Oh, internet! How you consume me!

Posted by Tasha

It's a snow day! And I have a list of things to do (nothing new) and I got in bed with my work computer and my play computer and without intending to... I clicked on some targeted ad (from Facebook of all places!) and started looking at wedding dresses.

In the hours of my 'research', I realized that having a wedding that strays even slightly from the norm, is really hard to organize IF you can't picture it.

The first task really is to picture the wedding. Unfortunately, that's where I'm having lots of trouble. A Hindu-Jewish-Russian-Indian Lesbian wedding isn't something I can muster up an image for with the snap of my fingers. So I set out to search the abyss of the internet to get some ideas... But I could look for days, and weeks, and months, and still not really come to anything solid. Still, slowly with some pictures (many pasted below), picking bits and pieces of the internet, and most importantly talking to Tigritza, images come to mind.

Try to follow my wild stream of consciousness -

<-- Possible wedding dress style?

I found this on www.ideeli.com by Nicole Miller: the "Strapless Flowy Gown." (Could she get any more vague?) ...I think this would look really nice next to Tigritza's sari because of the one-shoulder strap and the knots in the middle. But it doesn't look regal enough - it's too long and simple; kinda like a fancy nightgown. And I'm thinking about adding some red or gold to my white dress...

...I like the idea of using some of Tigritza's sari material as a ribbon on my dress (image from http://bridestea.com/?p=1170)

I have been looking at blogs and random sites non-stop today. I find this couple really cute! There are tons of blogs about interracial or multi-cultural couples and I think those are really the most beautiful. I get so excited about the different traditions we can take from Judaism and Hinduism. Blending the two in a ceremony symbolizes the joining of our families, cultures, and backgrounds. Neither of us are religious but the traditions matter.

Another time-consuming endeavor: I started looking at bridesmaids dresses. Ideally I want the bridesmaids to wear something out of the ordinary that has origins from both cultures. This sari/dress mix is pretty damn cool - I actually like the first of the two dresses better but I like the blended style in the latter. Colors are a-whole-nother conversation. Shorter dresses for bridesmaids would probably be more fitting too.

Anyway, I spent toooo much time looking at some other styles of bridesmaid dresses: Seriously Tasha have you lost your mind? Yes I have. The first 5 dresses on the page are ugly at first but what attracted me to them was the style - it's really an Indo-Western blend! Still maybe they are better fit for a traveling circus...

In all the wedding guides or lists of things to do first, second, and third, the absolute first is securing a venue. Of course we have been putting this off but today I started looking (and quickly quit because it's harder than I thought). I'm picturing an almost gothic cathedral (minus the religious affiliation) - Philly actually has some very old and beautiful buildings, like our University's libraries and museums. I'm essentially imagining a castle with a beautiful lawn and a balcony in the middle of a city - don't I have a great imagination?

Then I looked at wedding toppers, you know the ones that go on top of a cake: this sari topper is the closest thing I found to half of something I'd use -- and I don't like it at all! But I found some sites that would do personalized wedding toppers for about a million dollars... Don't think we really care about wedding cake toppers too much but it popped up somewhere in my google search and I went with it.

The moral of the story regarding today's search: I couldn't even find something Indian-American (forget about Indian-Russian) and triple-ly forget about adding the gay thing in there! Wedding planning for even a slightly 'different' wedding is actually pretty damn hard - although I found some cool alternative sites: http://offbeatbride.com/ which gave me some ideas I never had like - crazy cake vs typical cake (I know, there are enough atypical things about our wedding - why add to the chaos right?)

Anyway, it's been a long day of procrastinating and thinking about the wedding... at the end I just want a really beautiful big party! (Don't we all...)