Wedding Trauma

Way back when, the joys of getting married came hand in hand with life-altering trauma for the bride: leaving her parents' house, where she had lived her whole life, and moving somewhere else with a man she did not know very well; abruptly setting aside a lifetime of modesty and chastity for sudden plundering in the marriage bed by the same little-known man (who most likely was no foreplay ninja, thus compounding the trauma); and so on. I may be getting married in a different era, but I too am working through certain traumas, such as:

* My bangs. For my last haircut before the wedding I chose to economize, being already slightly traumatized by the cost of the wedding itself. So, forgoing my fantastic $85 French hairdresser, I went to a competent $32 hairdresser, figuring the haircut didn't matter because I'll be wearing a veil the whole time. All that would matter is my bangs, right? So naturally, while my back was to the mirror, this hairdresser savaged my bangs, which now look much as western Asia did after a rampage by Attila the Hun. My bangs are one inch long. I look like a Roman emperor.

* People's inability to hear me when I say I don't care. Whether the bridesmaids wear open-toed shoes? I don't care; as long as they don't sprain their ankles walking in the woods, they could wear fuzzy bunny slippers or Flamenco shoes, I don't care, but please, please don't email me pictures of ten slightly different pairs of black shoes from which I am expected to choose! What color cummerbund my father should wear? I don't care. Tie dye? Gold lame? Chainmail? Whatever floats his boat. What our wedding colors are? What? I do not understand this question. Our wedding colors are "pretty colors and lots of them." Our wedding theme is "come have fun, eat fantastic organic food, dance, lie giggling under the table while hopelessly drunk, wear a crazy costume if you want, wear a bikini if you want, enjoy." Our colors are pretty, our theme is enjoy. Everybody, please feel free to improvise from there.

* My Republicousins. For various reasons, fifteen of my Catholic, Reaganomics-loving cousins and their families will be unable to attend. This means we won't get to expose the only Republicans I'm closely related to, and their impressionable youngsters, to our big fat Pagan hippy Native-AmeriWiccan wedding ceremony in the woods, presided over by a Pagan priestess and shaman, with some gay bridesmaids to boot. The sheltered red-state youngsters, my first cousins once removed, also won't get to see my gay uncle dressed as the Mad Hatter. They'll be at Sunday school or something. Oh, how sad.

I am working through these various sorrows psychologically, and, with the help of my therapist and a strong community of supportive friends, I hope to emerge from all this as a better, stronger person.

Today's Most Beautiful Thing

Paul Potts, a cell-phone salesman from Wales, is today's most beautiful thing. This melancholy, unconfident, overweight Welsh phone salesman in his late thirties auditioned for the British version of American Idol, "Britain's Got Talent." He stood there with horrendous teeth and an awful suit that didn't fit and announced to the judges that he was going to sing opera--two of the judges exchanged a sarcastic raise of the eyebrows, as if to say "oh god help us." And then he did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

A few weeks later, he won the entire competition. Here's his finale performance; after this, millions of people across Britain phoned in their votes, and he won. http://youtube.com/watch?v=EfVImoJSAMo

Yes, yes. There is grace in the world.