Wordsmith Lane

Blogger’s Desk: Excuses & Explanations

Wordsmith Laners, I’m truly very sorry about my neglect of this blog and my writing over the past few weeks. I have so many posts in draft format that my brain is failing to perfect, and although I have plenty of content for you, I just can’t seem to get into it while a hundred other things swirl in my brain. I am hoping you’ll forgive me when you read this edited version of my latest Bride to Be column, and I promise I will be back soon! All my love (desiring all of your understanding), Sarah xoxo

Picture this. You’re five and a half weeks out from your wedding and your stress levels are already running rampant, wreaking havoc on your skin and rendering you the type of bride you thought you’d never be. Your fiancé is scared of you, your best friend thinks you’re a diva and your photographer wants to kill you because your 10,000 commitments means you can’t settle on a date for the pre-wedding consultation. Your bank account has $243 in it, your dress feels heavy at one of your final fittings and you swear it’s a lot pooofier than you wanted it to be, and the veil you revolved the whole dress around suddenly doesn’t look right with the lace you chose when you were having one of your indecisive moments. The kinds of indecisive moments you usually have at sumo salad or muffin break, but quadrupled in magnitude. And then your band cancels on you. And people start telling you that the new owners of the reception centre aren’t up to scratch where their meals are concerned, and that there probably won’t be enough food on the big day, which is equivalent to the anti-christ’s coming to earth where Lebanese weddings are concerned. Suddenly, it feels like the whole world is crumbling around you, and you start talking to yourself in the third person (in public, which is something you promised yourself you would never do).

So what do you do? For starters, you don’t pull your hair out, (much as it seems to be the most appropriate action) because you know for certain that your fiance is not going to love you the same if you are bald. You don’t screech any profanities (even in Lebanese, which people are less likely to understand) at passers-by, because that would be entirely un-Christian and you think that Jesus is already mad at you as it is.

So what do you? You stop writing, and you stop making sense. You stop reading your beloved books and magazines, because your brain’s understanding capacities are somewhat diminished, and because you’re not crazy enough as it is, you let your eyebrows grow to horrendously frightening levels. You almost crash your car at the Give Way sign in Revesby. You start reading Contiki and Topdeck Travel brochures instead while you dream of Paris and Santorini and the monastry of the Black Madonna in Poland, which is somewhere you’ve never been, but want to go anyway because the Black Madonna would likely let you whinge and hopefully understand your predicaments with her amazing Mother-of-God powers. And then one day, you wake up, think ‘stuff it’, and decide to stop caring and start delegating.

You tell the wedding planner to discuss the menu options (and quantities) yet again with the reception centre – after all, it’s not like you can change the venue when the RSVP cards are pouring in like the rains of this Sydney spring. You have your mother, who is known for her ability (if necessary) to comandeer a large army by her sheer will, loud voice and determination, back her up, implying once again the enormity of the food situation.

And, because you tell yourself it would be mean to use your journalistic powers to black-list your band, (and because you’re apparently a bridezilla and thus everyone who has failed you thus far) you have your MC find you an alternative BETTER band.

And then of course, you motivate yourself to get out of your rut. You start by taking the afternoon off and treating yourself to the Now to Wow treatment at Benefit cosmetics at Paddington (because good brows fix everything) and a decent shopping spree. You buy shoes for your laylia (pre-wedding party) even though they’re ridiculously overpriced for their style,  and a pair of sandals because they’re pink (and encrusted with pearls).

And because the National Australia Bank has an overdraft facility and you get paid this week anyway, you keep buying stuff. You want something girly and decide now is the time to shop for your bridesmaids. Of course, you consider yourself a woman of high taste and buy the kind of stuff you’d buy for yourself, walking out with four pairs of lovely

earrings from Forever New ($18), pretty floral tea cups from T2 ($22) and four MOR scented candle ($40) whose amazing fragrance will be wafting through the air long after they bid you farewell for your honeymoon.

And then you go home and gorge on Pistachio ice-cream, because you know, you can’t fix all bad habits, especially the ones that taste really good, and do wonders for the closet you’ll still be loving long after the wedding has taken place and become a distant memory that threatned to envelope you in all its madness.