Fatness

I have good intentions, but life takes over. This week was just plain ole fat. I've been indulging myself with the delusion that it's okay for the holidays. Between our families meeting, work and the wedding, food an drink has been the comfort. No more. This upcoming week is the week of being good to myself. The families loved each other, my bff for life just got engaged on Thanksgiving, and I'm dancing today in honor of a man who shaped my fabulous black gay self.

So this week:

1. No Harolds ( I swear they put crack in the hot sauce)
2. No Cocktails
3. No restaurant food


This next 28 days I will live by the bar method, loose 15 lbs, and care for myself like the blushing bride I'm supposed to be.

On the Married Gays

Last night was amazing! I was supposed to be at a dance rehearsal for an upcoming perfromance but only 3 of us showed up so me, the fiancee, a long time friend/fellow dancer and his fiancee/husband decided to have cocktails in the attached restaurant. Life, love, and the pursuit of happyness.

It is amazing how life just intervenes in all of the best laid plans. I met the fiancee in a city I was just passing though and knew she was the one. They had a similar story of fate. Over two and a half Red Velvet Martinis I saw my relationship mirrored in maleness and realized that we were on to something. I think the black gays are coming a long way in realizing that there is a life beyond the stereotype of promiscuity and detachment. We can form attachments that are just as lovely and just as screwy as the straights. The white ones have figured that out already and that's why the Prop 8 demonstrations seem totally devoid of color. But we need to be more visible, love more, be more open so it's known that yes, we do exist and no, we aren't going anywhere any time soon.

34 days to go.

35 days

Man oh man, it's been a week. Usually I'll have time to read my favorite blogs and update my own, but not this week. From meeting my mother to figure out if we can fit the doubled guest list (that's right, doubled), to running hither, thither, and yon to get the last details of cake and food, to meeting with our lovely officiant who is located across the world on Harlem and 63rd, I've been a bit of everywhere this week.

The DIY list is getting smaller without me doing anything. Everything I can outsource for the cheap is being done (thanks Sam) or eliminated. 35 days is nothing in the scheme of wedding planning.

Great news though, we are going to NOLA on our honeymoon!!!!! WHOOOO - HOOOO for the lushly overfed, southern fried, creole spicy week long honeymoon in the most decadent city in the country. Beginets here I come!

One Upon a Wedding

300 guests + food and liquor + 40 mi outside of the city = this wedding I went to last night

The fiancee and I had a marvelous time at a wedding last night. It was everything a good girl would hope it to be, and as a guest, it was a great time to get politely smashed on free liquor. As with everything in life, there is always a running commentary going through my brain so I can never just enjoy the simplicity in anything and this wedding has given me plenty of fodder. As much as I would love to recount the night with catty play by plays a la Queer Eye, the couple seemed so happy and in love that I don't have the heart. But I do have a few lingering questions:

1. Between the two of you, are you really that super tight with over 300 people?
2. Why do DJ's have to be obnoxious as all hell while you and the now spouse are having the first dance?
3 Does the vidioegrapher have to carry the tripod while he's filming said dance, instead of picking the dang thing up and acting like he knows what he's doing?
4. Should your planner really be walking around your ceremony in socks?
5. Why does some catered food taste like cardboard? (just for the record, my salmon was good)

On a side note, I also had a makeup assignment in the suburbs before the wedding and did the makeup for a bride and her mother. The bride seemed genuinely disinterested in her big day. I can only speculate from the 30 minuts I spent with her, but it didn't seem like she wanted to be getting married. Now, I'm NOT trying to make the point that she didn't love her fiancee and want to spend the rest of her life with him. She seemed to have given into the idea of a wedding of tradition that did not fit her personality. Her hair was done in a beautiful updo that she seemed uncomfrtable in. She stressed to me that she didn't want any makeup but I managed to convince her to add a bit of color for the pitures. She just went with what her family said to do with not much joy or any other emotion.

I think it is so important that a wedding reflects the personality and desires of the couple as a whole. No one elses will, not tradition or family, should impose on those desires. A wedding is a celebration of committment that two people are making to each other. I always believed that how you go into something determines the outcome. I hope that bride does not encounter in her marriage what she encountered in her wedding.

In Desperate Need of Color

What possessed me to have my wedding in the wintertime in Chicago? Six years in the sunny state of Florida must have made me delusional about just how grey and depressing winter really is. So for all of the winter brides who will not be touched by the sun for months before and after your wedding, this inspiration board is for you.

Attire: The Dress

Wedding dress = Princess for a day

When this whole shebang started, I was the bride who was dead set on bucking tradition. A right hand ring for engagement, a slinky, sexy dress with colorful, killer pumps, and absolutely no bridesmaids. No aisles or giving away. Then something called the wedding bug hit me. Maybe it was all of that Knotting and Wedding Beeing that I did like a good little bride. The online browsing turned to shopping which turned into a full fledged wedding complete with dress, shoes, and attendants (not bridesmaids, more on that later)

As a newbie to this wedding thing I had absolutely no idea that the wedding dress industrial society was so, shall I say, involved. Mothers and best friends making a day of helping you put on and take off dresses that cost as much as two semesters of tuition at FAMU (Go Rattlers!). It was all so overwhelming to think of spending $2,000 on a dress when our budget was only $10,000. Then I learned of the sample sale, which actually should be named the cattle call for stylishly frugal brides.

Not knowing what to expect, I got up early, dropped the fiance off at work, and drove to Oak Brook in rush hour traffic, thinking I would be the first one there at 9:00 a.m. Not so much. There were about ten other brides and their mothers and best friends squealing and fawning over the most amazing dresses. The wait for a dressing suite was about 30 minutes so I continued to browse while trying not to drown in the taffeta and silk the other girls were slinging.
THE dress was the first one I tried on. Princess AJ took over as soon as the silk hit my skin and the dress lady zipped me up. At that moment I realized just how my practical, non-traditional lesbian wedding turned into this amalgamation of who knows what. But the great part about that princess moment is that it only set the budget back $215 + $100 for alterations. (hint: one of these dresses is the one I'll be wearing)

Photos from Brides.com

MakeUp Love

The holidays are upon us and it's time for a new face people! In addition to having a fabulous artist designed DIY wedding in 50 days, I am an Aveda Freelance Advisor and will be at XOX Salon at 4458 N. Milwaukee tomorrow for their Holiday Celebration doing complementary (meaning free) makeup touches for attendees. This is only the beginning of my busy makeup season so I'll try to keep my dates and locations posted.

It's going to be amazing to work on all of these beautiful people going to holiday parties and getting inspiration on how to wear my own makeup for the big day. As a makeup artist it is so hard to decide how to wear my own makeup. I also have this dislike of having other makup artist work on me. It's kind of like a hairdresser going to another hairdresser, there's a lot of intimidation and expectation that goes along with it

Photo from Aveda