Michael and I arrived in Spain under cover of night, having just cheated Ryan Air out of a significant amount of money.  They wanted to charge each of us over a hundred euros for our checked luggage being over the weight limit (the limit, incidentally, is, like, zero kilos, and I now understand how this airline makes all its money).  So we stuffed all of our heaviest items (i.e., stacks of books) into our wee carry-ons, which now took on an absurd weight-to-volume ratio, like props in a slapstick movie.  Michael, meanwhile, was wearing six layers to minimize his luggage content.

Our journey together became defined by such hijinks.  We began to keep track of our schemes.

   [ Our Lady of Hotel Simon ]

Free of the torments of Stansted, we arrived in a perfect Seville.  I returned after eight (eight!) years to the lovely Hotel Simon, and although no, the lady at the desk did not know off-hand where the nearest karaoke bar was, she was more than willing to investigate for us after giving us a raised eyebrow.

We did not end up karaoking, mercifully.  Instead we wandered the streets, dining on soul-saving tapas and wine and giddily basking in the shadow of the Giralda, its Almohad interlace as demure as it is elegant.  This was our first taste of what we were searching for--the whispered traces of al-Andalus.  Already drunk on Spain, we turned a dark corner and stumbled upon a dream: a large group of muscled Sevillians hoisting a gilded baroque platform over their heads -- they were practicing for Semana Santa.  In a few weeks those platforms would be topped by massive painted wooden statues narrating the Passion -- Christ on the donkey, Christ kissed by Judas, Christ Crucified, Christ resurrected.  Mournful horns blasted from a portable radio so that the men could practice keeping time -- a hint of the grand marching bands that would take over the streets during holy week.

  [ Intersecting arches, Patio de las Doncellas ]

The next day we went looking for Pedro the Cruel's ghost in the Alcazar, only to find art that transcended the supernatural: dizzying stucco arabesques, optically illusive tilework, romantically swaying wisteria.  I found tiny fists clutching flowers in the arcading of the Patio de las Doncellas, the smallest traces of human presence in an otherwise aniconic courtyard.  Not to mention a good example of medieval humor.

Nearly out of time, we hurried to the Cathedral, a gothic colossus standing on the grave of the great mosque (which survived for almost two hundred years after the Christian conquest of the city).  We lied about our ages to get in at the discounted rate -- scheme number two.  We were just proud of ourselves for lying to get into church.  I tried and failed to find the tomb of Fernando el Santo -- where are they keeping him these days?  In the end we triumphantly climbed the thirty-four ramps to the top of the Giralda and gazed out at beautiful Seville -- at the tiled domes and the rooftop pools and the orange trees -- until the bells rang right by our heads and we nearly jumped out of our skin.

 
[ cathedral gargoyle ]

Thirty-six hours in one of the greatest cities of Europe was not enough, so we decided to move here.  Immediately post-dissertation, we think.

[Sevilla pictures here]

Dissertation research jaunts, I have decided, are best bookended by some quality visits with loved ones and babies.  Thus I opted to fly in and out of London rather than Spain in order to visit my bestest friend Mrs. Fanning and the Blessed Arrival from Heaven, Miss Poppy.  Recent encounters with humans of the pre-verbal type have confirmed for me that people do indeed develop personalities more or less immediately.  When considering the Poppy, the most appropriate and characteristic word is "serene".  She´s a little Buddhita.  She never wails, merely cries a bit until her (always justifiable) needs are met.  Sometimes when you hold her she gets a little bored and starts to fuss a bit; flip her over and she´s fine.  Best of all, she uncomplainingly allows me to perform whatever sartorial experiments strike my fancy.



I can see myself turning into a sort of punk Anne Geddes someday -- God help any children I might ever have.  We had taken the Poppy to the neighborhood pub in Swindon on St. Patrick´s Day -- an unforgivably boring holiday in England, at least from what I saw; perhaps second only to the fourth of July.  Said pub, the Tawny Owl, boasts local Arkell´s ales and an outside patio with what they call "features" -- including a water wheel, large decorative agricultural equipment and so forth.  Signs abound warning "No climbing on this feature".  We found the use of the word "feature" wonderfully quaint, in the way Americans find most English things quaint, I suppose.  (Ah, a roadside sign that reads ¨Queues Likely¨ -- how delightfully quaint!  Not to mention thoughtful, warning us of potential traffic jams.)



We ended up talking a great deal about babies, and I thought a lot about how much I prefer babies to dissertations, and how pleasant (and horrible, I know, I know) it would be to retire from dreaded academia and turn my attention to accessorizing a miniature person.  I lamented to Mrs. Fanning about how selfish I am, how I don´t want to get fat, how I can barely keep myself together let alone another human being.  She agreed that pregnancy is indeed pretty awful (though for the record, she´s looking fabulous), but that... and I quote.. I should have respect for what my body is capable of.  That was really quite a dawning moment for me.  Hmm.

That assumes, of course that my body IS capable of reproduction -- I have yet to be convinced.

We spent about five seconds in London to pick up Poppy´s American passport.  (She´s a dual citizen!  My lifelong dream!)  While family Fanning went into the Embassy, I spent an hour at a cozy, decades-old Italian cafe called The Lucky Spot, which sported the following poster in the window, a facsimile from World War II.  I really wish they had propaganda like this in New York, rather than the neurosis-inducing "if you see something say something" nonsense.  This is henceforth my personal mantra and dissertation motto:

The minute I got off the plane in India... I can't remember the last time I was quite so happy.  Well, I suppose it was the day after the election, but regardless, the point being, I love love love India.  The saris, the taxis, the streetcows, the inexplicable spiced quality of the air.  I missed it.  New York thinks it is a place of extremes, but it is a flatline of pastoral banality compared to Bombay.

Emerging from the airport with my suitcase and seeing that single dense sea of bodies waiting to pick up their loved ones, each face anxiously anticipating that flash of recognition -- I almost started laughing and crying at the same time, what with the delirium and the excitement.  Zubin looked ridiculous with the combination of 70s Bollywood facial hair and hip NYC attire -- but finally finding the one body in that huddled mass ready to scoop me up was such an amazing feeling of relief and belonging.

As someone who has lived in New York since pre-2001, I was not really afraid to be in Bombay again so shortly after the attacks (26/11 is what they're calling it in the papers).  If full-scale war had broken out between India and Pakistan that would have been another story, but as things were I decided to assume that the level of potential danger is really no higher now than it ever is, and in fact this was probably an ideal time to go to India since security would doubtless be so heightened.  (And it often was -- like when I had to show my passport something like 11 times at the airport on the way home.)



But then Zubin decided he wanted to go to Leopold's, and I got really uncomfortable.  It wasn't a fear of being victim to a second attack, but rather a fear of brushing up against young ghosts.  The deaths were too fresh to be historicized in my mind, and I had no desire to immerse myself in an open wound.  Surely particles of blood remained, and bulletholes had yet to be patched up; I felt no need to insert myself into Recent Tragic Events (cue memories of souvenir "Ground Zero" baseball caps on New York tourists).  But I went with him anyway, if only with the intention of supporting their business in the wake of a presumably economically debilitating event. 

The place was packed.  We barely got a table.  It was full of Indians, and full of tourists (many of whom had their children in tow) all chatting away without a hint of solemnity.  Perhaps there was a terror-tourism aspect to the crowd level -- Adi told us that when Leopold's first reopened, Indians came from miles out of town just to see the bulletholes -- but by and large this appeared to be a gawk-free assemblage of locals and tourists, hungry for lunch and thirsty for the kind of weak lager that hot countries specialize in.

Adi Uncle took good care of us, tooling us around town.  We spent much of my 24 hours in Bombay visiting the Parsi relatives, including Zubin's 98-year-old grandmother.  Her senses are significantly impaired but she knew Zubin as soon as he walked in, and rasped out his name.  He is her only grandchild.  She seemed to recognize me too, and we shared a sweet moment of enthusiastic hand-clasping.  The family apartment is full of beautiful wooden art deco furniture that Zubin's grandfather bought new.  The only thing that seems to have changed in the apartment is the view outside.  The sea, once nearby, even viewable from the neighborhood, is now blocked by a barricade of high-rise office and apartment buildings.  It kind of reminded me of Williamsburg.

A list of life-changing -- or at least life-enhancing -- events of the past few months, which I wish I had time to write about in detail.  Maybe I'll start posting some photographs and narrate pictorially.  In chronological order:

1. Attended (with evilvic) a very intimate living room concert given by Kristin Hersh, and afterward cooed with her over pictures of her kids on her husband's iPhone.  (Are we friends yet?)
2. Saw My Bloody Valentine, and nearly died by aural assault.
3. Saw Echo and the Bunnymen perform Ocean Rain at Radio City Music Hall.
4. Got married.
5. Had a delightful honeymoon in New Orleans.
6. Witnessed Barack Obama elected president.

Hey, awesome, so I like totally almost got into a fistfight in a bar last night!  The boyfriend and I decided to go out to a "nice dinner" for our anniversary.  Dazie's, our local favorite Italian, is closed on Mondays for August so we opted to go to Bamonte's in Williamsburg, where neither of us had ever eaten before.  It's a classic Brooklyn place -- elderly waiters in tuxes, elaborate light fixtures, a pink-and-black bathroom -- very fifties fabulous.

The food was pretty disappointing, but even worse was the high-decibel drunken birthday bash being conducted two tables over, which featured the 40-something birthday boy spouting out non-sensical racist rhetoric for the entire restaurant to hear.  It was pretty highly refined stuff, e.g. "Do you know what Obama's middle name is?  DO YOU KNOW what OBAMA's MIDDLE NAME is?  If you google Obama, you know what comes up? 'I am a fuckin MUSLIM', that's what comes up." 

I started to fantasize about all the things I could do to him -- spill a glass of red wine over his head on my way to the bathroom, whisper to him in his ear "happy birthday, you ignorant fuck -- I hope it's the last one you ever have."  I was fuming and Zubin as usual was taking the Buddhist high road, insisting that we "not let him get to us".  Then birthday boy started bitching about all the Hindus in Morristown (Zubin's cousins live in Morris Plains, thank you very much), and we finally decided to take our bottle of wine and finish the evening at the front bar in front of the Yankees game. 

I have a temper.  I felt like I had to do something or I'd obsess the entire following day.  Then it struck me -- I suck with verbal confrontation but I'm not so bad with the written word; I'll make him a birthday card!  I took a bar napkin, folded it in half, drew a cake with candles on the front, and on the inside wrote "Happy Birthday!  And thank you for ruining my special anniversary dinner with your ignorant racist bullshit.  PS, Everyone knows what Obama's middle name is.  The more intelligent of us aren't too worried about it."

It was tempting to wish him dead, but I figured I might have a better chance of making an Italian-American feel bad if I aimed for the Catholic guilt.  Although the smarminess of the PS may have undone that.

The timing was close -- the drunks started to saunter out of the restaurant just as I was finishing it, so I had to go outside to deliver my card.  I handed it to him and scurried off -- I guess he at least saw the picture on the front because I heard him drawl "Aw, thanks, that's so sweet of you..."  Neither he nor his thugs returned to kick our ass.  They all sped off in huge black SUVs.

I couldn't help feeling like Zubin and I were a sub-sub-plot in a Sopranos episode, a la Kennedy and Heidi -- "Hipster Couple #1", perhaps.  "Bi-racial liberal arts-grad pair".  Or maybe "Gentrifiers 1 and 2".

Stansted to Munich early in the morning. Desire for exploration immediately squashed in favor of a three-hour nap at the Hotel Blauer Bock.  A taxi driver informs us that our hotel's name has a double meaning, "blue buck" being slang for "drunk old man".

Since we slept through museum hours we spend our day wandering and browsing in shops.  Munich is pleasant -- almost generically pleasant -- very clean, very...well, European.  Zubin is in love with it for some reason; I think it's the food.  Our best meals of the whole trip are in Munich.


[ Munich Residence (palace) ]

For lunch we dine on phenomenal vegetarian schnitzl at a hipstery restaurant called Hopfeck.  When we ask about the portion sizes the cute Williamsburgy waiter prevents us from over-ordering; apparently the plates are huge.  "I know how you Americans are," he says.  But I thought it was Americans who were over-portioned and hence morbidly obese!  I suppose the Germans must have evolutionarily advanced stomachs. 

At dusk we end up at a little outdoor cafe on the edge of the Hofgarten, drinking haus wein and listening to a dinner opera hired by a private party.  Surely this is the apex of contentment.  Have I mentioned how much I want to move to Europe?  Then we wind our way to Prinz Myshkin for (gasp!) Tofu Stroganoff.

 
[ Diana Temple, Hofgarten ]

Next day, I have to choose between going to the Glyptothek and the Modern Art Museum.  I choose the latter, partially because I prefer the twentieth century to the BC, and partially because it seems appropriate to see German expressionism whilst in Germany.  They cover the avant-garde movements fairly well -- Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter are there, but Dada and the Bauhaus are represented only by painting (as per Pinakothek tradition, I suppose).  Regardless, it is a special experience to be surrounded by a roomful of Noldes, then Kirchners, then Beckmanns and so on.

In the afternoon I go to Vienna, and Zubin stays behind so he can finally eat some real sausage.

Munich pictures here.

Another cold, rainy day in London.  We only had time for one more museum so I picked the V&A.  I now feel like a complete idiot for not going here when I was studying abroad (actually, I did, but it was for a special exhibition on poster art so I saw nothing of the permanent collection), as this is where all the medieval stuff is.  But the cast courts were even better than the real thing:  I was not anticipating walking into a room and suddenly being confronted by Trajan's Column, the Silos reliefs, and the Portico de la Gloria all together in an art historical jumble.  The whole experience was all very wunderkammer.  We also visited the "China Design Now" exhibition, which does a good job of balancing popular, underground, and official culture.  It made us want to go to China.  By the time we got to the Islamic wing I was completely visually oversaturated.  Walking between vitrines full of ceramics and metalwork, I found myself starting to feel really panicky, along with that thorn-in-throat sensation of being about to cry.  I realized that I was having a PTSD flashback to studying for orals, and should probably just give up and leave.

    
[ V&A -- L: cafeteria ; R: courtyard ]

So we went to Harrod's -- I'd never been there before, but had heard wondrous tales of its majestic food and dessert courts.  I hoped to purchase a scarf (I'd made the mistake of packing for a summer vacation), but could not even afford their cheapest one.  Mrs. Fanning and I gazed at very large Cartier diamonds.  After a few minutes the level of wealth being transferred all around me started to make me feel mentally violated.  So instead of focusing on the merchandise I studied the customers instead.  I was fascinated by the number of Arab shoppers -- I wonder if the demographics would have been much different had I visited Harrod's back in 1998.  I expect so.  As if to highlight this transformation, near one of the entrances was an elaborate promotion for apartments being sold in Dubai, featuring a scale model of the entire city.  But the highlight of my Harrod's experience was seeing the Princess Diana and Dodi memorial: life-size bronze renderings of the couple, looking like they're on ecstasy, each with an arm outstretched toward a flying sea gull (?!), which is obviously leading them upward toward Heaven.  It's all an apparently serene scene until you notice the capital letters emblazoned on the pedestal, which read "INNOCENT VICTIMS".  Oh, the kitsch of it all!  (I was too stunned to even take a picture of it, but there are good ones on Flickr.)

We met up with Mr. Fanning at the end of his work day and drank fabulous ales in Chiswick at a pub called the Bull's Head -- easily one of the coziest bars I've ever been in.  It's right on the Thames, and when you sit in the lower level you actually feel like you're submerged in the river.  Then across the street for a nice dinner at Annie's, where I learned that champagne cocktails garnished with candied rose petals are a very good thing. 

I did NOT want to go back to New York.  Not for all the summer sun in the world.

We had a lovely Sunday night double-date with the Fannings at the Cinema Haymarket.  We saw Brief Encounter, a dramatic adaptation of a Noel Coward film done by the Kneehigh Theatre Company, which is based in Cornwall (me olde ancestral home).  It was recommended by David Walker, who saw and enjoyed another one of their productions with one of his London Programs.

In terms of set design and production, it was maybe the best play I've ever seen. I spent the majority of my time in the theater actively smiling -- there was constantly some kind of onstage marvel to respond to.  But rather than utilizing "special effects" per se, the extravagance of the production lay in these transparent, charmingly heavy-handed magic tricks.  The leads, at one point, swung from chandeliers operated by the other actors via pulleys in full view of the audience.  A rowing scene involved an actor waving a cherry blossom branch in front of the boat's passengers. "What a lovely branch," cries one of the leads, to which the prop-yielding actor coyly replies "thank you" and winks at the audience.  There was no trompe l'oeil about any of it, just brash (yet economical) inventiveness.

The production played up the play's (and venue's) cinematic origins brilliantly, occasionally lowering a screen that showed pre-filmed, flickery black-and-white projections.  The actors were able to literally step into the screen, their bodies immediately transforming into two-dimensional celluloid specters.  It was pretty breathtaking.  The issue of adaptation is interesting here – when switching between media, how is language and performance altered from screen to stage and back to screen again? (Brief Encounter is actually a play based on a movie based on a play.)  Theater acting is necessarily stylized since the distance from stage to seat must be traversed, while cinematic portrayals tend to be more subtle given the close proximity of camera and subject; intimacy between film and audience is more easily achieved.  The acting in this play -- the entire production, for that matter -- aside from being theatrical, was stylized in a manner very specific to World War II-era cinematic romances, but with vaudevillian musical interludes spliced in.

These interludes were songs also written by Coward, and only rarely did they directly complement or explicate the central narrative.  Ultimately they were diverting diversions, there to entertain and to play up the "period" aspect of the play.  If there was anything wrong with Brief Encounter it was that the central narrative of forbidden romance was continuously interrupted, maybe even stifled, by these cheerful musical confections and the (secondary) characters who performed them.  But perhaps the play would simply have been too sentimental otherwise.  In any case, when the hero was crying out "I love you!" to the heroine, my brain couldn't help but cry out, "but why?  We never got to that part."  There wasn't much space between the bells and whistles for much character development.

That said, this narrative structure of melodrama alternating with joviality did allow for an interesting upstairs/downstairs dynamic and class critique, underscored by the disparity between accents and the occasional juxtaposition of different couples' romantic dalliances.  There is, after all, something terribly bourgeois about infidelity, much like divorce.  Nevertheless, I'm too soft not to cry at [er, spoiler alert?] the hero's ukulele farewell serenade.  The romance was certainly not in the play solely for ironic purposes.

So, a confection, but a brilliant one.  There were even pre- and mid-show entertainments: the 'chorus', dressed like old movie ushers (that is, bellhops), played songs in the aisles beforehand, and the cast had filmed pseudo-retro-adverts for the intermission.  And since the venue is normally a movie theatre we were allowed to snack and drink in our seats!  It's really the little things in life that make me happy.  But I'll take all the bells and whistles too.

- We stayed at a friend's flat in Brixton.  It reminds me so much of Brooklyn; I felt at home there.

- We spent Sunday morning in Southwark, walking around the empty market and attending a choral mass at the Cathedral. (Little English choir boys in ruffly high collars! Oh, the cuteness!)  We walked to the river, and the sight of St. Paul's made me teary-eyed with London nostalgia (or perhaps New York exhaustion). 

- We met up with Mr. and Mrs. Fanning at the Tate Modern.  They are awash in wedded bliss.  They informed us that he just got a job offer so they are shortly moving to... wait for it... Luxembourg.  The beauty of it is that Mrs. Fanning can't really get a job until she masters either French or German, so she's basically going to be a housewife whose only main obligation is study languages.  Jealousy!  But how excited am I about having an excuse to go to Luxembourg?!

- My favorite moment at the Tate was inside the galleries, in front of this window:
A young mother stood before the window with her toddler in his pram, and said to him "Look, it's raining -- everyone has their umbrellas."  To which he replied (and you must imagine this with the two-year-old's English accent), "I don't want an umbrella, mummie! I want to get all dirty and for the rain to wash me away!"

- We saw a great play, Brief Encounter (review to follow) and afterward met up with the fabulous Adam Toy, who we befriended at Diajeng and Gustav's wedding in Indonesia a few years ago.  He took us to a good pub near Leicester Square called Salisbury, which has a charming menu featuring connoisseurial descriptions of mediocre beers.  E.g.: "Fosters, Australia, 4.0% -- Its full malt character on the mid palate blends well with a delicate creaminess and crisp, clean hop finish, creating a perfect balance to the beer. An ideal drink with Chicken Caesar due to creamy balance and cleansing effect."

[London pictures here]

This article from Thursday's New York Times is a pretty disturbing portrait of contemporary American bridal culture.  Several months ago I read Rebecca Mead's One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, which traces the emergence of the Bridezilla phenomenon and unpacks the wedding industrial complex.  I read it partially out of my fascination with the wedding industry and partially because I was a little concerned about becoming tripped up in its seductive tulle net myself.  One of my favorite stories in the book involved a bride who insisted that all of her bridesmaids dye their hair the exact same shade of blond.  But this is nothing compared to the 'zillas who encourage their maids to get, ahem, breast implants and cosmetic procedures prior to the wedding.  Best of all is that the insult is consistently staged as a gift for the bridesmaids, a "fun spa day" when the girls can all relax and celebrate.  Apparently these poor suckers don't realize (or don't care) that the actual "beneficiary" is the woman who wants to be flanked by an army of porcelain pageant queens in her wedding pictures. 

The last paragraph is borderline heartbreaking:

And how does a bride break it to a mother-in-law that she’d love her crow’s feet to be frozen into submission? Very delicately.

“My mother is in her 60s. She’s been talking about it for so long, so I said ‘Let’s do it,’ ” said Stacey Berlin, 29, a marketing consultant, who is having a party at Aquamedica Day Spa in Long Branch, N.J.

It was trickier with her future mother-in-law. “To her,” Ms. Berlin said, “I said it as a joke: ‘You should do Botox for the wedding!’ She giggled, and then I said, ‘I’m serious. It’s exactly what you need to freshen up.’ At first she kind of laughed it off, but the more we talked about it and I told her my mom was going to do it, she said ‘O.K.’ ”

I want to hug this poor woman.  I hope she has better luck with her next daughter-in-law.

The main argument of One Perfect Day is that engaged women aren't entirely to blame for becoming superficial monsters; rather, they are at the mercy of a profit-hungry industry that feeds off of their romantic tendencies and insists that they're not having a proper wedding if they're not purchasing a monogrammed silver commemorative cake cutter.  The wedding industry's success lies in how it alters the parameters of the "traditional", and implements what Mead calls the traditionalesque.  Witness the unity candle, which is hardly a centuries-old custom.  Apparently its first recorded use was in an episode of the Young and the Restless in the seventies.  Now every couple has to buy a fifty-dollar decorated pillar of wax, or else they must not love each other very much. 

This reminds me of when I saw Celine Dion being interviewed on Oprah when I was in high school.  Oprah asked her why she wanted to have such an extravagant and expensive wedding, and with that wide-eyed, soulless gaze Celine replied "I love him big time, so I want big wedding."  I remember being struck by how nauseatingly classist it was to equate love and money so explicitly, as if poverty prevents affection from fully blooming.

Media saturation is, of course, a major culprit in this myth of the Perfect Day.  These poor botoxed bridesmaids are being subjected to these tortures ultimately for the sake of photographic and videographic documentation.  Everyone wants to be a picture-perfect bride in a fairy-tale wedding in Neverland (and thanks to Disney, this is now possible!).  When I saw them in London, I asked Andrea and Doran if there was anything they would have changed about their wedding, and both agreed that they wished they'd spent less time posing for pictures and more time just existing and enjoying the day with their loved ones.  They sometimes felt like the event was being manufactured solely for the purpose of future reminiscence, like the Japanese who 'experience' their European vacations through the viewfinder of a camcorder. 

Now, I'm very much interested in photography, and I recognize that it is a construction rather than a reflection of truth.  But I deliberately hired a wedding photographer with a laissez-faire, photojournalistic style because I didn't want to spend half my wedding day creating moments for the sake of documentary record -- or, god forbid, re-creating them.  Couples are frequently encouraged to re-enact their vows, recessional, etc. if the photographer doesn't get the perfect shot the first time around.

One Perfect Day mentions another curious phenomenon surrounding twenty-first century nuptials.  While brides routinely feel a need to turn their maids into stylistic clones, ostensibly waving the flag of mass conformity, they are (perhaps paradoxically) also encouraged by the wedding industry not to conform to a traditional, cookie-cutter wedding.  That is, there is a pressure to make your wedding special, unique: an expression of your own individual, personal style.  Unfortunately Mead doesn't theorize this as fully as I wanted her to.  Surely this must be a peculiarly American tendency -- this desire to individualize, as if your wedding was a hot consumer item that can be purchased nowhere else.  It is now customary for couples to have a "signature cocktail" for their reception, for instance.  The industry is constructing an obligation for brides to separate themselves in the minds of their guests, who are likely to attend dozens of weddings in their lifetimes.  One must, above all, be memorable.

Aside from being terribly American, I suspect this emphasis on individualization may also be a generational phenomenon.  Many of the women who are getting married now are products of the Lollapalooza age -- we prided ourselves on being outspoken and unconventional.  It seems natural that we would want our major life events to manifest that.  (This is also evident in the trend of invented and super-archaic baby names.)  And frighteningly, many new brides are Gen Y and grew up going to Hot Topic, where you can effortlessly select your personality from a wide array of available sub-cultures -- emo, punk, goth, indie... you name it, they will sell you the t-shirt for it.  Similarly, if you have a Disney Fairy-Tale Wedding, you can choose from an array of pre-selected wedding concepts to suit your personality: Is your dress a "Sleeping Beauty" or a "Princess Jasmine"?  Will your reception be "Classic Elegance" or "Simply Chic"?  It's all a delightful illusion of "personal style" veneered over a mass-marketed, factory-farmed event.