Father of the Bride Archives

Like I would know. But as a public service, I am bound and determined to find out.

Anyway, this comes from Kathryn Wexler, a fashion writer for our sister McClatchy newspaper, the Miami Herald. Lindy Sue from Homestead writes in that her daughter is getting married in January and wants to know about what style and length the bride's mom should wear, etc., etc.

Kathryn replies in part: "For a traditional wedding, you will want to rely on dressy fabrics, such as silk, taffeta, polyester and brocade, to name a few. At more casual weddings, a breezy chiffon is fine. The dresses are usually full-length, and often come with matching jackets or boleros. If not, make sure you have a pretty shawl or dressy sweater. If you can't see yourself in anything other than a suit, make sure it's memorable -- with a metallic tint, sparkly adornments or shiny threads."

I understand some of this. Like full-length. If you want to read this in full, go here or here. 

Every Sunday, I make a point of reading the wedding announcements in The New York Times. Sometimes I have even read them aloud to my wife. This is a tough page to crack. Unlike the N&O announcements, which are paid ads that anyone can buy, the Times treats weddings like news stories. There are pros and cons to both ways of approaching this, but it sure means that a lot of New York-area weddings don't run in the Times. Imagine the tension in households all throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as families wait to hear if they've made it. Forget about the Times executive editor. The real power at that paper resides at the weddings desk.

One of my games in reading the Times is to try to figure out who married better, the bride or the groom. If the bride's father has a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and the groom's dad is a meat cutter in Queens, that's a clue that the groom somehow managed to win a scholarship to an Ivy League school where he met the bride, and love conquered all. Ten points for the groom in that instance.

Often, the bride and groom work for non-profits in noble-sounding gigs that, my guess, don't pay much but for some reason require two graduate degrees.

The more noble-sounding the jobs, ("The bride is a communication specialist for the Worldwide Coalition to Save the Whatever"), the more often there's a dad somewhere who has been working years in some very gritty line of work. The grittier the line of work, the briefer the mention he gets.

Which isn't fair, on behalf of gritty dads everywhere.

So I try to visualize what this New York Times wedding announcement dad looks like and does, particularly in the cases in which the editor chose to run the announcement not because the dad or mom seemed like anything special but because the bride, say, has shaped a resume that resonates with the Times wedding czar's refined sensibilities.

For example:

Dad's the general manager for North American sales for Acme Electroplating & Die. He makes an OK living in an industrial park outside Newark, and spends his days dealing with calls from customers wanting to know what happened to that missing shipment of electroplated stuff that was supposed to be coming in on the truck. He hasn't had a vacation in about seven years, and every month or so he cuts a check so that Marissa or whatever her name is can pay the rent and go clubbing in Manhattan despite her low-paying job. He loves Marissa dearly. She has no idea what he really does at Acme, but worries after visits home to their suburban New Jersey ranch home that he looks tired. Marissa's mom is an emergency room nurse, and also looks tired, and can only sigh deeply when she thinks of the $200,000 that went into Marissa's education and the continuing monthly annuity.

I think the Times should spend a few paragraphs going into this backstory, but I suppose it will only muddy up their wedding narratives.

(A really important disclaimer: This bears no resemblance to our own situation. My daughter has been working many hours at a pharmacy while attending UNC, God bless her, and Travis has been working part-time all through N.C. State, including plumbing. No one whose wedding appears in the Times has ever worked in plumbing, I am certain. Our couple will undoubtedly be both working in good, sturdy, rent-paying jobs after graduation. Their wedding announcement will appear in the unpretentious if accessible N&O.)

This week it is seven months to the wedding. I promised that I would get in shape such that when I walked my daughter down the aisle, it would be a slimmer and trimmer me. So starting tomorrow morning, I will be hitting the gym.  By the way, I hate the gym. Hate it, hate it, hate it. 

And I like to eat. But I will commit to eat only that which my wife puts in front of me, and refrain from snacking.  I have taken this pledge before, but now I am doing it publicly in this blog, which puts the pressure on me, and you know that's what I need more of, pressure. 

Do I sound cranky?  That's because just talking about this makes me cranky. There was a time that when you got old, you were allowed to look like I do. When did that change? 

OK. I'm finished. I guess I'll have to keep you posted on this with regular weekly weigh-ins. I'm embarrassed to tell you what I weigh now, so I'll just give you how much I lose. Maybe at the end of this, I'll tell you the starting poundage.  I can't tell you how much I'm not looking forward to this. 

Saturday, I did a favor for an out-of-town friend and went to Riverwood Athletic Club, a new subdivision on the outskirts of Clayton. At a collectibles shop at Riverwood, Jim Rice -- a legendary baseball player who roamed left field for the Boston Red Sox in the 70s and 80s -- was signing autographs. My friend is a collector and wanted to get Rice's signature on a couple of baseballs. This is how a lot of former major leaguers make a living, particularly those who played before today's multi-million-dollar contracts. There is a wedding tie-in to this story that I will get to by and by.

I stood in line for around 45 minutes with a surprising number of southern Red Sox fans, and eventually got to the front of the line and had the two baseballs signed by Rice. I was reminded, as I stood patiently waiting for Rice to affix his signatures, of another Red Sox great that I met around 40 years ago, Joe Cronin.

Jim Rice should be in the baseball Hall of Fame. Joe Cronin, when I met him, had already been elected to the Hall. And I met him at my home in Newton, Mass. He was there because his son had fallen in love with a girl who lived next to us when we lived in a veterans' housing complex in the 1950s. Joe lived in a somewhat swankier side of town. My mom was throwing a party for the couple as part of the runup to their wedding. And Joe Cronin showed up. I was probably no older than 10 or 11, but, like any youngster growing up in Boston, I knew about Joe Cronin.

So that's my wedding story for today.

*********************************************

I would be remiss if I did not mention that Saturday night I had the distinct pleasure of seeing my son's band play at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh. My son was on the drums. This was the first club gig for the band, and it's something to see your baby boy pounding away at drums before a rowdy crowd in a club. My future son-in-law, Travis, was there with Hil and said George did just fine. Travis is, himself, a rocker who has played local clubs for some time, and so he can tell. My children got their musical genes from my wife because I can't play squat.

So yesterday morning, in a situation completely unrelated to the wedding but completely related to my job, I needed a picture in a hurry to test the photo-uploading feature of our newly relaunched web site, Triangle.com. Some background: I've been working like Mongo (Blazing Saddles reference), a minor pawn in the prep work for this new site for about three months, and as we were coming down to the wire, all of a sudden the photo feature -- which lets people share their photos on the site -- wasn't working. We had practically everyone except Jim Goodnight working on the problem. Finally, at 10:45 and 42 seconds, we got the email from The Boys in the Lab that it was working. But you know me, obsessive-compulsive boyo that I am, I didn't want to leave it alone. I thought, ok, I've got to test this sucker myself. So I scoured my hard drive, and what do you know, I found the pics from the engagement photo shoot. So I loaded the one with Travis and me, and that became the first new image on the relaunched Triangle.com. Eventually, people started getting their own pictures uploaded and it eventually got shoved off the home page.

In other developments...... I was watching some bridezilla show the other night; it might have been the Bridezilla show, I don't know. They're all starting to run together, because they all have the same motif, if I can use that word. What I mean is that they are videotaping the bride and the bridesmaids in the house before going to church, or in the bride's room at the wedding venue, and pure heck is reigning. The bride is usually on her cell telling someone at the other end that she's freakin' because the flowers haven't shown up yet. You have never seen such tension as in these sequences. Meanwhile, what they don't show is the groom and his homies, shooting the breeze and scratching, where the conversation is running to: "So, like, who do you like this weekend, the Colts or the Patriots?" Guys don't typically go all Hugh Grant/Four Weddings and a Funeral on you. They aren't that self-aware.

One issue that I learned about, visually, from the show I was watching is that getting the bride into the car with her wedding gown and all the accoutrements on takes several minutes, and is not unlike trying to wedge the box with the new DeWalt 3750 PSI pressure washer (with the 13 horsepower Honda engine) into your back seat at Home Depot, except that the pressure washer is not hurting dog's ears for blocks. I have not seen this on any wedding checklist.

Here they are. See post a couple of scrolls down for the story. Photo cred to Bruce McCarthy. We had to pay the ducks scale rates; Thanks to Ducks Local 393 for their cooperation. No fowl were harmed in this shoot.

Obligatory rabbit ears photo, a family tradition.  And could dad be any goofier? No, is the consensus.

My wife, who reads this, pointed out a couple of typos in my last post, about the photo shoot. She has spent her career teaching youngsters, and as such, has a teacher's eye for spelling errors. I should, too, having spent much of my career as an editor. I will try to do better.

Hilary and Travis are both in serious job-search mode, with graduation from their respective colleges around six weeks away.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about the other kid, who isn't getting, perhaps, as much attention because of the upcoming wedding. George, my freshman at N.C. State, probably thinks that's just fine. And as a second child, I know that it's not all bad when the older sibling is dominating the radar. So I should mention that George is playing the Berkeley Restaurant with his band this Saturday night in Raleigh. I have now assuaged my guilt, and I checked the spelling of assuage.

So this is what happened at the engagement picture photo shoot. I got there late because I'd been napping, which is what I do on Sunday afternoons after the hard work of going through pounds of New York Times. Hilary and Travis were already with the photographer at the pond behind Clyde Sorensons's house. Here's a plug for Clyde for letting them use his pond. He's a professor of entomology at N.C. State who also sings a booming bass in the choir at the church and may be one of the most unassuming smart persons you'll meet. What Clyde doesn't know about bugs probably isn't worth knowing. The Sorensons live a few houses down from Travis' home.

The photographer was a friend of Travis' family, Bruce McCarthy, who, when he isn't shooting weddings, is a manager at Novo Nordisk, one of the life science companies that have transformed the western side of Johnston County where we live.

The late afternoon sun was burning through the clouds. I'm not just saying that for imagery. It was a beautiful Clayton day, the kind of late October day that makes me love living in this small town. Halloween has decorated Clayton.

The leaves had started to turn, and the breeze was whipping up ripples on the surface of the pond; the ducklings were being supervised by their mother. Murray, the Sorensons' dog, was barking despite Clyde's best basso profoundo efforts to shush him.

Travis had his arm around Hilary. Bruce was giving instructions. "Bend your left leg and keep your right leg straight," he told Hilary. Hilary was showing more teeth than Travis. She had the same expression she has always had for cameras. I can't exactly describe it but you can see it in every shot from 3 to 21. Even with a couple of inches of heels, she came up only halfway up Travis' head. He posed them against the fence, on the gazebo-ish dock that extended into the pond, on a bench, against trees.

We had some fun. Hilary climbed up on Travis' back and they chased after the ducks, hoping to get them in the picture but they wouldn't play. She got Travis in the headlock shot (see earlier Toru Tanaka post). They did the shot where they are walking away from the camera. I mugged with Travis, my head on his shoulder. We pretended for the camera to be playing tug of war with Hilary, me on one arm, Travis yanking at the other.

Whole thing took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Out of the dozens of shots, you'll see one in the paper, in the weddings and engagements classified section back of Sunday Journal.

I mentioned somewhere that Hilary and Travis met in middle school, got to know each other through church youth group, and such.  My wife and I were in our early 20s when we met, I think we were both 22.  We were set up by mutual friends.  Katherine was teaching school with the wife of the sports editor at the newspaper in Martinsville, Va., were I was working in my first job. I was a reporter, and pretty much all I did was work. Katherine had gotten a job with the county schools after graduating from Meredith. We had been living in the town for a couple of years.

The sports editor's wife, having taken pity on me, wanted to set us up; the sports editor wasn't crazy about playing cupid, Katherine told me later. But he went along with the idea and gave me Katherine's phone number.  The first time I called, she was busy that weekend; I gave it another shot and we made a date and the rest, as they say, is etc., etc.  Katherine's recollection is that I spent our date talking about myself, which, I don't know, may be true. My memory is hazy.  I remember having Alaskan King Crab.

Hilary and Travis are getting ready to get their engagement pictures taken.  My favorite kind of photos are the ones where the bride-to-be has her fiance in the "you ain't goin' nowhere, bud" headlock reminiscent of one of my heros from 1970s-era professional wrestling, Professor Toru Tanaka, who used what he called the "sleeper hold" on his adversaries. It was very effective. Hilary does not favor that pose.

Here is a photo of the professor. I do not recall if he actually got a Ph.D. or if he was ABD.

My daughter gave me a pedometer for my birthday and said I have to walk 10,000 steps a day. It has an FM radio. Monday, I did around 2,500 steps. Tuesday I forgot to wear it. I am also going to start going back to the fitness club that we have a membership to but haven't been using.  I have seven months to lose a bunch of weight, I won't say how much.  Having two kids caused me to lose my figure and my feet went flat. Also, my wife's a phenomenal cook, so I place some of this on her.

We were sitting in the florist's family room.  The florist asked Hilary what her colors were.  Hilary reached into a box and pulled out the shoes she will wear on her wedding day.  They are red, and the bridesmaids will be wearing red.  Some significant information exchange was transpiring between the florist and my daughter, I think, even if I didn't understand it all. But it all started with the shoes and the gowns and works from there. There is some kind of coordination imperative which, if violated, well I don't want to even think about it. 

Here is what I have come away with re: flowers.....

* Busy is bad.......don't use too many different types of flowers.

* Once flowers open up to the right point, the florist will refrigerate them.  Hilary said it's like "hairspray. It holds 'em in place."

* Too much pink with red dresses isn't good.

* You'd think this is obvious, but what time of year you get married determines what's available in the way of flowers.  (Actually, I didn't feel such the twit after I read my new copy of Carolina Bride - an N&O publication, thank you very much. On page 64 it says that your "floral professional can tell you what flowers are readily available during the season of your wedding." So there.

* Here's some decisions:  Corsage or wrist flowers for meemaws? Hand-tied vs. bouquet holder?

* Evidently, starting a few days before the wedding, the florist is fighting a narrow time window from the time the flowers show up from California or South America.  The word is "processing." Lots of processing to get the flowers ready for the church, for the reception hall. I am convinced that I would not want to be a florist. Especially if the daisies that are supposed to be yellow with brown centers come in a shade of salmon with centers that aren't brown.

My new copy of Brides magazine (Our Big Flower Issue!) says that the average cost of wedding flowers these days is $1,121.

Sounds about right.