#87: BRAVE GROOM INTERVIEW: Bret (aka, every planning bride's wet dream)

Ladies and gentlemen...boys and girls...Lady Gaga and those of us who *don't* wear outfits made of raw meat...I am so very excited to unveil my first BRAVE GROOM interview! It's about time I got  a dude's perspective on here, yes?

After you get a look into the mind of wedding blogger Bret (mastermind behind All Things 'Zilla), you'll agree: If Bret decided to become a polygamist, you'd totally mail him your photo and resume. Why? Because you'd get to experience the joy of planing a wedding with a smart, funny, and creative guy who is totally involved in the planning process! And now, put on your scrubs and rubber gloves...because it's time to dissect the groom: 

 

How would you describe your involvement in the wedding planning process?

I would describe it with one word: totes. I'm totes involved. I used to believe firmly that 'totes' didn't sound right when placed before the word it was modifying and worked much better as a reply; for example, "Wanna go see Piranha 3D?" gets a reply of "Totes!" whereas "I totes love Justin Bieber despite myself" sounded wrong. But now I've come to accept both. Although I haven't truly accepted Bieber into my heart yet.

Anyway, um, I'm totes involved, and I fully expect to be so all the way through. I mean, I have a wedding blog, after all; even though I'm starting to realize that blogging about weddings is not actually the same thing as planning one and so "Baby I posted today!" doesn't mean "baby I hired a vendor today!"

I think about our wedding all the time and have already done quite a bit myself - I hired a photographer, secured the venue, have been trying to figure out the feasibility of making some of our food myself, have been composing music for the wedding, and more. My fiancee Jessica and I have been having meetings recently where we discuss our progress and have even gone so far as to assign Project Managers for the various aspects of the wedding. It's a team effort and neither of us would want it any other way. The fact that we are both really excited about planning it is sort of inherent to our personalities and to our relationship - if I claimed that I wasn't interested in planning our wedding, Jessica would look at me cock-eyed and assume I'd been body-snatched. It just wouldn't jive.

What is the coolest/ most fun/ most interesting part of planning?

For me, it's the creativity I get to weave into nearly every phase of planning. Need to pick a song for the first dance? I'll write one instead. Need to buy favors? How about we make our own pop tarts or candy! Potluck dinner? Let's put photos of the cook next to every container of food at the buffet with a little paragraph about the dish! And I'll make bread! And our friend is brewing beer! And our other friend is canning her own pickles! And so forth. Every piece of the planning process is an opportunity to inject our own personality into it.

Well, except the budget. That sucker is dry and boring.

What aspect of planning has surprised you?

I may not really be able to answer this quite yet since we're so early in the process, but if The Brave Bride were to hold a gun to my head and demand an answer - though I hope she doesn't because, come on, that's mean, and not really very Brave - I'd have to say: how much our friends have family have offered to help.

This is not to say I wasn't expecting people to be excited, but Jessica and I have both been blown away by the outpouring of love and excitement from the fine folks in our lives. Offers to cook, brew beer, make crafts, design and make clothes, and general help with all pieces of the process. I've been sent spreadsheets of photographer research, a completed budget, been given planning books; a friend of ours basically designed our entire wedding website in a couple days and did all sorts of bridesmaid dress research; a friend will be taking our engagement photos and then designing our save-the-dates and invitations along with the help of another friend.

Anyway, we feel really lucky to be surrounded by such great people, and it's amazing how much confidence it all gives me that the wedding will be awesome.

I've also been surprised - nay, shocked - at the staggering amount of wedding blogs that are out there. When Jessica suggested I start one of my own I had no idea that three out of every four young brides* have their own wedding blog. So then of course I had some trepidations about adding yet another one to the cyber-mix, but when I realized how few grooms blog about weddings, I decided it was still worth my while.

*[Citation needed.]

What part of planning makes you want to set fire to a nursing home (or some other less dramatic act of fury)?

Speaking as someone who has actually set fire to numerous nursing homes, I'll say that I only did it because I had solid intelligence suggesting that aging terrorists were being harbored within the walls of the homes, and frankly, it was my civic duty to commit arson. As for irritating aspects of wedding planning, I'll say that more than anything up to this point the most frustrating part has been trying to deal with caterers. They've been inflexible, unfriendly, expensive, humorless, and even impossible to reach on the phone in some cases. But we've managed to grab our frustration by the balls*, wrangle it to the ground, present it to the cheering crowd, and make something awesome out of it: a self-catered/potluck hybrid wedding.

*[Obligatory reference to testicles.]

And of course, with that we've created a whole new slew of possible nursing-home-fire situations. But really, if the choice is dealing with loving friends and family who want very much to cook for us and to help us in any way possible, rather than a company that refuses to let us provide our own damn linens for crying out loud, I feel quite confident that we can navigate any of the pitfalls that may arise.

We are still over 10 months away from the wedding, so it's possible that the most frustrating aspect of the planning process has not yet emerged, remaining dormant below the surface, simmering, bubbling, ready to pounce. But I'm sure that when the time comes we'll grab that aspect by the balls, wrangle it to the ground, and so forth.

If the TLC network created a wedding-related reality tv show geared toward engaged men, what would the title and premise be? Why do you think men would benefit from this show?

After some thought I think it would either need to be called Don't Assume The Groom or Fiance what? or Groom Raider. The more cynical, marketable vision of the show is that it gathers together a bunch of newly engaged men and pits them against each other, Project Runway style, but instead of designing clothes they're designing a wedding. One of them gets voted off each week by a panel of B-list celebrity judges (plus a professional wedding planner or two), and the winner is the one who designs the coolest wedding and wins a free honeymoon or something. The brides would be nominally involved but it's the groom's show.

But a more practical, helpful show would simply be about dudes planning their weddings WITH their fiancees, because as silly as it sounds, even that is sort of unconventional - at least nontraditional. A show that follows couples planning their wedding but that focuses more of the groom's point of view would be great and might show grooms-to-be that the old "just show up on your wedding day" style of groom-wedding-planning is pretty lame and outdated.

#69: The Testicular Perspective: Men & Wedding Planning

                 I was wondering how I could incorporate Jack Black into this blog. Score!

Wedding planning is a riveting female-dominated sport if I ever saw one. But where the dudes be at? Why aren't men excited about wedding planning? Where are their wedding planning blogs?

It turns out that grooms do indeed have a voice in the wedding blogging community, albeit a soft whisper compared to us ladies. I found this out when the funny and fabulous Bret of All Things 'Zilla wrote a guest post over at One Cat Per Person (home to one of my favorite bloggerettes, Angie), about his participation in the wedding blog community. Bret also shares his desire for more equal representation from grooms in the blogosphere (like this thoughtful and hilarious one).

Of course, many men are heavily involved in the planning and do their share of heavy lifting throughout the process. (Hooray! Seriously.) But that's not without first hearing the rather overdone half-joke "All you have to do is show up" advice from his friends and relatives. Unfortunately, the "planning" done by the rest of the male population involves little more than visiting a venue, choosing the menu, trying on a tux, renting a limousine, and keeping a close eye on the budget. This leaves all the tedious research, logistical details, the gathering of 150 addresses onto a spreadsheet, the up-all-night-alone-finishing-centerpieces work to his partner. Boo. Lame I tell you.

How did this phenomenon begin? I refuse to blame it on the general disinterest that most men have in centerpieces-- that would be too easy. Throwing a fun party for your peeps and planning an incredible day with the love of your life aren't exactly gender-specific activities. And when a wedding is described in this manner, you'd think that men and women would be equally excited about the celebration, equally obsessed with making it kick some major butt, equally interested in making the whole sha-bang look aesthetically rad, and more or less equally turned off by the logistics and the amount of cash dropped in hosting it. But as you know, that's not what typically happens. So what's the dealio?

I stumbled upon a possible answer to this conundrum when browsing a few online groom resources.  While I was happy to find that such resources do exist, I was totally turned off by what I was seeing on some of those sites: detailed articles on etiquette, how-to guides about preparing speeches, instructions on being an A+ groom...basically a long list of rules and expectations piled one on top of the other. Wow. Fun.

And in that instant I saw with fresh eyes the similar pressure that women experience from the wedding industry, except turned up a million notches. We are taught what to wear, how to act, what to want, what to purchase, how much to spend, and how to feel...and not just on a few obscure wedding websites like the groom-geared ones I found, but in countless bridal magazines, advertisements, and films as well. It becomes clear that the source of the bridezilla stereotype lies not in the X chromosome; rather, it is the result of stress in a woman's pursuit of wedding day perfection - a standard that is defined,  enforced, and perpetuated by the a blend of the wedding industry's evil genius and our surrender to it.

It was at this point that I imagined a role reversal; what if men were the targeted victims of the wedding industry? What if women were the mere bystanders? And what if my now-hubby were feeling stressed and pressured by what the magazines and blogs were asking of him? What would I do if my guy were strung out and worried that his $8k tuxedo made his butt look big and that this, combined with the fact that the roses were the wrong shade of pink, would ruin the wedding photos?

Well. I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd rebel. I'd be all "What the eff are you reading those magazines and blogs for?". And then I'd joke about eloping in Vegas and having a romantic candlelight KFC dinner to follow. But if my dear Brian paid no mind to my plea for simplicity and sanity throughout our wedding planning, I just might pull away from the stress and the mess and let him micromanage his little heart away. I'd be content with handling just the fun stuff, like picking out my dress and attending the cake tasting appointment.

Now, this is not to say that the above response is the most supportive way of handling your partner's stress. I mean, why not get to the root of the issue (i.e.- unreasonable societal expectations and his sense of self-worth being wrapped up in these expectations), instead of teasing him and then withdrawing from the planning process? I'll tell you why not: because it's easier to joke about KFC in Vegas than it is to get to the root of things.

Then, of course, there's the idea that the wedding day is "for the bride" - that' it's "her day". Well. If I were a man who believed such nonsense, and I were marrying a woman who believed in such nonsense, would you blame me if I was uninvolved and unexcited about the planning? (Again, not the most loving response, but I'll leave that topic for another post.)

So. I don't know if I've really figured anything out here. My hypotheses are merely a shot in the dark until I can conduct my Brave Groom interviews in the upcoming weeks. (Woo-hoo! Are you not excited about this??)

Until then, how about bringing up this topic with your partner? After he spills his guts, consider sharing your findings with the blog, yes? Now off you go, my little detectives!

PS. My 69th post has the word testicular in it. Go figure.

Photo Credit (Click for more freaking hilarious Jack Black photos. You're welcome.)