When you become engaged to be married, apparently what happens is someone (your mom) starts sending you a million pictures of potential wedding dresses, and because all of a sudden something that would have made you insane two months ago (a million pictures of potential wedding dresses) is suddenly THE BEST THING EVAR you make a secret Pinterest page which only you and your mom and your pseudo-step-sister-in-law and your fianced can see (which, duh, I know, but there is no way I’m making the most important fashion decision of my life without him. True love story.) And when you pin up these “pins” they look dreamy and perfect, like fairytales, which is to say, they look like models wearing expensive dresses. The truth is, when you actually go to try on these dresses, you are reminded that you quit smoking a year and a half ago and you are, suddenly, not above wishing the impossible, like that you somehow got married *before* you quit smoking because since then you’ve became a somewhat bigger person (literally), or you consider, extremely momentarily, that you should begin smoking again, just until the wedding, which reminds you that though you’ve become a bigger person in body, you have not necessarily become one in mind or heart. And what’s going on through all of this pushing and pulling of fabrics and linings and souls is that you begin to feel, let’s call it, ungenerous towards your newish, non-smoker’s body. And what happens, when you’ve finally wedged your larger, morally righteous self into one of these beautiful, fanciful, romantic, fairy-princess-like Pinterest-friendly dresses, is you walk out of your dressing room and there are eight (at least) women, sitting there in the general dressing room area, right in front of the three-way mirror, all of whom your mother has met in the last six minutes, all of whom are EXTREMELY interested that you’re planning on being married at some point, and all of whom have opinions about your wedged, smoke-free body, the worst of which they keep to themselves (thus far), which somehow makes it (“it” being their secret opinions about your body in these unflattering dresses and your proximity to them and the obvious non-secretness of their secret opinions but really, if you were being honest, all of it: everything relating to strange crowds and weddings and bodies and not smoking and department stores and designer dresses, etc.) even more unbearable.

I’ve read articles and talked to friends about the public pregnant body–which is objectively horrific (the public-ness, obviously, not the body itself)–but no one prepares you for the smaller thing, which is how, when you plan to get married, suddenly you have all these strangers telling you that sequins are particularly non-flattering to your thighs and backside. Like, I knew that! It’s just that I wanted to try on a dress completely made out of sequins for once in my small and shallow life, okay?!

So, you guys, I made it through five dresses before I said two very bad words and called it quits for that day, basically breaking my mother’s fragile heart forever until the next time we enter a Nordstrom, Macy’s or Neiman Marcus together. If I ever become a pregnant person, it’s very clear I’m also going to have to become a hermit for several months as well.

And just when I was thinking, like, fuck all these moms and their teenage prom daughters watching me/I’ll wear what dress I want, talk to the hand, simultaneously that thought was being overridden by the horror of what would happen if my friends saw my cellulite through my wedding dress and it occurred to me: Oh right! Weddings! They are for publicly and metaphorically-but-not-really-but-really-literally exchanging my body and right to reproduction for safety from saber-toothed lions and Packers fans. So actually we are exactly where we’re supposed to be in re: cellulite, strangers, and a lot of disconcertingly sticky polyester products.

In summation: Eh. Weddings. On the one hand: I want a really fun party that I can wear an awesome Marc Jacobs (or whatever) dress to. On the other hand: Yuck. So that’s where I am right now: somewhere between Vogue and yuck. But I guess that describes most of my style life before I got engaged too. Hey, good title: Somewhere Between Vogue and Yuck. I sense a new blog. (It would probably mean I’d have to start reading Vogue again though and, well, yuck.)