(Warning: This is a rather self-indulgent post that will probably be very tedious to anyone who doesn’t know the parties involved.)

I would like to congratulate NEF#14 on transforming herself into NMF#14. May she never do it again.

I wasn’t going to make a habit of writing about bloggish weddings, but apparently I’ve been nominated official gossip columnist for such affairs, so here we go.

I must first say, in a whisper, which you will hear, that the music was not overwhelming. Indeed, it was quite comfortable. We could hear each other by speaking loudly; no screaming was necessary. I am impressed, and I want to know exactly what arm-twisting technique the NMF employed to convince the band to keep it down.

On the blackness scale, this wedding was middling-dark. There was no pink or green, but there were grays and whites. And Scraps made extra sure to point out that she, among all the bloggers, wasn’t in solid black. She was wearing a skirt that was – dum-da-dum-da-dum – gray.

Pardon me – she prefers to call it silver.

SD thinks this post is going to be all about her, so I will try not to disappoint. Firstly, she owes me an apology for thinking that I could possibly have been planning to tease her about her obsession with her hairdo. It was one of those bobby-pin intensive things that never stay up unless you have light, wispy hair. SD had industrial strength bobby-pins in hers, but she eventually had to ponify it anyway. Anyway, she accused me of being about to say something nasty when in fact I wasn’t, and I think she owes me for that. But somehow, by 12:30 am, she managed to extract from me an apology for making her think that I might be about to make fun of her. Either she’s good lawyer material, or my logic circuits had shorted. Or maybe I was just grateful that she went a half-hour out of her way to get me and Little Sheep home. That was nice of her, wasn’t it?

Some women/girls/females, on their wedding eve, look like Brides. Maybe it’s the layers of makeup or the extravagant updos or the Disney princess gowns. NMF#14 skipped all of these, and looked just like the down-to-earth (and sometimes below) young lady we all know and love, only very very very very very very very very very very very happy. I don’t think she stopped smiling for a minute, even when she saw the guys throwing her groom about on a chair and felt compelled to call, “Please don’t kill my husband!”

But I would love to know who did her makeup. It was so natural looking it looked like she wasn’t wearing anything. But she must have been wearing something because nobody looks that gorgeous naturally, right?

*ducks projectile from the NMF*

Weddings are like the African savannah. Naturally short of water, you need to use innovative techniques to ensure that you stay adequately hydrated. Why is it that waiters will never bring you water at a wedding? Anything else you ask for you can get, but if you part with your pitcher, rest assured you will never see it again.

In other parts of the world they fight land wars over water, but at weddings we’re civilized.  We kept our stilettos to ourselves and strained the water from the ice-bucket for each other while Dreamer regaled us with other solutions to drought from other weddings.

NMF#13 left early for reasons she claimed had nothing to do with the ‘M’ in her title. No comment. Scraps and Serach left shortly after, leaving a very bare-bones representative of what we discreetly referred to in ‘mixed’ company as ‘The Other World.’ There has to be a less ominous way to refer to cyberspace without blowing our cover.

There was a veritable plague of limp hands at this wedding. You know those people who won’t hold your hand in the circle? I can’t stand them. Circle dancing requires holding the hand of the person next to you. Keeping that hold requires effort from both parties.

During the mezinka (sp?) the bride demonstrated her excellent ability with a broom. She can balance it on her fingertip and twirl it like a baton. Whether she can use it to remove dirt from the floor remains to be seen.

At this point, only 20% of this post is about SD, so let me add: the absolute highlight of the night was finding out that my 6 am emails to her are forwarded to her phone, which vibrates upon receipt, and which is kept under her pillow. (Oops.) Who’d have thought that my messages, carelessly dashed off, could have such an impression upon their recipient? It just shows the power of words.

Why is her phone under her pillow, you wonder? She said something about an alarm clock, but let’s get real. Dr. Bad4 diagnoses her with severe and chronic Gadget Obsessive Disorder. If she left it as far away as her night table, she might suffer withdrawal. Know why she’s still single? Because she needs inorganic chemistry, not biochemistry. SD isn’t going to fall for any guy who isn’t at least partially bionic. Her bashert probably hasn’t been invented yet.

This post is now 35% about SD.

Bad4Shidduchim takes an official Thanksgiving break. It’s a national holiday, after all, and I’m an observant American. Well, except the halacha about spending more than I earn. But everything beside that. Including Thanksgiving.

One thing to give thanks about is that you don’t have to drive on Thanksgiving more than once a year. When people have the vision of a golden brown turkey hovering a few inches in front of their mind’s eye, they drive like carnivorous animals. Which, might I point out, have never been granted driving privileges for good reason. (Reason: they drive like hungry humans.)

Other things to be thankful for: that the other side of the bridge is always clear and yours is always crawling, even when you go over the same bridge twice within a half-hour. This demonstrates clearly that there is a higher power feeding you easily-managed, photon-sized yisurim to ensure that you make it to heaven in spite of yourself. It also gives you more time to belt out “Lo Yisa Goy” along with MBC, which ensures that any passengers you have also get their fair share of yisurim. This way you can all go to heaven together and spend all eternity together – an experience you’ll already have tasted by the time you finally get off that bridge.

Another good thing about traffic on exit ramps – you have the time to glance around and admire the autumn beauty. The damply dark trunks, the yellow leaves, the crisp air blowing in the window. What a perfect day.

Even more good things about Thanksgiving – it’s an opportunity to get together and eat with family and friends on a day you can actually drive. The only other times we do that is Chanukah and Purim, and neither is as leisurely and relaxed.

Finally, Thanksgiving is a very healthy holiday. Cranberries are full of antioxidants to prevent you from aging. Turkey has fewer injected hormones and is healthier than chicken. Don’t forget the lean protein necessary for healthy physical function. Pumpkins and brightly colored vegetables are full of important vitamins and minerals. And pecans will give you a much-needed dose of omega-3 fatty acids.

We’re still working on an excuse for stuffing.

So, I hope you all had a happy Turkey Day, and we’ll be back to our regular programming on Monday.

I hate having to decide when to go to weddings.

Okay, I don’t decide. I never decide. I always go to the second half. It seems to me that that is the important time to be there; if all I have to do is show my face and say mazal tov at the reception, then I am unnecessary and won’t bother.

But I’m always disappointed to miss the shmorg. I mean, let’s face it, that’s the best food of the evening. Why do the face-showers get it instead of the dancers?

My suggestion: reverse the food. Serve the standard boring chicken and grilled veggies to the mazal-tovers at the reception, and bring out the good stuff after the chupah. Buffet dinner style. Yum.

Note to self: add to list of improvement to implement at own wedding (which will, indubitably, never happen).

I remember reading somewhere that most young couples claim they would have been happier with a smaller wedding and a larger down payment, but their parents wanted the fancy wedding, so what could they do?

Naturally, I was curious, and since I also like to get things done ahead of time, I brought this up at the Shabbos table one weekend. I figured we might as well hash it out now and maybe come to some compromises.

Well, we didn’t get very far.

The first thing I brought up was flowers. Flowers are nice. They’re decorative. But the basic version is very boring and I have my doubts that masses of orange roses and lilies really adds much. And why on earth would you want to plunk down half a fortune for those really nice driftwood-and-candle things for a seven-hour party that you’re mostly dancing at when – have we mentioned – there’s a down payment that could be made?

The parents were okay with a flowerless chupah – my sister had one (though there was no shortage of purple orchids in the rest of her wedding). And really these changes just take getting used to. “But you need centerpieces!” my mother protested. Sadly, no sibling had gone centerpieceless yet.

I suggested the centerpieces could be something simple and interesting, for example, a goldfish in a bowl. Or, if you want to get symbolic, two goldfish in a bowl. The idea pleased. I thought we were done. The centerpieces at my wedding would be goldfish in bowls.

Alas. Those parents. Before dessert the modest addition to my wedding gifts had been poured into accessories for the goldfish. A plain bowl was too boring. It ought to be decorated with colored marbles, and maybe have a plant or two stuck in for color. As I looked on in horror, my humble ten-cent fish were morphing into male bettas or even shubunkins, so I hastily announced that I’d changed my mind.

I decided we’ll stick with the flowers. Maybe we’ll go for silk. At that point I  decided to let the subject rest.

But then NEF #16 told me that she is thinking of making her wedding a potluck. (She might be serious, too.) I mentioned that to the parentals and they were all over it. Just think – the smörgåsbord provided by the guests!

So, at this moment, I’m having a potluck wedding, but there will be flower centerpieces.

Go figger.

Anyone know how large it is, the demographics, where it’s located, and so on?

Being married elevates subjects of discussion which might otherwise be considered too mundane to discuss.

For example, soap. In general, I would not be caught discussing the matter of soap. Unless it were in the context of making bubbles, or something. What is there to say about soap? I use it. (Yes, I do. Relieved?) I just don’t know what there is to say about it.

But two days ago I sat in a car with two married people, and string me up if they didn’t sit there discussing soap for a full five minutes. You see, MF#4 (I think it’s 4) married a guy who refuses to use a bar when it’s too small for him to comfortably handle. Which leaves quite a hunk of soap. Thus, MF#4 has sacrificed all the showers of the rest of her life to using ever-shrinking bars of soap until they’re too small for even her. Ne’er again shall she enjoy the pleasure of a huge bar filling her hand… etc.

Oh the sacrafice!

Isn’t it romantic?

MF#6, on the other hand, doesn’t like bars herself. Her life is liquid only, bar the bar. But her husband will come home with Costco-sized packages of bar soap. I didn’t catch whether she uses them or leaves them for him because at that point I made a quiet comment to the other single person in the car about how the vistas of conversation pieces open wide when you step out from that chupa, which made the MFs a tad defensive.

So much for naturalistic observation of the Married Woman in Her Natural Environment. I’ve got to learn to stay behind the blind, keep the binoculars up, and the mouth shut.

No, I’m not talking about the physical science. I’m talking about dating terminology. Walking the Grey Line, a commenter, used it once to mean “I can’t stand her looks.” And I went: “Ooooh. Is that what it means?”

I’ve always wondered. I’ve never used the “no chemistry” excuse to break up because I have no idea what it means.

If you ask google to define “chemistry” it gives you lots of stuff related to things you can’t see but for some reason are supposed to care about anyway. Only one definition relates to relationships: “How two people interact” with the sample sentence “The chemistry of that relationship was wrong from the start.”

Yep, definitely sounds like some of my dates.

But seriously, that’s a very benign definition. It could easily mean that you just weren’t talking on the same wavelength. You know those people? You think you understand them and give an intelligent answer. They give a brief pause and an even briefer confused microexpression before answering, and you know you completely got the wrong end of the stick.

So nope, that can’t be what “chemistry” means. Because you often hear daters use the phrase like so: “We went out four times but… there was no chemistry.” It doesn’t take four dates to realize that you and the other person don’t understand each other.

So, step two: when google fails, ask a real, live, human being. Like maybe one of those people who talk so readily about lack of chemistry.

“So, Mr./Miss Dater. You say that you went on a date on August the 23^rd of the year 2009 CE and there was no chemistry. How would you define ‘chemistry’?”

Be prepared to see someone act out “prevaricate” and “obfuscate” and a few other fun words you don’t often get to use. You may not come out knowing what “chemistry” is, but you’ll get the vague notion that it has something to do with feelings, relationships, attraction…

Ah, attraction. This is similar to Walking the Grey Line’s definition. Not Attracted = No Chemistry.

But people are attractive for various reasons. One could say that the popular girl in a class is attractive to all the girls who flock around her. It’s a friendly attraction, and bears no resemblance to anything related to Bore’s atomic model (er, did I spell his name wrong?) or compressed nitrogen or  bubbling test tubes.

Here’s my hypothesis: when people say “chemistry” they really mean “biochemistry.” And by that I mean not atoms or molecules so much as amino acids and proteins… or hormones.

Upon various occasions I have suggested to young women that “no chemistry” means “not falling in love.”  My hypothesis is always greeted with loud guffaws, be they bais yaakov maidels or more modern. “Love?” snicker the more modern ones. The BY types just look affronted.

Love? That’s for cheesy novels and Disney animations. A goyish concept. It’s not about love. It’s all about ezer kinegdo, don’t you know? You fall in love after marriage. Of course, you don’t want to marry someone who revolts you but really, you don’t know what love is until after you’re married. Everyone knows that. Love? You think “no chemistry” means “not falling in love”? How could it? Love is a passing infatuation. Not a Jewish concept. Really, you have such strange ideas that you could be one of those blogger people.

Okay, I get it. I said the “L” word. Wash out my mouth with soap; I won’t make that mistake again, except when I turn up the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack to “Do You Love Me?” There’s an intriguingly ambiguous song. After years of sharing everything, does love matter? (Are we self-conscious about wanting it because we believe the answer is “no”?) What is ‘love’ anyway? Is it hormones? It is something deeper? Is this a confusing case of using one word for two distinct concepts?

Maybe… maybe Orthodox Judaism has contributed a distinction in usage to the English language. “Love” is only to be used on long-standing relationships – your parents, grandparents, siblings, kinfauna, and best friends forever. To use it on anyone else is to invite censure. “Chemistry” is to be used for short-term bursts of hormone-driven attraction.

You can’t be in love with your spouse until you’ve been married a while, but you can have some Nobel-Prize caliber chemistry going until then.

Or biochemistry. Try that one on the shadchan. “He’s a great guy, and we had a great time, but… the biochemistry isn’t there.”

I do not like mall dates.

I haven’t got a vast experience to draw from. Just one, in fact. But it did not go well.

Malls are noisy and crowded and littered with traps and pitfalls. And I’m not just talking about Victoria’s Secret, though that’s bad enough.

Actually, I think things went south around the jewelry display.

In general, a casual pass of the jewelry is, in my opinion, a strategic move. Let’s face it – if you marry the guy, he’s going to be buying you jewelry (probably), and you should know beforehand whether you can trust his taste. I’ve had dates I was reluctant to dump merely because of their saving grace of having better taste than mine. Meaning, not only could I trust him to pick out nice stuff, I’d actually want him to do my accessory shopping for me.

But it wasn’t the earrings that threw us into discord. It was the engagement rings.

Yes. There we were on a second date discussing engagement rings.

He said CZ ought to be fine.

I said absolutely not.

We then proceeded to not see eye to eye for about five solid minutes.

What exactly is an engagement ring? To him it was just an expense. Something you have to do when you decide to marry someone. A way of irretrievably consolidating a whole lot of handy green into a very small, shiny, and completely useless object.

I see his side of things. Diamonds are pricy. A young couple has enough expenses without throwing in a rather expensive rock.

I agree that frivolous expenses should be cut down. Skip the bracelet. Skip the necklace. Skip the atara for the tallis. Skip the gold watch. Skip the silver leichter tray (most are ostentatious and awkward anyway). You can skip every “required” gift on the planet and I wouldn’t object. But you can’t skip the engagement ring.

Because to me, the engagement ring symbolizes so much more than an expense.

This ring custom dates back hundreds of years before anyone thought to put an atara on their tallis or their leichter on a solid silver tray. It predates hot desserts at weddings and seven-man bands with singers.

The ring symbolizes a man’s intent to marry a woman, and also exactly how much he values that intent.

Chocolate, flowers, and love letters may also symbolize this, but they severely lack the value. Small gifts and sweet nothings are courtship rituals. A ring is an investment. Nothing says it like diamonds. Or any precious stone. Cubic zirconium, pretty as is it, completely misses the point. We don’t need something glittery to stick on our finger to dazzle passersby and make our friends jealous. Seriously – the very suggestion is insulting.

It’s a Torah concept that once you decide to do something you should perform a tangible action to solidify it for yourself. The ring symbolizes the engagement. There it is – yes – on her finger.

And don’t guys get some (any?) thrill at all from seeing their ring on their betrothed’s finger? Is the engagement not, somehow, more real?

After a bracelet engagement I can see to turning down the ring – might do it myself (those rings are a bit too bulky and flashy for my taste). But that’s the woman’s prerogative. And really, a bracelet doesn’t have the same solidity or cultural clout. No, really, there’s nothing quite like a ring.

So guys, don’t rock the boat.

(grooooaaaan)

Someone who attended the last ice cream meet said she was on her way to a camping trip.

Someone else recently told me they were dying to go camping.

Same here.

Who were you people? Shoot me an email. Maybe we can plan something for the spring.

One great thing about getting married later is that you can learn from everyone else’s experiences. I have collected all sorts of wisdom from MFs over the years, and look forward to applying them in my own time.

For example, one NEF informed me that there’s some place in Brooklyn (I forget the location) where you can get high-heeled white sneakers for your wedding. (Say what?!) Apparently, these are important so you can dance, be comfortable, and not have an extra inch of gown dragging on the floor after you take off the heels you wore for the chupah (why you wore heels I have no idea).

I would never have heard anything about it if the NEF hadn’t dropped this information. Sure, I have a married older sister, but she got married in python-skin cowboy boots, and nobody would have been the wiser if she hadn’t hitched up her cupcake ballgown skirt to dance the mazurka at one point. So I never would have known about this subtle yet important matter of high-heel sneakers. Thank goodness I didn’t get married before this NEF.

Some other gems I’d like to share for public benefit:

“Don’t have a long engagement like I did! You’ll go crazy! Like me!” ~ Someone engaged for five months.

“Don’t be engaged for so long! It’s not fun!” ~ Someone who dated for longer than she was engaged.

“Get your gown fitted last thing. Otherwise you’re so worried you won’t fit into it that you start nervous eating.” ~ Someone who doesn’t tip the scale at 100 lb.

“Get your gown fitted while bloated. Then you won’t have to worry.” ~ Someone who really doesn’t need to worry anyway.

“Yes this hoop is heavy. Don’t let them bully you into wearing one in  your gown.” ~ Someone who danced like she didn’t have an extra five pounds sewn into the bottom of her gown in addition to about 10 pounds of petticoats.

“Wear your shaitel before you get married. You need to get used to it or else you look like you’re wearing something on your head.” ~ Someone who wore a sheitel every Shabbos before she had a wedding band on her finger.

“Get a good photographer. Ours was lousy.” ~ Someone who doesn’t like it when visitors look at her album.

“Your photographer doesn’t matter. By the time you get the album you’re already too busy with a kid to care.” ~ Someone who never opened her album until I showed up for Shabbos.

“Don’t get engaged during midterms.” ~ Someone who received her first ‘C’ the day after her vort.

“Don’t worry about things. They’ll get done if they have to.” ~ Someone who didn’t receive a grade below A- through her engagement and marriage.

“Get a thick veil. That way nobody can see if you’re crying or laughing at your chupah.” ~ Someone who really needed two mothers to guide her down the aisle.

So, there you are. No engagement can be too short. No gown will ever fit. No photographer will ever satisfy.

Do you have any pearls of wisdom of your own to share on marriage, weddings, and so on? Jewish Wedding Info wants them here.

But for the here and now, what’s the greatest gem of advice you’ve ever gotten from an Engaged Humanoid?

I often go on dates with men who confess that they’re not good at math.

I consider that a silly statement; there’s no such thing as good or bad at math. It’s a matter of practicing until you get used to the concept. Technically, I was pretty rotten at math in high school – I generally did the right thing, but rarely got the right answer. However, this was usually a function of my being bad at arithmetic. I was lousy at math because I rarely understood why I was doing what I was doing.

If I’m exponentially better at math now, it’s because I’ve spent two-and-half years studying and practicing it. I guess if I worked at it for 2.5 years and hadn’t made any progress then I’d be really bad at math. I’d probably also be mentally deficient.

The people who are “good at math” are usually the obsessive nerds who read mathematical theory for fun and enjoy a lazy afternoon deriving equations. They’re good because they practice so often, not the reverse. Maybe work and aptitude aren’t always linear, but they’re certainly positively correlated.

Anyway, every now and then I go out with a man who is taking a math course and is struggling. Well, don’t we all (excepting the obsessive nerds)? But, not having spent extra years in yeshiva, I’m usually a year ahead of my dates in the math courses and already have a more developed perspective on what they’re learning. My instinct, upon hearing them complain about what they don’t get, is to grab a paper napkin and pen and start explaining. We have all evening to discuss what we worked at in summer camp ten years ago, why not spend fifteen minutes on how to use an integrating factor? It’s of mutual interest, and if the date flops, at least he’ll have gotten something out of it.

Well, that’s what I thought. But my impression, many dates but very few matrices later, is that men don’t want to think about their homework on a date. I find that odd.

Homework and dating are both chores that need doing in a quest for something larger. Accomplishing both in one shot is a beautiful piece of efficiency.  And haven’t people married the people they used to study with?

You can plot important points about a person based on how patiently they explain a gradient. There is a high probability of bonding over a Bernoulli distribution. Finding a determinant may help you determine if you’re linearly dependent multiples of each other. And come on… can you think of anything more “awww…how cute” than “they spent the evening taking the triple integral of her water bottle to evaluate the volume”?

If you can think of many answers to that question, then you don’t have fun with math often enough and probably don’t think you’re good at it. Who knows – maybe we’ve gone out. Was our mathematical chat the absolute max point where the function of our relationship turned negative?

I’ve been informed: the female pays for most of the wedding. The guy takes care of the flowers, orchestra, and photography, and the gal pays for everything else. (Hall? Food? What else is there, exactly?)

Exactly where did this distribution come from, and what if you don’t want to split it that way because you (female) have a photographer you like and you (male) have a hall you prefer?

Or because you want to do something really drastic and innovative, like decide these things together?

I was informed of this little tidbit after I made the suggestion that all the funds each side is willing to spend on the wedding be deposited into a joint account and expenditures approved by all as part of the overall budget. In total, it would probably reduce the payout, though increase the awkwardness.

So, who says the guy is a FOP? And why?