Father of the Bride Archives

Samantha Thompson Smith, our fashion writer at the N&O, says the tiered look is going to be the rage in '08. Here's the Vera Wang she emailed me. Like I'd know. I had to resize the picture because the original image was 4 megs and it made this blogging software very unhappy.

Update:  It looks like Hilary's picked out her locale for the bridal luncheon. And she is on day two of her teaching career at Clayton High. 

156 days until the wedding. The shuttle is rolling out to the launch pad and the countdown is proceeding.  

Here's Travis at his recent graduation, with proud fiancee.

Final exams and graduation behind her, Hilary has a few days before starting her teaching job. So she was shopping for wedding invitations.

Wedding invitations are complex. They are like the settlement documents at a real estate closing.

According to my wedding bible (The Knot Book of Wedding Lists), here is what you might find in the bundle of paperwork such is the invitation:

* An outer envelope

* An inner envelope

* Reply card with self-addressed stamped envelope

* Rehearsal diinner invitation

* Maps

* Travel and hotel information

* Menu card

* Place card

etc.

The Knot said you could expect to spend up to 3 percent of your budget on, ahem, "your stationery needs." Wow.

Of course, you have to set up an RSVP database in order to track who is coming -- this is for the caterer, mostly, so you have an accurate headcount.

Then there are details about how to negotiate a contract with the calligrapher. And how to deal with the post office so the invitations are hand stamped rather than run through a machine, which could damage them. Which offers some insight as to how postal workers become disgruntled.

Friday: The two families -- ours and Travis' -- went to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate the graduation of Hilary and Travis. I like eating at Kanki. But you find yourself eating fast to keep up with the cook.

Saturday: Started cleaning out garage. Saw Walk Hard in Smithfield with George.

Sunday: Worked on getting up the leaves in the front yard. Realized this will take me until March. Early Christmas dinner at the farm in Clinton. Next Christmas, Hilary and Travis will be married. We used to have to drive like 7 hours from Maryland to get to the farm. Now we live 50 minutes away, and it is so much easier.

Monday: Went to the outlet mall with George. Bought Katherine a new Bunn coffee maker and Hil a fancy pot at Le Crueset. Crueset is French for expensive. Went to Best Buy at White Oak to get some gift cards for the kids. Monday night, we opened presents, a Barkin family tradition that started when the kids were little and couldn't wait for Christmas morning. Ok, I couldn't wait until Christmas morning. I got the satellite radio I had asked Santa for.

Tuesday: Christmas Day. Finished cleaning the garage. George installed the satellite radio in my Buick. Went to White Oak to see The Great Debaters with Katherine. Less funny than Walk Hard, but more uplifting.

Now you are up to date.

As the younger brother in my family, I should be sensitive to the fact that second children don't always get as much attention as the first-born.

A standing joke in our family is that my niece Rebecca, we thought, would become a lawyer so that she could launch a class-action suit seeking damages on behalf of all middle children everywhere.

This is not always a bad thing, to not be the oldest. My older sister got a LOT of attention and direction, mostly unwanted, when she was a teenager in the early 60s. Me, as a teenager in the mid-to-late '60s and early '70s, I pretty much operated under the radar. I could come and go as I pleased, and I pleased a lot. Never seemed to matter. My father frequently seemed to forget that he had another kid roaming around, and would occasionally call me by three or four of my uncles' names ("Richard....uh, David....uh, Leon.....uh, Daniel!").

I say this by way of noting that my son, uh, George, has successfully negotiated his first semester at North Carolina State University. He did better than I did in my first semester, possibly because, unlike me, he attended his classes rather than playing Hearts in the dorm and other stuff that we don't need to discuss here in a family-oriented blog. So we are proud.

George has not gotten a lot of mentions here because this is about his sister and her upcoming nuptials, but I wanted to give him a shout out. This weekend I hope to attend with him a screening of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story because we have the same 18-year-old sensibility.

I will now resume my intense focus on my first-born because I love her more.

Kidding. Really.

Here's where it's a good idea to draft your wedding announcement and your obit at the same time, just in case.

According to the AP, a Pennsylvania couple got married and then went skydiving. They got married at the airport and then went up in a plane to 10,000 feet and jumped out. It was the first jump for the bride, who had an instructor with her, and then the groom exited the plane. He was evidently an experienced jumper.

Recall that I said in a previous post that the Trash the Dress phenomenon was nutty? This is nuttier.

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Post-graduation, things are settling down a little bit. Hilary, who has some time on her hands until she starts her job, spent yesterday decorating the tree and putting up stockings. She also decorated the TV set in our bedroom with some Christmas frou frou and created a little Christmas village in the kitchen. She is restless. It is hard to be going 75 mph towards graduation and then everything stops. Her cat, Noodle, whom we treat as our practice grandchild, is going nutso batso over the tree ornaments.

 Travis, who also has a little time on his hands waiting for his graduation Wednesday and the start of his new job next month, cooked dinner for us last night. I expect that things will get a little more frenetic when they report for work after the New Year and wedding showers start popping up on the calendar.

The winter graduation story on the front of the N&O today was fine. But it didn't have some key details, like what did me, Travis and George have at the Bojangles in Clayton before we drove to Chapel Hill to see Hilary turn her tassel.

Katherine, Hilary and one of her future bridesmaids, Megan, drove up earlier. I was assigned to take brother George and fiance Travis. Travis couldn't leave until the 11 a.m. service was over at Christ Community, where he directs the music. George was starved, hence the Bojangles. I defer to George in these matters.

That having been done, we drove up to Chapel Hill and to the Dean Dome, a carload of non-UNC fans. Travis, who graduates this week from State, George, who is finishing his first semester at State, and me, (Old Dominion '87, Maryland '95.)

Here are my notes:

The administrators file in behind Chancellor Moeser in their robes. Not much from the crowd. The doctoral and masters students file in in their black robes. Not much from the crowd. Then the graduating seniors start coming in in their Carolina blue robes, and the place goes nuts. Parents who have been waving at their kids since pre-school graduation haven't forgotten how to do it, after all these years, and the graduates - as one - rediscover their inner pre-schooler, waving back, a little self-conscious at first and then, what the heck.

The seniors are a mixed group of over-achievers who are graduating a semester early (My Hilary, thank you very much) and the more leisurely 4 and a half-ers who came up a few credits short last spring. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they changed majors once or seven times.

Don't bet against the late graduates. They have already figured out the work-life balance thing, and aren't fussy about deadlines.

I said to Travis, do you see Hilary? He pointed her out. She was seated at the end of one of the blue rows, on a spot on the three-point arc, at the far end of the court from Moeser. I saw what looked to be her and she seemed to see me. To confirm, I gave her the secret sign and she gave it back, so that was either her or another girl who had the exact same secret sign.

Streams of robed dean-like people and swells came to the microphone to tell us greetings from the alumni, greetings from the trustees, etc. etc. We learned that there are 257,000 living alumni of UNC, which is a lot of Duke haters, when you think about it. The alumni guy reminded the graduates to stay in touch, let us hear from you, don't be a stranger. Translated: We need to keep track of your mailing address so we can unburden your wallet periodically. ODU and Maryland monitor my whereabouts like I owe them child support.

Hilary gets to stand up when honors graduates are recognized. Yay.

Then we settle in to listen to Hodding Carter, the commencement speaker, who actually delivers a very good speech with a minimum of platitudes. I don't know as the graduates really understood the significance of Hodding Carter, who has witnessed and participated in an enormous amount of history. His dad was a crusading editor in Mississippi who fought segregation. Hodding himself was a soldier in the movement to give African-Americans political power, he worked in the Jimmy Carter administration, he had a distinguished journalism career and now teaches at UNC.

He talked about how life was once more certain, about what he called "the safe harbor of the known." But he said that this "tidy social order" also had an ugly side, for it forced blacks to sit at the back of the bus and gave most women few choices other than homemaker.

I looked over the sea of blue and thought what a different world Hilary goes out into in 2007 than she would have in 1957, when young Hodding was standing in cap and gown at Princeton listening to a commencement speaker's exhortations.

No one today, 50 years on, would seriously entertain the idea that she would be defined by her husband-to-be Travis. Her possibilities are limited only by her ambition. She saw on the podium in front of her not an all-white, all-male group of deans, but a diverse group of academic leaders.

Hodding Carter urged the graduates to "embrace change," but that may not have been necessary, because these students have only known change. Most of them were born just before the Soviet Union fell, were in kindergarten at the dawn of the Internet and were in their mid-teens when the twin towers were attacked. He cited Lincoln's observation that we cannot escape history. I thought, well, we, their parents thought we could, after the Berlin Wall fell and history supposedly ended, but our kids have learned otherwise.

And then there was the conferring of the degrees, and the turning of the tassel from right to left. And Moeser, who was attending his last winter commencement as chancellor, told them something thoughtful. He noted that the underlying assumption behind the founding of UNC after the Revolution was that an educated person was a public asset, and told them that they were standing on the shoulders of the good folks of North Carolina who have invested their hard-earned dollars in the higher education system. Including, he didn't have to add, many North Carolinians who never make it to college. So now, he said, it was time for them to go out and repay the citizenry's faith in public education with good works.

And then it was over. Cookies on the concourse, photos of graduates, and out into a day that had turned cold and windy.

 One down, one to go.

Hilary's got it, and didn't look good yesterday. The symptoms really manifested themselves early, early this morning. Which was of some concern, because today was her last exam of her undergraduate career, and by the time she was medicated this morning by the doctors, driving was not an option. Fortunately, Travis came to her rescue, taking her from Clayton up to Chapel Hill and then back again. What a good guy.

I sat up with Hilary. Well, technically, I patted her on the back a couple of times and then went and woke my wife up and said: Hilary's sick. And my wife sprang into action. Which reminded me of what I used to do when Hilary was noisily demanding a bottle from her crib. "Baby's crying," I'd say.

Graduation is Sunday. Full report to follow.

I'm coming a little late to this phenomenon. Evidently, there is a movement afoot called "Trash the Dress." I heard about this talking some time back to a wedding photographer. Here's an excerpt from an Associated Press story:

VICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) — Dustin Sanders of Ruston, La., loads his weapon with pink, orange and yellow paintballs, takes aim and fires. His target: a $500 partially beaded wedding gown worn by his bride of 4 months, Jessica.
As the paint blasts onto her gown, Jessica, 26, screams. Then she holds up a paintball gun and fires back, leaving her groom bruised and painted pink.
A wedding photographer captures it all, then follows the couple as they wash off in a fountain.
“It’s different, and we’re pretty unconventional,” said Jessica, adding that she and her new husband didn’t want to destroy the dress - just capture some unusual pictures that reflect their sense of fun.
“Trash The Dress” photo shoots like this have become an offbeat phenomenon across the country. In many, brides in white gowns simply pose where they’re bound to get wet or dirty: in the surf, in trees, in cornfields, on horses, in trash-strewn city alleys, on boxcars, on tractors.
Photographers say most such shoots aren’t necessarily about destroying or damaging the dress.
“It is just taking it in a place that you wouldn’t normally go. Not worrying about it too much,” said photographer Adam Hudson of Ridgeland, Miss., who has shot recent dress-trashes in the mud and at the State Fair.
“I think that a lot of brides are getting tired of the stand-in-front-of-the-altar shots,” he said.

*********

There's even a web site that's devoted to this.

OK. I'll say it. This is nuts.

From Brides.com:

1. Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy: After meeting at a Georgetown dinner party in May 1951, John F. Kennedy proposed in the spring of 1953 right before Jackie was sent on assignment in Europe with the Washington Times-Herald. She smiled and said she would give an answer soon. While away, she received a note from the future president saying “articles excellent but you are missed.” Upon returning home, she was greeted with a diamond-and-emerald engagement ring.
2. June Carter and Johnny Cash: Love bloomed where they both felt most at home. In 1968, Johnny proposed onstage during a concert, leaving many in the audience wondering if it was simply part of their notorious repartee. Garth Brooks copied the Man in Black when proposing onstage to fellow musician Trisha Yearwood in 2005.
3. Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer: In late 1955, the Prince proposed through his friend Father Tucker, who came to America to ask Grace for her hand in marriage on behalf of the prince — a royal custom by which a prince doesn’t arrange his own marriage. The prince later presented her with a 12-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring.
4. Seal and Heidi Klum: The singer proposed to his model-girlfriend two days before Christmas, 14,000 feet above sea-level in British Columbia, on a glacier, in an igloo built especially for his
proposal.
5. Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles: Though he proposed three weeks earlier at a private, candlelit dinner at Buckingham Palace before she left on a trip to Austria, the official announcement came on February 24, 1981. He intended to have her use the trip to think
about the proposal, but she accepted immediately. He presented her — and they presented the press — with an 18-carat sapphire engagement ring surrounded by diamonds.
6. Nick Cannon and Selita Ebanks: After leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala, he took her to Times Square in a chauffeured Rolls Royce where he presented her with a 12-carat diamond ring and pointed to the MTV jumbotron where the words, “Selita will you marry
me?” were projected.
7. Courtney Cox and David Arquette: Never to let anyone outshine him, David proposed on a beach in Florida and arranged to have a fireworks display go off the precise moment that he planned to pop the question.
8. Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman: The music executive groom proposed to his songbird bride in a room filled with flowers, balloons and a stack of gift boxes, each of which contained a different gift and poem; the last box had the ring.
9. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: In a press conference following his proposal, Tom gave the details of his early-morning Eiffel Tower offer of marriage to the Dawson’s Creek starlet. Before their midnight trip to the French landmark, the two shared a candlelit dinner at Le Jules Verne restaurant.
10. Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe: The young couple was reportedly engaged on vacation in South Carolina when he proposed to her in late 1998 over a breakfast in bed of strawberries and cream.

My proposal was less Tom and Katie. I don't recall much; we were in my wife's apartment. She says my pitch went something like: "You and me get along pretty good. Wanna get married?" Hey, it's lasted.

"Dad, I got a job." She called me at work with the news.

Hilary, who graduates from UNC on Sunday, will start work as a teacher at Clayton High School Jan. 2. Hilary graduated from Clayton, Comets Class of '04.

If you're driving through Clayton to the beach, it's that group of red brick buildings on the left of U.S. 70, right before the Highway 42 ramps. Clayton is still a small town, and the high school is an important place. Clayton blue is a color you see worn all over town. When people come home late-ish from jobs in Raleigh or RTP on a fall Friday night, they crane their necks as much as the 70 traffic will allow to see the scoreboard and how Gary Fowler's team is doing.

A popular local spot is the Rockin' Comet Diner (try the Philly cheese steak sandwich.)

It is a town where you can hear the trains whistle through on their way to Raleigh or Selma, a legacy of the days long gone when Clayton grew up around the railroad line.

Graduates of Clayton High can recall, many years later, the Comet Code, even though they may have indulged in a wee bit of teenaged eye-rolling when they recited it at school functions:

"Be where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there.
Do what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do it.
Say what you are supposed to say when you are supposed to say it.
Respect yourself, others, their rights and their property."

Which are good words to live by when they go out in the world, or even when they return from the world to teach the newest Comets.

It is the second Sunday of Advent, which is something I didn't used to know much about, being Jewish and all. But I married a Methodist, and my children are Methodists, and so I have been attending church off and on for more than 25 years. I am hoping that God gives me credit for being in one of his houses of worship, even if it is just partial credit.

Over the years, one of the reasons I have attended church is to watch my musical children perform, and that has now come to include my future son-in-law, who is the music director of the church when he isn't studying computer science at State. Hilary is in the choir. Today, the service included special Christmas music, with Hilary playing the keyboard.

On stage were a couple of timpani that were on loan from the high school for the service. These timpani are part of a story.

When Hilary was drum major of the high school marching band, I was a member of the pit crew, which consisted of dads who hauled the props and pit equipment to competitions. Our job was to assemble the props and set up the timpani and other immobile musical instruments, like xylophones. I did not know that you were not supposed to lift timpani by the top because that would mess up the tension of the heads and make them sound funny. Instead, you were supposed to grab them by the metal supports on the side.

I learned this the hard way at a competition in Tennesee, when we were scrambling to move the equipment inside a domed stadium. I was grabbing my timpani by the rim and was dragging it, and one of the more experienced pit men proceeded to tell me, loudly and with great authority, what I was doing wrong. This has become known in family lore as the day Dad Got Chewed Out Over The Timpani.

And there it was today, on stage, the timpani I mishandled. In the spirit of the season, I thought, isn't it time I have forgiven the man who yelled at me?

Nah.

So Hilary comes home with new shoes, a pair that she can wear at graduation in a week and a half and some new-job shoes. Frankly, I had never paid attention to her shoe purchases before, but because I am always on the lookout for blog material, I actually stopped what I was doing and looked at them. The boxes were an unusual color and I said where did you get them. She said the Black and White store at Southpoint. The Black and White store? I asked. Yes, it's a store that just sells things that are black and white.

Just black and white, huh? Yep, she said. Upon further investigation, I learned that it is called White House/Black Market.

I mentioned this to a co-worker, who looked at me as if I was the last person on earth to know about this, and she said it's not so strange an idea. Wouldn't it be easier for you if there were a Blue Shirt Store? I wear a lot of blue shirts.

Speaking of blue, Hilary also showed me the cap and gown that she had gotten for the big event Dec. 16 at the Dean Dome. The last time Hilary and I were in the Dome together was September 1998 for a Celine concert. Hilary was 12.