because I have to?

Before I start sounding too pompous, I will acknowledge that there's certainly room for cynicism here. There are plenty of people who will prioritize the loudest and most difficult customers because they're the ones that will bring the bad press, at the expense of the customer who is more understanding and forgiving. Absolutely. But I'd rather be the flexible and more relaxed customer than the burpturdy one by a long shot, because I'll be a bit happier with imperfection than a burpturdy person is likely to be with something perfect.

Moons of Honey

For those who've been asking: no, we haven't planned a honeymoon yet.

It's not that we don't want one or don't think it'd be fun to have one, it's more that it's not very high on our list of priorities at the moment. With a shorter engagement it does mean we have to be really clear about what needs to get done soon and what can get done later, and the honeymoon's right near the bottom of the pile.

Part of that might be the overabundance of options. We can go pretty much anywhere if we saved enough money to actually do it, but where do we even begin? Blake and I have varying preferences on what we look for when we travel, but we haven't even touched on it at length. For a time, it looked like we weren't even going to bother with one.

But the advice I've been given by multiple parties is to definitely have some kind of getaway and not to leave it too long after the wedding. The logic is that planning the wedding is stressful and the wedding day itself is intense - everyone is in your face all the time and, apparently, getting a break involves dragging your bridal party into the bathrooms with you so that you can pee without ruining your dress. Oddly specific example aside, it makes sense; decompression is needed. We will also have family and friends flying in from overseas, so we will also want to spend extra time with them before and after the day itself if possible.

For me, I think I will actually miss the stress of planning a wedding. I thrive on projects - the bigger and the more reasons I have for spreadsheeting, the better. In 2011, I and a top-shelf dude by the name of Dave orchestrated a mass gathering of 30 nerds from all over the country (and 1 notable who flew all the way from the US) in Byron Bay. Why? Because we felt like it. In 2012, I engaged in the long and heavily involved process of applying for a visa to stay in Australia. In 2013, we bought a house and renovated it before moving in.

I don't plan to do these projects ahead of time, mind you; they just seem to pop up and I love that they do. And if I find myself lacking one, I inadvertently try to make an existing, smaller project bigger. I reckon that's how I ended up being a half-decent volleyball coach - in 2010, I went whole hog on training plans and getting feedback from players pre-, mid-, and post-season. Using Surveymonkey. And collating the results for my own reference.

I'm a nerd, guys.

It's an understatement to say that my 2014 project turning out to be planning my own wedding. I will genuinely miss it when it's over, but I'm sure I'll find another project before too long.

I think our plan for the honeymoon will be to do a small one closer to home at first - maybe a month out from the wedding just to dodge the busy holiday period. I find the idea of just hanging out with Blake, with no pressure to do or see anything, pretty perfect as far as decompressing after the wedding goes. Then, later on, we can put any money in our Wishing Well towards a much bigger, longer trip.

Parties Involving Bacholerettes and/or Hens

This post might rub a few people the wrong way, but look, this is really just my personal opinion. It's not a commentary on how I think things should or shouldn't be, it's just a write-up on the way I see it. Please don't hate me!

The concept of the bachelorette party (aka the hens do) is a wholly alien one to me. I have been to many and have had heaps of fun, don't get me wrong, and I definitely appreciate being invited and getting the chance to be a part of it! But the fact that they are a thing remains personally befuddling.

Historically, my friendship groups have been predominantly male. That's not to say I didn't have friendships with girls or aren't close to girls, it's just that for the most part, I hung out with way more guys than girls. Generally speaking, in a big group of people, I tended to gravitate towards talking to the guys. This isn't because the girls were bad or mean or anything like that. In fact, if you know me at all, the reason seems obvious: the majority of my interests tend towards those "traditionally" viewed to be held by guys.

More accurately, both my sister and I were raised in an androgynous way. We explored interests because we found them interesting, and we seldom noticed (or cared) what genders explored them alongside us.

The example I love to give is that we had far more Hot Wheels cars than Barbie dolls, and frequently tried to find ways to attach the Hot Wheels cars to our Barbies' feet as roller skates. We loved Lego even before the Paradisa set came out, and we begged and begged for Nerf guns from a young age (we got Super Soakers instead, which I think is my mum's way of making she never had vacuum up the odd Nerf dart). We just didn't see gendered stuff when it came to what we liked. Neither my sister nor I wore or had any interest in makeup until our late 20s; it's not that we thought makeup was bad or that it was too girly for us (and there's nothing wrong with being girly, either!). It's more that we just weren't interested in it; it wasn't on my radar and I'd spend my money on magic tricks and video games rather than foundation or eyeliner!

But as we got older and the gender divide seemed to broaden right around the puberty mark, we did begin to notice that we were making friends far more readily and quickly with boys than with girls.

I don't know if it's my age group or the local culture, but since moving to Perth I've found that you're kind of "expected" to get along better with people your own gender. I find this bizarre and perhaps worthy of its own sort of exploration. I don't have a problem with it necessarily; it's just been far more noticeable in Perth than it ever was in the US or anywhere else I've lived. Whatever the cause, it does mean that the gender split across my friendship groups is a bit more even these days than it ever has been.

As you can predict, the idea of a bachelorette party to celebrate my last days as an unwed woman with an all-girl cast creates a weird cognitive disconnect for me. Like, I get that it's a bit of fun with your mates before you enter married life. On that level it sounds awesome, because it's sort of true that the dynamics in a given group change as people start getting married. But I don't know why it's been defined as an all-girls (or all-guys) thing.

An all-girls hens party would exclude some of my best mates, which gives me the sense that this is one of those wedding things that just isn't for me. It's great and excellent if it's something anyone else wants to do, and I am 100% supportive of those for whom it is important! No complaints. I just won't be having one of them for myself, is all.

That's not to say I'm against a pre-wedding bash at all. As a guest, I do totally get the idea of meeting other people who will be at the wedding before the day itself; that sounds like a cool plan. I reckon a Nerf war or laser gun fight sounds pretty freakin' fun, but I might scrap the idea all together given that we have very little time left in which to plan a bash at all.

Decision-Making Fatigue

The title is a term I'm totally borrowing from my friend Kris, because I honestly haven't been able to come up with another expression quite so accurate without also incorporating disturbing toilet imagery.

We're reaching the part of the planning process where quite a number of final decisions need to be made. Everything left outstanding - jewelry, hair style, makeup, floor plan - now needs to be chosen and locked in. Suppliers will do whatever they can to accommodate me, which is a good thing, but they are terrified of not getting direction from me in case they cock it up and come back with something I hate.

The reality is, though, is that there are a great number of things for which I legitimately don't have an opinion. GASP! VIVIENNE WITH NO OPINION? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?!

The bare bones of the ceremonies in both cities are sorted - a place for the ceremony to happen, a time for people to turn up, and people to actually make it happen. All booked in, no issues thus far, and that's really all I care about.

Being a neurotic nutcase, I masquerade as a seemingly normal human being by prioritising everything. I work with lists and ranks - if something is a higher priority, everything beneath it will be ignored and shunned until the higher priority thing is sorted. Right now, all my higher priority stuff is either sorted or does not require further input from me at present. "Pending supplier action", if you would.

This means is that my attention is now turning to the lower-priority decisions that have yet to be made. The thing is, I'm exhausted from all the decision-making that took place in the upper echelons of my priority list, and my stock of "Shits I Give" has been depleted. I may have had opinions for some of these things before, but at this stage in the planning? I'm absolutely done even thinking about the rest of the list.

I do not have an opinion on what colour eyeshadow or lipstick I want on my face. I do not care if a rose is hidden by a lily or an orchid in my bouquet. I don't actually give a shit if the wedding cars have ribbons or not. Where should the wedding chairs go? ON THE GROUND, DUH. And why in the fuck would I care what colours the DJs wear?!

The people asking these questions don't seem to accept my sincere reassurances that my shit-giving bucket is bone-dry. I should also clarify that these requests for input aren't always from my suppliers, either; most of them are actually from well-meaning family and friends who can't seem to tolerate an "I don't know" or "I don't care" answer.

But I must know, they claim. I will care!

Dear everyone - there are simply no spare shits left to give. The only thing I must and will do is marry Blake (his reciprocal "I do" pending). If the thing is not directly impacting on my ability to do that, then at this point it gets zero (0) airtime from me.

I've acknowledged before that a lot of suppliers and vendors do need a place to start. I get it, I really do. But as I also said in that post, I like to defer to their expertise and experience. Please, please for the love of god, just let me fucking defer to your experience. But nope, that's just not going to happen.

Therefore, I'm enlisting a wedding A-Team - people in addition to our not-so-available bridal party who will help me field the extra, superfluous decisions, thus sparing my sanity. If an answer is needed on something that's not a high priority, I am trusting the members of my A-Team to deal with it for me. And they will have my love and gratitude for the rest of my natural life.

Hiccup the Third: The Dorothy Shoes

I really have to thank one of my coworkers for coining the term "Dorothy shoes". If you know nothing about them at all, that's an excellent clue, even though I totally reference them in an earlier blog post.

I ordered my wedding shoes from Shoes of Prey, who let you customise the style of your shoe within certain parameters. This was mainly to ensure that I had a style and color that I liked. I placed the order back in August (after spending 2 weeks agonising over how high the heels should be) and they arrived in late September. Within 4 weeks, as advertised.

I slipped into them and right away I loved how they looked and felt. I was worried they wouldn't fit but I could totally get my feet into them, hooray! But then, as my heartbeat returned to its normal rate, I realised with a great sadness that the more I wore them, the more I was beginning to notice a problem.

I didn't spot it at first, but effectively the shoes are a full size too big. Sticking my foot right back into the heel where it should be left a good amount of space between the toe of the shoe and my own toes. Not a good look nor a comfortable fit on an important day, I guess.

The thing that makes me laugh these days is that I actually considered just running with it. Grab some bubble wrap and squish it into the heel area, surely that'll do the trick and no one will be the wiser. The shoes will be hidden by the dress anyway, who cares if they don't look perfect? So I might roll my ankle on my wedding day, I do that all the time, would it really ruin the day?!

A thought - a realisation - crept in not long after I'd actually grabbed some paper and tried to squish it into the heel cup to see if that would work. I spent dollars on these shoes. Good dollars. And for such good dollars, I should be getting shoes that fit.

Shoes of Prey comes with a 365-day return/remake policy, which I imagine is part of the price they charge for the shoes. So why didn't I jump on that right away?

Because my dress fitting was in three weeks! (Two weeks as of the writing of this post.) That meant I needed to have shoes on-hand on the day so that the hem could be measured and trimmed. Even if they began to remake them THAT DAY, they're unlikely to arrive in time for the fitting (they claim a 4-week turnaround) and surely they're going to wait to receive my rejects before they even start on new ones!

I addressed my worries by doing something I rarely do anymore in this age of E-mails and online messaging systems - I picked up the phone and called someone.

The solution I managed to negotiate was that they'd get started on the new shoes straight away and try to get them to be before the fitting. Meanwhile, they'll let me keep the current ones to use for the fitting just in case they don't make it. I'm pretty psyched about this option and I think they agreed to it because I sent them photos of how they just didn't fit and they know I'm not full of crap.

Now, I'd written most of this post a couple of weeks ago, when the shoes first arrived. As of the time of this post's publication on the blog, my shoes are due to arrive this Thursday, in plenty of time before the fitting. Hooray! So, provided the shoes actually come in then and are the right size, I'm definitely giving Shoes of Prey an A+ for customer service.

Why We're Not Doing a Gift Registry

Ever since we announced our engagement, we have received a barrage of requests for links to a gift registry. All of these came from my side of the equation, where it's pretty much par for the course for extended family and family friends to buy gifts or give money to the couple at the announcement of an engagement. Now that the wedding is approaching ever so steadily, those requests have become something more akin to demands.

These days, it's pretty common to encounter a Wishing Well, which is in essence a pool of money that guests can contribute towards that pays for something significant, such as honeymoons and renovations. This means that rather than use a gift registry, you can just pop some money into the Wishing Well with the expectation that it'll get put towards something the couple wants.

I've become privy to a broad spectrum of opinions on wedding gifts. Some people refuse to give cash because it can feel too impersonal, too much like you're just paying the bride/groom for your dinner, or too tacky. Some people refuse to give gifts because it's not about what you give, it's about how the couple use the gift, and therefore cash is a better and more sensible option. I have lost track of how many times I've heard the discussion around how couples these days have been living together for a period of time prior to getting married, therefore they don't need all the "setting up the new home" items that were more common gifts for couples back in the day. Or how gifts are just this massive storage problem for a period after the wedding. Or how the excitement of opening a wrapped present is such a wonderful feeling. Or the environmentally unfriendly wastage of wrapping paper.

It all makes sense from both sides, it really does. I have no strong opinion on one side or the other; often, it'll come down to how well I know the couple and whether or not they do in fact have a registry. If there is one, I'll buy something off it. If there isn't, we give cash.

Out of respect to our friends and family who had requested one, Blake and I made an attempt to set up an online gift registry. We failed within 10 minutes of starting.

Our problem, we realised, is that we are extremely particular people. When I say I want a vacuum cleaner, for example, I don't just mean "get me anything from this brand". I will research the shit out of it and other brands, look for the most neutral reviews I can find, compare those to old models or other brands, create a shortlist of possibilities, evaluate those based on what I want in a vacuum cleaner, and then source the best price for that model. (For the record, don't get me a vacuum cleaner.)

We have found no (free) online registry that supplied or offered to supply every possible product we wanted at reasonable prices. On top of that, it was impossible for us to know how much was too much or too little to ask. Is it reasonable to ask for a [thing] costing $[number]?

In essence, those 10 minutes consisted of me finding a number of online gift registries, us staring blankly at each other for what we would even add to it in the first place, and then when an idea did eventually come to us, I went off and did my research. By the time I came back with a shortlist for that one item (at about the 10-minute mark), I realised that it just wasn't going to work. There is no registry that I'd found that offers the best model/version of everything, and we're too picky to settle.

I have to reiterate that we wouldn't have even bothered with trying if it weren't for all the requests we were getting, mostly from family friends I've known my whole life. I mean, another reason for us not knowing how to do a gift list was because we didn't really expect gifts!

In the end, it just seemed easier to field individual requests from the more In. Sis. Tent. folks out there and just direct everyone else who'd like to get us something to the Wishing Well. As it is, it's pretty common in Chinese weddings for people to give cash, so if you really want to get us a gift but are feeling a bit iffy about just dropping dollars, you can always just say you're being culturally appropriate!