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Personal matters
I haven't had much time to read the web or blog lately. For one thing, my part-time job ended two weeks ago and so I've been scavenging for freelance design work. But, more importantly, Charles (Stay Free! "Vice President") and I have decided to get married. Since I'm a classic Type A personality, I immediately started to look into reception sites and expenses, even though the wedding is a good year away.... and, to make a long story short, the experience has been such a rude awakening that Charles and I have decided to document it on a new wedding blog. Maybe you'll enjoy it.
Hopefully we'll find a reception site soon and will run out of things to complain about (though somehow I doubt it).
Posted by Carrie McLaren on 09/21/2005 | Permalink
Comments
Carrie - my friends got married at the Prospect Park Picnic House a few years ago. It was very affordable and absolutely beautiful for a fall wedding, though I think the rates have risen - the site now costs $4,000 to rent.
http://www.prospectpark.org/plan/main.cfm?Target=../dest/picn_rent#wedding
and Mazel Tov!
Posted by: Leigh Witchel | Sep 21, 2005 6:37:40 PM
Hi Carrie,
I attended a wedding on Sunday this past weekend at the Picnic House - it is most certainly an excellent venue and integrates your wedding into the fabric of Brooklyn life - which of course should be inescapable even on your wedding day. There are discounts for days that no one wants. Sunday - September 11 - unfinished venue. You name it, it can be a discount.
Anyone shooting it yet?
Congratulations,
-Tobin
Posted by: tobin | Sep 21, 2005 6:53:29 PM
First off, congrats! Here are my ideas:
* Totally sell out and have the whole thing sponsored by brands. It would be fun even brainstorming who would, ironically, scurry to represent at a consumer culture critic's wedding. This would make a great story, I think (Of course that awful Star Jones went that route already)
* Have the shindig at Juniors in Bkln. I don't know that they are reasonable, but I would like to attend a formal occasion there.
Posted by: becky | Sep 21, 2005 7:46:56 PM
Congratulations Carrie and Charles - all the best! But Carrie, why are you converting?!? The only religion more backward than the catholics are the jews, and they never accept conversions from a woman anyway, so why bother!
Posted by: Jim | Sep 21, 2005 7:47:33 PM
First off, congrats! Here are my ideas:
* Totally sell out and have the whole thing sponsored by brands. It would be fun even brainstorming who would, ironically, scurry to represent at a consumer culture critic's wedding. This would make a great story, I think (Of course that awful Star Jones went that route already)
* Have the shindig at Juniors in Bkln. I don't know that they are reasonable, but I would like to attend a formal occasion there.
Posted by: becky | Sep 21, 2005 7:48:15 PM
As a longtime Stay Free! reader, I'm rather surprised to hear all this. While I totally wish you and your partner the best, I find it strange that you'd be buying into the wedding thing, being such a strident cultural critic and all. Have you read Jaclyn Geller's history of marriage and scathing critique of the wedding industrial complex, "Here Comes the Bride"? This is not an institution/industry with much positive stuff going for it, historically or in contemporary guise. And Judaism is a moldy old conservative sexist religion -- I was born into it and I avoid any associations to it at all costs.
Why not save yourself the entire 15K and just move in together? Or go to City Hall and throw a party in somebody's backyard afterwards if the dominant culture still nags at you to legalize your relationship and have some kind of gathering to celebrate that legalization. (People in unmarried couples cannot get each other's Social Security benefits if one of them dies, even if they've been together, like, forever. Yay for marriage, if you happen to be hetero!)
Oh my oh my. Just when you think you can count on certain things in the world. What's next, articles in Stay Free about how to diet your way into that princess dress? Or whether Tiffany's or Bloomies has nicer vases?
(Don't mean to come off as rude here -- I feel about weddings the way I do about Walmart, so I was caught off guard by the blog entry. I do love Stay Free magazine, though!)
Posted by: Lulu | Sep 21, 2005 8:59:42 PM
Congrats on your upcoming wedding. My niece is getting married in a month in a cave in Virginia. Why? Caves must be hot wedding spots I guess. Again Congrats to both of you.
Posted by: Suann Lewis | Sep 21, 2005 9:56:07 PM
Congrats!
Posted by: Zack | Sep 22, 2005 12:05:10 AM
Lulu should suck it. A wedding is a public testimony before the people you love. A brilliant cultural critic of the atomizing individualism of American life like Carrie should proudly revel in a ritual that acknowledges the collective nature of social life. It concentrates all the beauty the couple cares to muster in one place, in the midst of a huge party, an existential dare that love can trump loneliness, until death do us part. So some people turn it into an alienated and alienating, zombified commodity fest? Well fuck them then. Proceed without guilt, Carrie and Charles, and with all my and my wife's blessings.
Posted by: Rick Perlstein | Sep 22, 2005 2:16:57 AM
My suggestion is to have a friend with great taste in music mix you a set of cd's for the reception. You can suggest some favorites, or leave yourself in their hands.
I did it, everyone danced, and my wife and still listen to the cd's all the time.
Above all, when you have a wedding - have the wedding you want - it is your marriage!
Congratulations!
Posted by: Flip | Sep 22, 2005 7:21:35 AM
Lulu - my thoughs exactly. BIG suprise - not the marriage, the approach.
Posted by: Susan | Sep 22, 2005 8:22:03 AM
congratulations to you two - hold out for a a debeers diamond ring, carrie. and charles, get into the habit of eating ice cream straight out of the carton. i predict many years of happiness - should the mag change its title to "not so free anymore"?
Posted by: herb | Sep 22, 2005 9:22:21 AM
> BIG suprise - not the marriage, the approach.
Excuse me, but what do you even know about the approach, other than the fact that we are having a wedding? I guess the "alternative" thing to do is to either head to City Hall or Vegas, but we like our parents too much to do that.
Posted by: carrie | Sep 22, 2005 9:30:39 AM
Ah Rick, what an idealist you are! I'm all for community and love and existential dares. But when I see a brilliant cultural critic blogging about the obscene costs of ultra-traditional conspicuous waste items like gowns and cut flowers and wondering aloud about whether this venue or that one will offend her parents' sensibilities, it's pretty clear that this is not exactly about "all the beauty a couple cares to muster," let alone an existential love-dare. It's more of a bad sitcom plot. Who *cares* if mom still gets off on rote imitations of European royalty?
Anyone with a shred of resourcefulness and imagination knows it's easy to throw a great celebratory party without spending very much money at all. But that's not even the point I'm trying to make here. Weddings were historically about the transfer of property from one man to another -- we still see the symbolic "giving away" of a bride today, which I find disgusting on so many levels I don't even know where to start. Yeah, contemporary weddings tend to sidestep the chattel thing and focus more on the till death do us part angle, but it's pretty hard to take that sort of vow seriously these days; should be more like till death or divorce do us part, but professionally airbrushed photographs are forever!
Posted by: Lulu | Sep 22, 2005 1:12:08 PM
I may write more later, but for now I'm with Rick, Lulu.
I care what my mother thinks. She's been good to me and deserves a lot better than your sneering contempt.
Posted by: Charles Star | Sep 22, 2005 2:10:36 PM
Mazel tov to both of you, and best wishes! I'm glad to see the merger will be taking place, wherever and however it occurs. :) :)
Posted by: randee | Sep 22, 2005 2:40:17 PM
Charles--
No offense to mom, but let her kvell over your general happiness and the fact that your partner puts out the best zine ever!
(I've known many a Jewish mother in my time, and I do empathize....)
I'm really not trying to offend here at all! It's just that I've read Stay Free! for years now, and you get a certain image of someone from their writing, and imagining Carrie in a traditional wedding makes about as much sense to me as imagining Andrea Dworkin in a Girls Gone Wild video!
Posted by: Lulu | Sep 22, 2005 2:51:01 PM
Jeezis, Lulu, if you want to be flower girl so bad, just ask! Enough with the buttering up already!
Mazel Tov, Carrie and Charles!
Posted by: Jason | Sep 22, 2005 3:08:53 PM
You're going to marry a man who didn't even propose to you? Carrie, you deserve better than that!!!!
Posted by: jill | Sep 22, 2005 5:40:51 PM
Congratu-fucking-lations, as we say in London.
Posted by: Iain Aitch | Sep 23, 2005 1:37:34 PM
since tonite is the premiere of "inconceivable" (nbc?), i just hafta ask - what's the baby situtation? if any. if you opt for pets instead i'll hook you up with dog / cat adoption places (tho you prob know them already).
and while we're at it, can i interest you in some life insurance? or, have you thought about burial plots?
Posted by: herb | Sep 23, 2005 3:16:17 PM
To Jill: What makes you think that I'm not the one who was deprived of the proposal? You try to figure out how to propose to a woman who doesn't want a ring, hates diamonds, and is otherwise impossible to shop for because she isn't really into "stuff."
To Herb: Just take a look at the first post over at AFW. That's all we know right now.
More thoughts at AFW.
Posted by: Charles Star | Sep 23, 2005 4:25:20 PM
congratulations.
getting married is awful, but being married is fucking great. seriously.
and i have to say, i love the internet. every action has an equal and opposite judgemental backlash.
Posted by: blah | Sep 23, 2005 5:43:42 PM
Carrie – from your posts, it sounds like you’ve been in some turmoil lately with the apartment lease and the job, and marrying Charles might be the closest thing to jump to. Please think, girl! From Charles’ post, one thing is clear - you’ll be forever competing with his mommy in his mind, and guess who’s gonna loose that one!
Posted by: Lora | Sep 23, 2005 8:22:10 PM
Hey thanks, Lora! What are you doing hanging out here anyway? Don't you have to go tell your mother how little she means to you?
Posted by: Charles Star | Sep 23, 2005 8:36:06 PM
Charles whether you like it or not Lora has a point. Perhaps it mars your own personal view of what's happening. And maybe she's completely wrong. But at the same time, there's something valid to the concerns she raises.
I wish the both of you luck. But to ignore the oddities of this whole process and how you two are choosing to play it out publically is simply vanity without depth.
Posted by: Victor Dubinksy | Sep 23, 2005 11:35:09 PM
No, Victor, Lora doesn't have a point at all. At what point did "considering the feelings of others" become tantamount to "in the thrall of a dominating mother figure"?
When I can figure out why posting reviews of wedding venues and caterers is "vanity without depth," I'll get back to you.
Posted by: Charles Star | Sep 24, 2005 1:14:15 AM
"When I can figure out why posting reviews of wedding venues and caterers is "vanity without depth," I'll get back to you."
Please do. At this point there are no reviews just a bizarre post that announces a wedding and complains about the traditional process yet is hellbent on being a traditional process yet then links to a site to commemorate this whole thing called 'Another Fucking Wedding'.
I wish the two of you the best in whatever your attempting to do. In the wedding and the self-created conflict of approaching the process in such a bizarre way.
Posted by: Victor Dubinksy | Sep 24, 2005 12:24:36 PM
i went to AFW site & now that we know carrie is not pregnant, how 'bout charles? i recall that documentary some yrs back by joan rivers, called "rabbit test". well?
has the issue of PRENUP come up yet? i can imagaine a buncha lawyers just chomping at the bit to help y'out.
Posted by: herb | Sep 24, 2005 3:51:40 PM
hey carrie and charles:
congratulations--great news!
Posted by: Andrew Gelman | Sep 25, 2005 1:02:49 PM
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