Bridesmaids (344 Days to Go)

So I'm currently attempting to try and gather a majority of my bridesmaids together for a bridesmaid luncheon and to go shopping for dresses.  Yes, it's early.  But some of them are students, currently unemployed, etc. etc. such that I figure if we go now, then there's time to sit back, stash up the cash, wait for a sale, and all of that good stuff.  But by going and picking a dress now, I can end a few more annoying conversations and scratch one more thing off my list as far as stress inducers.

Sometimes I feel as much as I try to be cooperative and easy going on the girls, the harder things become on me because Jeff and I's mothers are old-fashioned about how the bridesmaids should be dressed.  Back in the 80s when they were getting wed, bridesmaids wore heinous, matchy-matchy dresses.  Now, today the trend is leaning much more towards the bridesmaids wearing whatever style best suits them in a general colorway.  But because we have a rainbow bridal party, I have more pressure being put on me to force them all into the same style dress.  Essentially, if I don't, I can look forward to a minimum of five years of complaining everytime the wedding pictures are looked at.  

Compound into that, both of our mothers feel that the Mothers' dresses are just too "matronly" and "old" for them.  Certainly at fifty they aren't so old that they can't wear something from the bridesmaid dress rack, right?  I guess they're trying to cope with the fact that they're old enough to have children getting married in their own way.  So, if I let the bridesmaids pick what they want, and being all different colors, I'm going to end up with the mothers and maids blending together with nothing but a few wrinkles to tell the difference.  And why yes, I've made a relatively obvious suggestion that the mothers wear a patterned dress and the maids were solids.  Nada in the cooperation department.  This is when I start wanting to bang my head on my desk, which is metal by the way.  And yes, they're insisting on wearing the same material too.  These are stubborn women, I tell you.  Nothing can ever persuade them to get off a subject until it's too late to have much more effect, but then you can still look forward to some disheartened griping that they were ignored in the decision making process.  Toss into the mix, the junior bridesmaid (aka mini bridezilla, aka MBZ) who wants to wear my wedding gown and have a date to walk her down the aisle and I've got one heck of a pot boiling over.  And seriously, it's all over what people are going to wear?  I suddenly understand the appeal of the nudist wedding.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to dictate the fashion choices of my mom and FMIL, however, I don't appreciate that they're dictating the fashion of my bridesmaids.  I mean seriously, when does that ever go well?  Because all it does is then complicate the issue of making them happy all the more.  And boy, do I get tired of hearing and phrase that starts with the word "Just".  "Just" is someone's way of making things sound easy.  As in "Just do it", "Just say no", etc., etc.  Or my personal favorite: "That just doesn't make sense."  Please, if the word "just" ever comes out of my mouth, slap me silly.  I deserve it.



Henkaa
Convertible Dresses



But I did come up with a third option that will set my girls apart, let them be individuals, make them identical for the ceremony and pictures and silence the mothers.  Now, if I can only get the girls to go along with it.  It's convertible dresses.  I figure, they agree on one of fifty some styles for the ceremony and pictures, and when we duck away somewhere to bustle my train before entering the reception, they can reconfigure their dress into any style they want.  That way they get to feel like they got to completely change dresses between ceremony and reception.  It's a win-win...at least for me.  I just hope the girls will see it that way too.

I ordered one of the dresses for myself to wear as a bridesmaid in Becca's wedding.  They're supposed to be one size fits most, so I figure the girls can play with mine and see if they like it when we get together later this month.  I'm crossing my fingers.  I really need to start nailing down details and therefore nailing problems to the wall.

Ex's (404 Days to Go)

The other day I was on Facebook and I realized that someone I went to college with was planning her wedding--for the second time.  When I had known her, she had dated a common acquaintance and right after graduation they were engaged.  Now, I had known there was some rough spots in their relationship and thus was not entirely surprised to find out a few months later (again through Facebook) that the engagement had been broken off.  But before the engagement had been broken, she had published a ton of professional engagement photos on the social networking site.

Out of curiosity, I went to see if I knew who her new fiance was.  I didn't.  But what really surprised me was that pictures of her ex-fiance were still shown in the top banner as being some of her most recently tagged photos.  When I clicked to see all the photos of her I saw that nearly all of them were from her engagement photo session with her ex (or from sorority life during college) and there wasn't even a single shot of her with her new husband-to-be.  Now, this was the exact opposite on his page (oops, his security settings weren't up to speed and I can be a stalker when curiosity gets the better of me), for his profile picture was a couples shot of them.

Both members of the couple have their entire walls covered in statuses and comments having to do with their upcoming nuptials but it really surprised me that she had never edited her Facebook to diminish her ex-fiance's presence especially with her wedding coming up in the fall.  So my question isn't really about whether or not she's wrong or right, but what is the proper etiquette in the situation?  Do you erase your past life and pretend it never happened?  Or do you at least more thoroughly establish that you have a new life that doesn't include that other guy you had a professional shoot with?

I'll admit, I never went through my account and deleted everything that went between my ex and myself.   The pictures, comments, even the connection as "friends" remains.  In fact, I hadn't even realized we were still FB friends until I saw his comment a week after I announced my engagement to Jeff about how he'd dodged two bullets in one month in reference to myself and another of his exes (and one of my bridesmaids).  I contemplated removing him, but didn't.  I have an attitude about removing FB friends that essentially dictates that I have to wish them dead before I remove them, thus no one ever has been.  

However, I feel as though I had been active enough on FB while I was single and while I was dating Jeff to establish very thoroughly which guy I plan to spend the rest of my life with.  It wasn't as if I was completely inactive during the two year span between wedding planning periods as this girl I once knew had been.  It was just slightly jarring to me.

I'm curious to know how others have handled their exes on social networking sites like Facebook.  Did you erase your pictures of your ex?  Did you remove them as a friend?  Or did you let the past be just as it was no matter how prominently it was displayed?