My First Wedding at the Age of 37

I do not like weddings! At the age of 36, I am now forced to have a big fat wedding! I am forced to spend a lot of money and there seems to be no escape from it.

The preparations started quite a while ago, everybody except me and my love are enjoying the preparations. The place, menu, musicians and date are set and fixed now.

I come from a big family and had to attend at least a few weddings every year. They all seemed somewhat similar; same type of music, food, dancing, etc., etc. Now, it looks like, it is my turn. I am being punished for falling in love.

I attended many friend weddings too, at least a dozen of them! I have to admit many of the brides didn't look like they were having fun before or during their wedding. One of my friends was so upset with so many things during her wedding that while she was dancing on the dance floor, she came to me and said "Just - don't ever have a wedding!". But I don't seem to be benefiting from her wisdom.

On the other hand, some glorify the experience. They say it is a once in a life time experience (not a realistic estimate for my generation but anyway) and I should have a great wedding. I should have it all; the big gown, champagne, cake and honeymoon and all that crap. They say this will be the only time that you will have all the people you love in this world, be in the same place all together. I have to admit, that side of it sounds really warm and decent.

One of the biggest concerns for a bride is to look great, to look at her best. Unfortunately, I have seen enough brides to know that, things don't always work out that way. One of my gorgeous friends, who could easily be mistaken for Kate Moss, looked her worst in her wedding party. She had professionals do her make up and her hair but those professionals were not very successful professionals.

Wedding Dress
What is a wedding dress anyway? Don't you think most of them look silly? Why do some girls take it so seriously? It is a like a six year old girl's dream rather than a womans dream.

As you can imagine, choosing a wedding dress is not easy for me. My cousins warned me not to buy something like a nightgown. Honestly those are the ones I like; the ball gown type wedding dresses are not at all my style. I thought the wedding dresses Sarah Jessica Parker tried on during the Sex and the City movie did not look good at all. Actually, all the clothes in that movie were quite tasteless. There are gorgeous things in the stores all around New York City, and they had limitless money to spend on clothes and how terribly they were dressed up all through the movie. Anyway, back to my fat wedding.

I started my wedding dress search by looking at the websites for Vera Wang and Carolina Herrera. They are very expensive, I don't think I can afford them but I like having an idea. I will go to New York in a few weeks so I can have a look at the gowns in their stores as the websites don't have enough choices.

I remember liking the wedding dress of the stylish and beautiful Carolyn Bessette. I learnt that Narciso Rodrigues designed that sophisticated wedding gown so I would like to have a look at his collection too. I hope they are not terribly expensive. Let's see what happens, maybe there will be great discount in the Vera Wang or Herrera store all of a sudden, or I will be their 10, 000 th bride in the store and they will give my dress for free. Or a billionaire will say, I look like the love of his life who he never had the chance to propose and he will want to pay for my wedding gown.

Make-Up
I do not want to have a professional makeup artist. The successful ones are hard to find, expensive and booked. I had a few really bad experiences with the make up artists, one of them made me look like a soap opera star, one of them made my eyes look so big that I felt like an alien who can also smell, eat and hear from her eyes. On top of that, they both got very annoyed with me since I was not happy with what they did. I just want to have friends and family around me that day, not people I don't know and can be a cause of more stress.

I am improving my cosmetic products at the moment. I bought a liquid foundation from Armani and the flawless face kit from Laura Mercier. They are all great. I also bought a Nars blush (color-orgasm) and some other great make up products like Urban Decay eye liner or primer potion. I already wrote a review on Urban Decay eye liner and I will write about the other products in detail soon.

Hair
I tried the Frederic Fekkai glossing shampoo, conditioner and the cream. These are decent products but I think I prefer to have my hair up and I might need to work with a hair stylist for the kind of hair I want. I would like to have a few orchids in my hair too.

Organizing a wedding is not easy, so much to do and I am in the beginning of all this process. There is still a lot to do; invitations, seating plan, choice of songs, pictures, video and etc. No, I am not a fan of weddings and this was not my dream, but there is something nice about preparing for a wedding. I witness how my loved ones try to help me in so many ways, and each person that I informed of my wedding date, no matter where they are, told me that they will be there for me.

Maybe we do need weddings. But not to look at our best, not to have the best wedding dress, not for our guests to appreciate our sophisticated choices of wines but more for to learn what we mean for others. To be able see our elementary school friends, cousins, colleagues, family and grad school friends all on the same dance floor.