5 Insane Things From Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine, Fall 2015

Is it the hardening of one’s heart that makes one less and less impervious to envy with each passing issue of Martha Stewart Weddings as one’s wedding clock ticks and ticks on? My wedding clock admonishes, “Nine months left, young lady!” and with that I book and book, plan and plan, dig and dig myself further into the buttercream trench, and I find now that looking at Martha Stewart Weddings doesn’t quite arouse me like it used to. Certainly, there wasn’t much to lust after in the Fall 2015 issue; perhaps because if you’ve seen 17 footed, Japanese maple-stuffed urns, you’ve seen them all, or perhaps because I’m not that into the tawny shades of autumn, or perhaps because it’s as I’ve suspected: I’m so deep down the rabbit hole now, the only wedding I can see is my own.

Fortunately, I still found plenty of insane things in this issue. I’ll never go blind to those, because they’re funny. Without further ado:

This Bouquet’s Hellish King Protea (p. 112)

This couple’s destination wedding in Mexico could have been revolting, like many destination weddings in this periodical tend to be, but it actually sounds almost very great. There was tortilla soup, a private villa, an intimate guest list, and tiny bottles of tequila. What could possibly go wrong? The enormous gaping maw of a king protea erupting from bride Krystal’s bouquet, that’s what. Look at that toothy thing! You know trypophobia, that extremely real phobia of holes side-by-side in a pattern? Which I have? There has to be a sister-syndrome that causes a similar skin-cartwheeling reaction to plants like the monstrous king protea here, because I feel all sorts of ill every time I let my right eyeball even creep over to Krystal’s bouquet. Also, these “flowers,” which at once look as if they could poison you, insult you, and trick you into thinking they’re pretty for a split-second and then turn into evil ghosts that suck your soul out a second later, are becoming increasingly more popular, which is—I cannot stress this enough—insane.

Krystal tells the magazine, “Sayulita is so us,” of the Mexican town in which she and her husband married. “It’s small, casual and just so charming.” If I were a hungry plant cursed with teeth hewn by vicious desert winds and decades of loneliness, I’d prey on small, casual, charming people first.

This “Secret” Source (p. 102)

We all lean forward in anticipation, elbows on knees, chins on hand-heels. Martha is about to tell us a secret! This is the kind of thing we’ve come here for—sure the well-lit photography is nice, and yes, the recipe for spice cake and the stationery edge-painting DIY are practically indispensable, but this is the Big Times—one of those breath-catching moments when the room falls silent and the keys stop tapping and the phones stop ringing and all the heads turn toward Her because she is about to serve us up one of those Martha-only morsels that only she, she of better-pancake-batter-dispensing, she of stronger-sandcastle-plaster-packing, she of plumper-pumpkin-painting, she of the world-wider-wedding-web could possibly know, and that’s what we’re here for, so lean in and listen, here it comes! The secret! Here it is, shh:

The secret source for nuts for your wedding is nuts.com.

This Custom-Built Teepee (Pg. 114)

In case you thought Veronica and Daniel were impoverished losers with no taste, this is a custom-built glamour tepee, not one of those tacky, one-size-fits-all glamour tepees you can get at just any old Party City. And while I’d like to not want to make fun of it, since this tepee actually stands as a beacon of strength and hope in a tale of tragedy (‘Ron’s and Dan’s wedding venue pulled out at the very last minute, and they had to turn their [incredibly well-appointed] welcome dinner into their actual wedding!), I, well, have to make fun of it, because, well, this is a whole bunch of rich white people sitting on fur inside a tepee that’s been decorated with pointless tchotchkes from Pottery Barn’s “rustic” lookbook.

The wedding, which also featured cow skulls crowned with flowers that Veronica, uniquely, “wanted [to] look like someone had gathered from a field” (literally have never this kind of “flowers picked from ground” idea before?), silver antler sculptures, and tables adorned with Moroccan wedding blankets, just would not have been complete without the custom-built tepee, which it is important to note again was built just for them and was not found just sitting there in the woods, left behind by an indigenous tribe of the Great Plains. Even more insane: The custom-built tepee wasn’t just used to hold richly textured poufs and pillows, or to land Veronica a spot in Martha Stewart weddings for sheer insanity. It was also used as a “makeshift” photobooth, when, I’m guessing, the custom mud-hut photobooth builder failed to show.

The Way Sophia Amoruso’s Entire Wedding Spread Was Fucked Up in My Copy of the Magazine (pgs. 294-303)

I always buy Martha Stewart Weddings to 1. read seriously and 2. make fun, of but this time I rushed to grab it for a reason that took even higher priority than my two usuals: to see the wedding of Sophia Amoruso, the CEO and founder of NastyGal.com. Ever since she announced her engagement, I’ve been burning to see how she’d do bridal. I am fascinated by this vastly wealthy, incomprehensibly stylish, mean-seeming, dour woman—her “goth” bent, her rude Instagram captions, her inability to maintain pregnant women on staff at her corporate offices. How, how, how would this creature do a wedding? Would she wear a gimp suit? Would she carry a gorilla instead of flowers? Would she even show up?

Anyway, so I run to CVS one day and grab the issue and my birth control and then run back to work and rip the thing open and flip over to page 294 where Sophia Amoruso’s the spread starts and there, right on page 294, is a massive printing mistake. No page before has this problem, and no page after page 303, the end of Sophia Amoruso’s wedding spread, has this problem. Only Sophia Amoruso’s wedding spread has this problem. It is so cruel but so hilarious—the ink is all offset, so the guests look like reanimated corpses, one spread is just completely black as if someone possessed by a demon barfed blood all over it, and all I can tell of Amoruso’s lewk is that she wore gloves, which, I don’t get it, this is Los Angeles. Ha, ha, ha, how pointless was this whole thing! Thanks for nothing, Martha!

This Real Wedding in Krabi, Thailand (p. 110)

On the indulgence scale, the couple behind this wedding makes Veronica and Daniel from Custom-Built Tepeeopia up there look like that family who only threw out enough garbage in one year to fill up a small mason jar. Michelle and Ryan’s nups, which took place on a remote island in Thailand that could only be accessed by “traditional wooden long-tail boats,” had everything: escort cards calligraphed atop “foraged river rocks,” hand-dyed silk flags for no reason, food poisoning, bridesmaids that knew how to sing, and macaque monkeys that watched lustily from nearby branches. It would all probably be way, way too much for most of us, but these two share a lifelong love of travel, so, for them, it was just enough.

What is my favorite thing of this wedding? It’s a toss-up. The blasé yet focused expression of this monkey is definitely my third-favorite thing—he’s like, “i cant believe the mother of the bride is wearing gold brocade what are you thinking this is a beach smh.” My second-favorite thing is that Ryan, who is the world’s most important man, and clearly owns a factory that creates gold doubloons to have been able to afford this wedding, is proving my favorite point ever: That rich, important people are not perfect. He is proving this by buttoning the bottom button of his suit jacket, even though no bottom button of a suit jacket should ever be buttoned. Money can’t buy you class, Ryan. Elegance is learned. My most-favorite thing is that “Michelle was the first to raise her hand” when “the boatsmen asked if anyone wanted to swim with Andaman Sea’s famous bioluminescent plankton.” Same!

And one actually good thing…

This Perfect Dog Who is Having None of It (p. 74)

Look at his rude face! I can’t take it, I have to go.