A letter to my little sister upon the occasion of her first being a bridesmaid.

alternatively, what I wish I had known when I was twenty-two.

Wedding season is upon us. That lovely time of year when as, a twenty or thirty something, you spend most of your weekends  and much of your money at weddings and their related parties (showers, bachelorette parties, gown fittings, engagement parties . . . the list goes on and on.) I spent the last two weekends at weddings. Most recently it was my little sister's best friend from childhood got married, my dad officiated, our whole family was invited and my little sister was in the bridal party. This was the "first wedding" for my little sister and her friends (by that I mean the first wedding where the bride and groom were their friends and contemporaries.) Having had about six more wedding seasons and being part of the "adult table" at this wedding gave me an interesting perspective, and made me think of a bunch of advice I would give to someone as they start this phase of their lives.

1. Don't show up hungry: yes these events are about food, and there is a chance that you will have to be rolled out of the venue in a wheel barrow, but you can't assume that you are going to be fed right away. Maybe they will start with appetizers or maybe the service will be short, or maybe you will be in a stifling church for a high mass and you will be that person who fainted when the incense came down the isle. This is doubly true if you are in the bridal party, people will be plying you with champagne all day your friend will hate you if you have drunk eyes in all of her pictures.  
2. Wedges and flip flops: If there is any chance any part of the wedding is outside wear wedges. It limits the risk of falling on uneven gopher hole filled ground, and even if you have only had a tiny sip off champagne and your floor length dress gets caught on your foot, if you fall at a wedding everyone will assume you are drunk. I am aware that they aren't great for dancing but better that than becoming a one man aerating crew. Which is why flipflops, hide them somewhere, whether you are wearing wedges or heels, once you are done with photos and have enjoyed enough of the signature cocktail that you don't care about your outfit you will be ready to truly enjoy yourself (you can also embrace your inner hippy and just go barefoot, but that isn't always ideal.) 
3. Really just clothes you can dance in (without embarrassing your grandmother). So maybe your grandmother won't be there, but at a wedding there is a good chance someone's will be. Weddings have a different music than clubs, different dress codes and different dancing. You'll have a better time if you don't wear something that risks flashing Pop-pop during Twist and Shout and having it caught on camera for the happy couple to enjoy forever, (if this doesn't worry you, you are more confident than me and I applaud you. I tend to save it for the bachelorette and still worry that my spanx are showing.)

4. Treasure the day. This is the one that is most important. It probably the one that makes me seem like an old lady (although the my feelings on dress code have a certain "get off my lawn" feel to them.) In the midst of your first wedding it is easy to get irritated with your friends. You have seen a lot of them, you are all sleep deprived, some (or all) of you are in dresses you didn't pick out which might be unflattering or uncomfortable. But these are the last glowing days of the friendships of youth, and before you know it your relationships will have transformed in ways that are incomprehensible to you now. The transition isn't sudden or tragic, it is a necessary part of growing up and a consequence of the gift of the freedom to marry and work and explore outside our hometowns. The friends who are important will always be a part of you, but not in the same way. I wish I could say that even if you move apart they will only be a phone call away, but that isn't true. At some point someone else will come ahead of you, they will pick their husband before you, their children, begrudgingly their jobs, and they won't answer your call. Not to hurt you but because the realities of life are more pressing. But in the glow of your first wedding weekend you can forget all of that, strengthen the ties between you, grow the memories you will cherish. It isn't going to be the same again, but you can enjoy it now, and start your future together whatever it brings.

I told you I have been to a lot of weddings.

Don't tell me to "breath"

I have always been a terrible speller, just ask my second grade teacher, or my parents, or probably anyone reading this blog. It is better with typing than hand-writing, and I am better at editing others than myself, but it is always a struggle. I have to stay on top of it, especially because I know people are paying me to pay attention to detail, although they are also paying me to speed read, which cuts in the opposite direction. Which is to say that this isn't a rant about people who don't know the difference between "breath" and "breathe" or "draw" and "drawer" or "won't" and "wont" or any number of other words we get wrong because we were typing fast, or lazy or didn't understand the rule.
This is a rant about a very specific type of email I get much too often, in which a sender (usually older and male, although not always) responds to my concerns by telling me to "breath." Usually these emails come from someone I am on a board with or a pro se (self represented) opposing litigant; I have never gotten one from another attorney, although that does not mean it won't happen in the future.

Here is what  happens:

1) The event, some action is taken or occurs which concerns me. It usually has to be something that really sits with me for a while, something big, a client or colleague behaving badly, an important decision being made too causally, something that is going to impact more than me alone.

2) My irritation keeps distracting me and I write a letter. This letter will end up being multi-bullet pointed, written, condensed, fleshed out, made as clear as possible while still conveying my grave concerns. It generally is a couple days between the event an when I send the letter to the interested party.
Usually (ideally) this letter will then serve to start a conversation on the concerns, or I will be told that it is too late to address it but my concerns are noted, or it is ignored. All of these are valid responses, some of them are more irritating than others but I don't impugn them as options. However, that is not always the response a recipient will give.

3) I receive a patronizing reply, very often where the author tells me more than once to "breath." Then I become so angry I have to step away from my email and will generally ignore the person until we absolutely must interact again. It isn't the most mature approach, but it is better than the reply I would deliver if I let my baser instincts react.

Here is why the visceral and violent response:

It implies that I am hysterical, in a fit of emotion that is rendering me unable to breathe. Throughout history women with strong opinions were considered crazy, dangerous, bad mothers, unfit wives. The victims of the Salem Witch Trials we mostly single or widowed women who were able to survive alone, they stayed alive as long as their work didn't upset the male political and religious leaders in their communities. First generation feminists trying to get suffrage were locked away in mental institutions, force fed and had their children taken away from them because they were "crazy" and hysterical. In the 1950, 60, 70's women who were dissatisfied with their lot as wives and mothers without intellectual stimulation were medicated into placidity. There is a long history of women with opinions being told that they are crazy. While the battles I occasionally take on are not those of the women before me the reaction I get when I am told to calm down and shut up is part of that legacy.

If you call someone crazy, or hysterical or (my favorite buzz word) "emotional" it means that they are not thinking logically, analytically, (like a man) and you don't have to pay attention to what they are saying. So my angry response comes from the fact that whoever wrote that email clearly didn't take the time read what I wrote to them.

And to make it all worse they couldn't even do me the courtesy of responding with the correct word.