Monday 18 September 2006

Yet More Signs Bridezilla Is in the House

My sister is awash in wedding chores, and so her fiance's mother offered to help. My sister gave her the task of ordering yarmulkes. Now I think of yarmulkes as akin to, say, napkins. Functional, necessary (for a Jewish wedding), and chances are about one in a million that any guest, when asked about the wedding the next day, will say, "Those were the ugliest/most stunning napkins/yarmulkes I've ever seen."

Apparently I am wrong.

The black silk moire yarmulkes my sister's mother-in-law-to-be -- um, MIL? -- ordered (and paid for) arrived the other day, and

My sister's mother-in-law-to-be -- um, MIL? -- ordered black silk moire yarmulkes, my sister told me, wrinkling her nose. Apparently if my sister herself had ordered them, she would have chosen black suede. And she would have stamped she and her fiance's names on the outside, not the inside. And she would have used just their first names, not their first and last names. And she would have used just the English date, instead of the English and the Hebrew date.

With each day I become more and more grateful I live thousands of miles away, because I can only imagine how I would mess up the tasks I'd be given if I actually were around to do them.

* * *

My sister has done nothing but complain about how much she has to do and how over budget she is, but I arrived at her apartment to find five boxes with the words "sniff" on them stacked in the space most people use for a fireplace.

They were packets of tissues with a bride and groom on each one. She claims to have forgotten how much she paid for them, but I find it significant she also refuses to look it up...

* * *

Today I met my sister for lunch and listened as she complained, virtually without stopping, for an hour, about her co-workers, her lack of time, her lack of money, and how grateful she will be when this wedding is over (I resisted adding "Me, too.") I asked if there was anything I could do to help, since I was planning to spend the afternoon mooching around Georgetown spending money I shouldn't. She asked me to look for champagne-colored ribbons -- not champagne-pink ribbons, she specified, but sort of light gold.

"Why?" I asked.

She needs ribbon for the basket with the yarmulkes, and ribbons for the bags she might leave for out-of-town guests, and ribbon for various other things I tuned out. She did not want me to buy the ribbons -- only to find samples, because only she herself could determine if they were the right color. She has not booked a DJ for a wedding that is five weeks away, and she is spending time deciding between shades of light gold?

* * *

Yesterday I arrived back at my sister's apartment after her bachelorette party weekend -- she had gone to drive a friend to the airport -- to find her fiance watching cartoons on Fox and smoking pot.

"Now that I don't have the bar to study for I've reverted to college," he told me proudly.

This morning I asked my sister how often he smoked -- she is unbelievably prudish about things like that, so it was a bit shocking. "Not every weekend," she said. "He does it whenever he has to do anything wedding-related, like go to Crate & Barrel to deal with the registry."

I like the guy more and more every time I meet him. I can't help wondering if he's going to smoke before the wedding, and if so, if I can have a couple of hits. Or seven.

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