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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
You thought only brides obsessed about flowers, caterers and invitations? Wake up and smell the floral centerpieces on the latest Web craze: Grooms' blogs.
Oct 30, 2003 | Hath not a groom taste? Hath not a groom senses, preferences, passions? Tasting the same food, hearing the same bands, subject to the same crazy family as a bride is?
So writes Doug Gordon, a television writer, in the Oct. 27 entry for his weblog PlanetGordon.com: What Happened to Him After She Said Yes. Gordon, 29, is in the midst of planning his August 2004 wedding to Rabbi Leora Kaye at a summer camp in Wisconsin.
Over at The Mighty Geek, a 33-year-old graphic designer from Brooklyn who will marry an MTV online producer named Jessica in January, titled one of his wedding blog entries "Groomzilla: Part 1."
"I've become a monster," writes the Mighty Geek, who more simply goes by the name "G." "At what point does an otherwise normal man, with the typical dismissive male attitude towards his own wedding, suddenly become so infatuated with a stupid and trivial wedding decision, the invitation font choice and color for example, that he is willing to throttle his own mother rather than back down from his font of choice?"
Groom blogs written by Gordon, G and their technologically nimble affianced brethren are becoming an increasingly popular way for engaged men to communicate wedding details, vent frustrations, and chronicle engagements. They are also poking holes in one of the longest-standing assumptions about the multibillion-dollar wedding industry: that grooms are passive, stoic creatures who have no feelings about their impending nuptials.
"You don't get a groom's perspective anywhere," said Gordon, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. "It's like the groom is another accessory along with the bridal gown, along with the cake and the flowers."
The call of the wild bride should be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts or has had a friend between the ages of 26 and 32. High-pitched and tremulous, it traditionally involves endless diatribes about uncooperative bridesmaids and debates over the virtues of salmon vs. chicken.
Perhaps you've heard it.
What you may not have heard -- ever -- is a peep out of her mate.
The ideal modern groom -- as imagined by Hollywood executives -- is essentially mute. Attractive but not too pretty, he will appear on time and shave when told. Patient and empathic, he will step in when his intended becomes overwhelmed by her ardor for lilies of the valley and Spode, but he will certainly not spend more than 30 seconds contemplating either. Under no circumstances will he have sex with the strippers at his bachelor party.
In short, the desirable groom behaves like a particularly obedient potbellied pig -- a supporting player and pet for the overworked and overzealous bride, who has probably already been slapped with the Bridezilla label.
But troll the Internet, and you may find a passage like this, from National Public Radio editor J.J. Sutherland's wedding blog: "The flowers will be cool, fall colors, no carnations, roses. Neat stuff. One thing we are including are 'coffee beans' which are these reddish berries that look like, well, coffee beans. But they seemed to have ended up the one unifying factor in all the flowers." Sutherland married media planner Veronica Ruiz in October 2002.
As his "throttle his own mother" entry suggests, G experienced intense feelings about his wedding invitations.
"I'm used to having things done a certain way so it all looks like a cohesive whole," he said. "I designed the invitations and the save-the-date cards, so I was very meticulous with that."
G also confessed that together, the couple physically visited 88 potential reception sites before agreeing to do the deed "in Jersey at a place we can afford."
Diane Forden, the editor in chief of Bridal Guide magazine, which recently published a list of 50 things a bride can do to get her groom more involved in planning, said that a recent survey conducted by the magazine showed that 50 percent of the responding couples were paying for their own weddings.
"That means that grooms are signing the checks and becoming more interested in where their money is going," said Forden, who added, "I think there are areas that the groom won't really get interested in, like the bridal party colors. And I can't really see him getting involved in the flowers." (Clearly, she's never met J.J. Sutherland.) "But there is certainly a growing interest from grooms in things like the music selection, the reception venue, the food, the wine, the registry. Couples are now registering together, and the registries are changing. You're seeing a lot more sports equipment, electronics, bar ware... things that men like to have in their homes."
What, no mounted grizzly bears or machine guns?
Registries, dresses, finger food -- these high-priced nuptial trappings have been aggressively marketed to women for so long that it is almost unthinkable that a man might have as much enthusiasm for flowers as his bride. That he might even have more enthusiasm for flowers. And china patterns and crystal and party planning.
Graphic design student Andrea Hyde Owen, who married blogger Will Owen on Oct. 11 in Minneapolis, says her husband was "a lot more stressed out in the end than I was."
No kidding. In a Sept. 30 blog entry Owen wrote, "Fears mounting over 'official' number of guests expected and actual number of guests expected. Seems that we modeled our reception contract on the assumption of about 90 people and from the RSVP it looks more like 40 people, but from the information that comes through non-official channels (a la NOT via RSVP) it feels more like 60ish people. So, could be anywhere from 60-90 people? Well, apparently that's an entired [sic] extra person (staff) at the reception. Ugh ... We're still making out final preparations for the rehearsal/grooms dinner, and of course we're super sper [sic] nervous and stressed about all of the final details that we can't really do anything about until THE WEEK ... Am I going a little nuts here? Yeah, I think so."
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