Weddings. The very word stirs different emotions in different people. I have already written a blog about why I don’t hate weddings. Let me tell you something that I do hate: strapless dresses. Sure I know that most of them come with those little bitty straps that you can attach in, but they are for all intensive purposes completely useless. Bra straps are not that tiny (which kind of defeats the purpose of having straps at all). Now apparently guys find strapless dresses and tube tops “sexy”. Sure, if shoulders are your thing (I happen to think I have very pretty shoulders) but here is my real problem with these items of clothing: I am not small chested. Maybe you cute little A and B cups can pull off the look, but I don’t care how great your strapless bra is, gravity will always always win. As much fun as constantly having to pull everything up is, I am awkward enough without having to worry about my dress pulling a Janet Jackson (an old reference I realize, but you understand what I mean, so it’s still valid if outdated).
It is wedding season in case you are not aware. The wedding in question was that of my younger brother this past weekend. I was wearing a (you guessed it) strapless dress and in all fairness the bride was kind enough to let me choose my own dress. This is awesome for so many reasons. Firstly, sometimes in an effort to match the wedding colors colorful monstrosities the shade of which should never be on a girl as pasty as I am. Secondly, one dress does not fit all. I am rather…curvy and the matron of honor was pregnant and the other bridesmaid was a lean and fit athletic girl. Yeah…that wouldn’t work if it were one single dress style. So I brought it on myself really. I know this and I will come to terms with it. Thank God for Victoria’s.
I have now been a bridesmaid a total of five times. Yes five. At my now sister’s (and I say that because I hate the term in-law. I love her like a sister and she is a part of my family, ergo, sister’s) bachelorette party one of my friends, I dare say one of my best friends said, “So Alicia, are you working on 27 dresses?” I love her, please don’t misunderstand that, but I wanted to punch her in the mouth. Yes, I am one of those “always a bridesmaid…” girls right now. While we’re at it, this weekend I have caught six, yes six bouquets. Used to be I wouldn’t try, they would just seem to come to me or I would catch it before it hit the ground because the other girls avoided the silly thing. I couldn’t even sit it out because inevitably I get called out and dragged up there. Yes, thank you so much for that wonderful reminder ladies. I somehow have brides that throw it practically right at me, but I didn’t really want to catch it. Now, my competitive drive takes over and I just want to beat everybody else at one of the suckiest games ever invented. By the way, do you know why they throw the bouquet? In medieval times a bride was considered to be especially lucky on her wedding day. This was so strong a belief that at the end of the ceremony the single women of the crow would rush her and try to rip her dress off of her. So the tradition of throwing the bouquet to the single ladies to appease them so they wouldn’t rip the bride’s dress to shreds/ trample her to death (which happened rather frequently back then). So I must be extraordinarily lucky by now or something like that. I’ve kept a few. I think I’ll burn them on my wedding day.
Ah yes, to the title of this whole thing. There is the tradition of throwing rice (which has been changed because apparently birds will blow up if they eat it, which is totally not true and has been proven to be a myth because birds eat that stuff in the wild, but oh well) and now we throw birdseed. I personally prefer blowing bubbles. Why? Bubbles don’t hurt. Birdseed does. (Rice/ birdseed was thrown for luck and to represent fertility in the marriage…in case you were wondering.) So the tradition goes that the friends/ family of the couple makes a tunnel to the car the couple will be taking and the birdseed is thrown. There is one very crucial flaw with this: there are people on the other side of the couple and most people have no aim/ believe it is a practice for MLB. So as these stinging little shards started hitting me, I batted them away and I’m sure I looked a bit like Raoul Duke in the desert. Now batting away birdseed is ridiculously ineffective and inevitably (another curse of strapless dresses and big chests) a decent amount went down my dress. How did it end up in my underwear? Well, I’m not quite sure on that one to be honest. I suppose a combination of most of it getting caught in the top of my dress and perfect timing as the seeds fell had something to do with it. Oh well.
