77 days until the wedding.
Really? 

Some things yet to do:

1.Find Christina’s wedding gown.  We are planning on making the drive down to Oxnard to the David’s Bridal mega-warehouse next week and finding something beautiful with few alterations needed.  We are now down to the wire with the timing of this purchase.  I will be invoking the help of every benevolent force in the Universe to insure that this day is a happy, productive and satisfying event.

 2. Find my dress.  As is my usual routine, I will shop alone and curse silently (or perhaps aloud, just for fun) the appearance of my upper arms, hips and assorted other body parts as I either struggle to squeeze into or swim around in dowdy mother of the bride dresses.

The non-fashion element of these garments does not trouble me since I’m supposed to be blending into the background rather than standing out and making a bold and glaring statement on my daughter’s wedding day.  I’ve had two trips down the aisle of my own….now it’s Christina’s turn to be in the spotlight.  I do have an appointment to get my hair “done” on the day of the wedding which will be a real departure for me.  The most I’ve ever dared to do (after bidding a not-so-fond farewell to the perms of the 1980s) was to put barrettes in my hair to keep it out of my face.

3. Decide what the men will wear.  We have a sketchy idea of what this is all about, but nothing has been firmly determined yet.

4.  Reception favors.  I recall attending a wedding years ago and receiving as a reception favor a $5 gift certificate to the local movie theater and a pack of Dentyne gum, tied together with a little pink ribbon.  This must have been an inside joke between the bride and groom, because the rest of us didn’t know what to make of it.

5. Details of the bridal shower at the end of August.  More to follow on this in an upcoming blog post.

I decided to consult with my 1950s bridal etiquette book to see how I’m doing with the suggested timelines and procedures, and stumbled across this delightful nugget of advice:

“If your parents are divorced but you are very friendly with your father, it is quite correct to have him take you down the aisle and give you away.  However, instead of joining the family in the front pew on the left side, he then retires quietly to the side aisle and to a pew in the back of the church, or in the case of only one aisle, he walks back a few pews to a special seat.”

Good God!  This reads as though divorced fathers are lumped into the same outcast group with leprosy patients and the criminally insane!  I like that this divorced father (who, in the 1950s, was probably an ex-con who reeked of whiskey and had a bleached blonde, leopard-print-wearing secretary/mistress by his side) was supposed to “retire quietly” to some “special seat” in the back of the church.  Why not just put a folding metal chair in the men’s room for him?  He can prop the door open to keep tabs on what’s happening with the “real family” up front….

The book continues:

“If you are devoted to a stepfather, he may take the place of your real father with loving propriety and probably with just as much nervousness.”

What a sordid picture this paints!  Even though Christina’s dad and I are divorced, he will be sitting right up front with the rest of us, proud of his only daughter on her wedding day.  Christina’s stepfather will be performing the marriage ceremony, so she will be surrounded by good men who love her very much (that is, unless one of them shows up drunk, handcuffed to a stripper and swigging gin out of a flask).  Then we'll need to look into that "special seat" option.....