Let's talk about wedding magazines.
Recently I was sitting at a bar talking to my married friend about how my wedding planning was going.
"Did you go out and buy all the wedding magazines?" she asked.
I hadn't. I had no plans to. Was this a mistake? Did I need wedding magazines to plan a wedding?
"No," she said, "but this is the only time in your life you have an excuse to buy them."
She had a point. But magazines, especially the ones aimed at women, had only ever made me feel bad about myself. So I expected that a WEDDING magazine would only increase my wedding anxiety by bombarding me with impossible images of things I could never afford or be. No thank you, I thought.
But then, as if by fate, a wedding magazine just showed up in my mailbox. And I decided to give it a look.
When I scanned the cover, the only thing that got me really riled up was the promise of "GOTHIC CAKES." What could that mean?
Unfortunately, though, the gothic cakes didn't feature even a single coffin made of fondant.*
Fixed it.
Something that DID seem Gothic was this confusing imagery where a bride appeared to be either sleeping or dead.
A lot of people in the ads looked secretly angry.
And the intended takeaway from many images was simply unclear to me.
Why is wedding food supposed to look like a forest creature made a nest out of it?
One helpful tip I got was to make absolutely sure that my photographer gets a shot of me fake laughing at a secret my husband just told me.
I guess it's good to be prepared if your wedding happens post-apocalypse.
