Secondly, I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU to everyone who has come rallying to my defense in the wake of the Single Bridezilla segment and its aftermath. Your comments and encouragement (and willingness to go beat people up on my behalf) have been greatly appreciated.

Finally, I would like to let everyone know that I have finally stopped reading the Daily Mail. And just in case you were wondering, I will not be getting a nose job any time soon (or ever, for that matter); even if I did have excess funds lying around to put towards plastic surgery, I wouldn’t. (Spending tens of thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgery is, in my humble opinion, just as ridiculous as spending tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding.)

In conclusion, it has been a very, very long week and I’m still fielding calls from all sorts of production companies and reality TV casting directors but in the interest of getting this post up before the internet wonks out again, I’m going to sign off and go rustle up some lunch.

(Which I will probably eat while watching “Say Yes to the Dress” on Netflix if the rain hasn’t cut the signal again, but don’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t want those Bridezilla rumors starting up again…)

Have a great weekend, folks!

I’ve got to hand it to the Brits—being the descendents of Shakespeare and all, their insults far outweigh those of their American cousins.  I particularly enjoyed “Good God, where did this chin sniffer get that nose !!! Looks like she’s done a 100 yard dash in a 90 yard gym.”  I had to read that one several times before I got it, so I thank you for that dose of amusement Grant from Wilts.

I also liked “who NOSE when they will marry!! God NOSE!!”  Very clever (and given the provenance of this particular comment, I’m to understand the people from Wilts—wherever the hell Wilts is—must be very beautiful to take such an interest in suggesting various plastic surgeries for me).

I am also grateful to Sally from Spain—it’s good to know that people from the Iberian Peninsula are also concerned about the hideousness of my profile.

In addition to the nose comments, which are outnumbered only by the “Run away!” comments, I’ve been called “Amy Winehouse’s ugly sister,” “grotesque,” a “completely pointless bimbo,” and a “huge disservice”  to “our gender.”  Then there are the bunny-boiler remarks.  Four at last count.  Since when did “bunny-boiler” become the insult of choice?  Evidently, I’m way behind on these things.

By the time Wednesday evening rolled around, I was so overwhelmed—not just by the comments but by all of the phone calls, emails and interview requests I’ve received in the wake of this whole thing—that when I called The Wedding Date to ask if he’d be okay with me sending a photo of the two of us to another news source, I totally broke down.

We’re talking tears… runny nose… sobbing into the phone… the whole nine yards.

Fortunately he was in the process of taking down his Star Wars-themed Christmas tree at the time and Star Wars always puts him a good mood (I’m pretty sure, in fact, that there was more playing-with-his-action-figures going on than putting-them-away) so when I started bawling over the fact that I didn’t want this whole “thing” to come between us, he assured me that it wouldn’t, that he was proud of me and that he supported me in all of my “bridezilla” glory, 100%.

Phew.

On another positive note, I was so exhausted while driving to my brother’s new apartment to borrow a camera last night that I got lost (well, I’ll blame the exhaustion anyway… we all know my navigational prowess is subpar on a good day) and when I pulled over to try to regain my bearings, I FINALLY figured out how the use the GPS feature on my Droid.

It wasn’t actually that difficult.

Which brings me back to my earlier point: I’m not a bimbo.  And I don’t need a man to “validate my existence” or, while we’re on the subject, to teach me how to use my GPS (although your comment on the subject did help, Zak).  I’m well aware that what I’m about to say pertains primarily to women, and primarily to women of the heternormative paradigm, in which the so-called “wedding industrial complex” definitely plays a huge role, but who doesn’t like to play dress up?  Who doesn’t like to daydream about their wedding?

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1)      Would the producers make me look like a complete lunatic?

2)      Would I look fat in my grandmother’s wedding dress (or worse: fat in the $12 reception dress I scored at Jomar’s)?

3)      Would the sight of me in not one but two wedding dresses send The Wedding Date running for the hills?

24 hours later, I’m happy to report that I did not look like a complete lunatic (half lunatic, maybe, but not complete), that I looked “very pretty” according to one of my five year olds (and “skinny” according to the mother of one of my high school students) and that The Wedding Date did not go running for the hills, even when several of his friends texted him to say, “I just saw you on Good Morning America!  Is that the girl?”

(They showed three pictures of us together.  Three!)

Being rather new to the media circus, however (whoops—did I say “circus?”  I meant “circuit”), I had no idea that the story would be “picked up,” first by Jezebel and then The Daily Mail.  (Thanks, by the way, to everyone who has been posting the follow up stories on Facebook.)

This is why my concerns over the segment were rather benign.  What I should have been concerned about were the comments that followed.

Here are a few of my favorites:

“I can see why they have to be already planning their weddings while single; who’s going to marry them!”

- Lorena, SC, USA

(Evidently Lorena has yet to embrace the question mark.)

“Talk about desperate. Plus, isn’t a wedding as much a groom’s big day as the woman’s?”

- VCHorseGuy, CA USA

(Yes, because men are known for their love of wedding planning.  Show me a man who doesn’t love talking centerpieces.  And bouquets.  And cakes and processional music and bridesmaids dresses.)

“In a word, FREAKS. Any women that even half thinks like this you need to RUN AWAY from as soon as possible. They should plan to get a date, and plan to get a life first. Bunny boilers.”

- EUSSR, London

(Bunny boilers?  Really?  Besides, last I checked, I have actually have a date, and a life come to think of it.  Then again, I suppose said life would be a whole lot richer and more exciting if I had the time to sit around commenting on other people’s quirks.)

“[The Wedding Date] and Travis [the boyfriend of the other “Single Bridezilla” featured in the segment] should run away so fast they leave a trail of dust in their wake. They would be completely superfluous to these women if they weren’t needed to wear a suit and show up at the wedding. The only part of the wedding day (ceremony and celebration afterwards) that is of any real importance is the marriage vows and what they mean, and these women don’t seem to be thinking of those at all.”

- Ab, USA

(What?  Vows?  Shoot!  I guess I should have started working on those years ago.  Obviously I’ll make them nice and generic so I can just “insert groom here” like Kim Kardashian.)

And finally, my personal favorite:

“Wow, that woman should give up on these crazy ideas and use the money to have a nose job. That witch’s nose is vile.”

- Tracey, Bolton

I’ll admit, this last one hurt a bit but when I told The Wedding Date about it, he got angry.  Really angry.  He even used the “F” word.  Several times.  And he never uses the “F” word.  It was quite lovely, actually, plus he told me that he loved my nose so if Tracey from Bolton is reading this, please know that your comment only served to bring us closer together and that it’s impossible to get a nose job for $12 anyway.

There was, amongst the nonsense, one semi-rational comment:

“Please, this isn’t anything new. Ever heard of hope chests? Women have always planned for their wedding and marriage once they reach a marriageable age. Wedding dress, linens, household items. Not so long ago it was looked upon as the duty of a practical, forward-thinking woman to be prepared for her future husband. Now, it seems, public opinion would rather mock and vilify these women for simply being true to their naturally romantic, traditional natures and doing what generations of their mothers have done before them. How sad our society has become.”

- Nikki, Boise, USA

There!  Take that!  I’m not so crazy after all.  I’m just a “practical, forward-thinking woman” who is being true to my “naturally romantic” nature.  At least that’s why I’m going to keep telling myself.  Thoughts?

PS: If you missed yesterday’s segment, you can see it here (at least within the US… I keep trying to find a way to share it with everyone in the UK but my attempts have served only to remind me how frustrating it was trying to watch the American version of The Office when I lived in London).

PPS: For the follow up pieces and even more ridiculous comments, check out Jezebel and The Daily Mail.

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His exact words were, “God, I love you!”

But he was staring at my chest, probably because we were in his bedroom and I had just removed my sweater to reveal my one and only Victoria’s Secret bra—but still.

How does one accidentally drop the “L” word?  (Especially when you pause to consider the fact that my cleavage is hardly my greatest asset.)

I didn’t respond.  I mean, what’s a girl supposed to say to that?  I don’t think he even realized that he’d said the “L” word and I myself wasn’t sure until I ran over the entire scene over again in my head, but he did.

He totally did.

I’ve written quite a bit about the “L” word in the past.  In fact, those of you who have been following the progress of my Great Date Experiment may recall a post I wrote a few months ago entitled Your First I Love You???  I’ve no desire to rehash the embarrassing moments chronicled therein (although the best was definitely when my soon-be-to-boyfriend told me he loved me during my senior year of college and I proceeded to bang my head on the steering wheel in response) but I am happy to report that there was no head banging this time around.  I simply kissed The Wedding Date in return and said nothing more on the subject because let’s face it: people say crazy things when they’re making out.

(Besides, I thought it was funny so please don’t worry when you read this later, TWD—no one’s ever given my non-existent cleavage such a compliment before.)

What I would like to discuss today is the process of falling in love, and of actually determining that you’ve fallen in love—as opposed to finding yourself simply intrigued by someone’s bra.  Or sleepy.  Or drunk.

Over the course of the past eighteen months, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting around and trying to figure out whether or not the feelings I’ve developed for a given individual actually constitute love.  Out of the thirty men who were kind enough to serve as my “case studies” throughout the duration of my experiment, I’ve come close a handful of times—mainly because I have an overactive imagination and continue to suffer from an early introduction to Jane Austen novels—but in the end, I was always forced to conclude that my feelings were simply wishful thinking, not love.

A friend from high school who was several my senior and therefore an expert on everything once told me that there was no way to predict the process of falling in love.

“When you are, you’ll just know,” she said.

And I never believed her until it actually happened for the first time.  I just knew, and the man in question knew, and even though we spent the next several months of our long distance relationship engaged in excessive melodramatics (“There’s something I need to tell you—but not over the phone.  It has to be in person!”) the “L” word was eventually spoken.

And yet, with each successive relationship I’ve entered into, the love part has felt entirely different, so different that I can’t help but wonder if I’ve ever actually been in love before.

“Holy sh*t!”  I find myself thinking, “So this is what it’s supposed to feel like?”

I don’t know.

Which is why I need your help: how do you know when you’re in love?  (And please note: I’m talking about being in love with an actual person, not just their teal-and-jaguar-print bra.)

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Maybe, just maybe, if we hadn’t had to watch that scene three times, I would have made it all the way to the end but this is what happens when you go from serial dating (18 months, 30 men and 75 dates at last count!) to focusing your “manthropological” research on one particular individual.  First you decide to go running the day after New Years, then you agree to watch Star Wars.  Pretty soon you’ll be playing Runewars and going to gaming conventions (and gaming conventions, as far as I’m concerned, are the beginning of the end).

Speaking of the end, I’ve got some loose ends to tie up from last week, in particular the question that The Wedding Date asked me when we were in Boston earlier this month.

We were at the hotel watching HGTV, eating leftover biscuits from our Denny’s Grand Slams and killing time before my friends’ wedding when he lowered the boom.

“Tell me about your experiment,” he began.  “Is it over?”

“Over?” I asked.  “Well I’m not on Match.com anymore if that’s what you’re asking.”

Unfortunately, this was not what he was asking.

“I know you’re not, and you told me about your experiment and your blog on our first date so I knew what I was getting into but now… are you still looking?”

“I told you, I’m not seeing anyone else.”

“Yes, but are you still looking?”

I didn’t quite know how to answer.  And every word that came out of my mouth sounded stupider than the last.  I was scared.  And stalling—I’d been single since moving back from London almost two and a half years ago!  Granted, there were plenty of times when I wished I hadn’t been single (My First Sugar Daddy comes to mind, as does the endless drama with Date #7) but for all intents and purposes, I liked being single.  I liked dating and yet, here was this man, right in front me, at a hotel in Boston because I asked him to come.

A man I actually liked—a man I liked just as much, if not more, than I liked being single.

And so, without further ado, I finally got my act together and told him, “No.  I’m not still looking.  And as for my experiment… well, it’s over.”

Now I’ll have to start blogging about Runewars.  Or gaming conventions.  Or the fact that I showed up to work on Saturday in a pair of pink Converse sneakers, despite the fact that there were three inches of snow on the ground and I’m the one who is always lecturing her students about proper footwear.

“Where are your snow boots?” my boss demanded.

“At home.”

“At home?”

“Yes.  I didn’t… well, I didn’t go home last night.  I spent the night at The Wedding Date’s.  It wasn’t snowing when I left yesterday.”

And so it begins.

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Now, getting down to business:

I once had a neighbor who told me that the best way to learn Spanish was to take a Latin lover.  He was a rather eccentric neighbor (I read somewhere that he was Nazi-hunter back in the day) and his appearances at the Hooper Island Martini Bar Soiree were always somewhat bizarre (I used to refer to him as Uncle Drosselmeyer) but I’ve never forgotten his advice.

Take a Latin lover.

Despite being half Puerto Rican on my mother’s side, I’ve never taken a Latin lover before.  Unless of course you count the Jehovah’s Witness I met on a cruise ship when I was thirteen.  He too was Puerto Rican but on account of being a Jehovah’s Witness, he had to ask his father for permission to ask me to dance on the last night of the cruise.

Obviously things didn’t work out between us (what am I supposed to do with a man who can’t dance?) but he did present me with a love letter during one of the teen nights.

Unfortunately I couldn’t understand much of it.

“What does this say?” I asked one of the other Spanish-speakers in the teen lounge.

“Dulce?  Dulce means ‘sweet,’ like ‘sweetheart.’”

“Oh.”  Well now, that was pretty sweet.

But that was years ago, and in the interim I decided that French, not Spanish, was my language of choice.

Mind you, I can only speak about six or seven words in French but when my Canadian high school boyfriend once lifted me onto a frozen fountain somewhere in the streets on Montreal and whispered “J’taime, Kat” I just about melted.  At least I would have melted—it was, as always, about six degrees below freezing.

But now, nearly ten years later, I’m off my French kick.  Now I’m back into the language of Colombian hot chocolate… the language of my ancestors… the language of love.

I never realized just how sexy the Spanish language can be until I started seeing The Wedding Date.

(I know, I know, I’m a little slow on the uptake.  But what can I say?  I used to think German was sexy.)

Now Spanish… even “tell me” sounds sexy when The Wedding Date says it, probably because he says it all the time when we’re making out, but I think this is one of those causation/correlation things: it would sound sexy regardless of the circumstances.

My newest favorite, however, is cariña, which is (if one is to believe Wikipedia) basically a grown-up version dulce.

Then there’s the quintessential te quiero.

“There are many interpretations for that one,” The Wedding Date explained last weekend (as if I didn’t already know that.  I did actually take Spanish in college, and in high school, even though my reliance upon Wikipedia and Spanish-speaking translators in the teen lounge would suggest otherwise).

“We’re going to go with ‘I really, really, really, really, REALLY like you,” he concluded.

“That works for me,” I replied.  “Yo tambien.”

Every once in a while, however, my brain will recall that I did spend several weeks in Spain, several times, in fact, and something will click without the requisite Google search.

New Years Eve was one of those times.

I was in the kitchen making myself another chocolate martini when I saw that one of my parents’ friends had cornered The Wedding Date.  She was grilling him about something, en español, and even though she was speaking too quickly for me to understand what she was saying, I caught his response: Creo que si.

Creo que si?

“Creo que si” translates approximately to, “I think so” or “Yes, I believe so.”

Only in this context, it was like Jeopardy: I knew the answer but not the question.

I rescued The Wedding Date as quickly as I could and steered him across the room towards my friends.  “Did you understand what she was asking me?” he asked.

“No, not really.”

“Well, she was asking me about you.  Basically, she wanted to know—

—–

And unfortunately I’m going to have to stop there for today because it’s already 7:52 and if I don’t get out of bed and post this now I really am going to be late for work!  More on Monday, I promise.

In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts in bilingual affairs below and have a great weekend!

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This was never so clear to me as it was the day after New Years, when I had my first brilliant idea of 2012.

“Let’s go for a run,” I suggested to The Wedding Date.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah.  We’ve been eating and drinking and lying around doing nothing around for the past 48 hours.  It would be good for us.”

“Fine by me,” he said.  “Let me just change my shoes.”

I should confess that my newfound interest in running stemmed mainly from the fact that Santa had brought me several eco-friendly active-wear tops for Christmas and I was eager to give them a try.  (Especially the gray one with the padded sports bra.  I love me a good padded sports bra.)

What I failed to consider was the fact that it was January 2^nd, and being January 2^nd, it was rather cold so my new eco-friendly active-wear top was quickly lost beneath a turtleneck, a fleece hoodie, a scarf and the hat I used to wear during my stellar but short-lived career with the New College Boat Club.  (We came in second place at the Christ Church Regatta, then I hurt my back and had to take an early retirement but I’m pretty sure I’d be training for the London Olympics right about now if things had gone differently.  And if I hadn’t had that blasted erg machine as much as I did…)

Equally unfortunate was my failure to recall that The Wedding Date actually likes running.  He ran a 5K a few weeks ago and has an app on his phone that tracks his progress and automatically uploads the results to Facebook.  I, on the other hand, only like running in theory.

Or in eco-friendly active-wear advertisements, where other people are doing all the work and their hair looks perfect and there isn’t an ounce of actual sweat involve.

“You’ll be fine,” The Wedding Date assures me.  “You’re a dancer!”

“That doesn’t mean anything.  I hate cardio.  With a passion.  And it’s cold.  And you’re good at running!  You’re gonna leave me in the dust.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take it nice and slow.  Slow and steady wins the race!”

So we head out, leaving the rest of my friends who are visiting for the holiday all seated around the kitchen table feasting on bagels and leftover cheese balls from the night before and various other carbohydrates.

It’s not too late to change my mind…

But relationships are all about compromise.  Plus, I’ll be able to gloat once we’ve returned and eat my bagel slathered with cream cheese in peace, guilt free.

The thing about running, however, is it doesn’t get easier once you get going.  It gets harder.  Five minutes in, my lungs are ready to collapse.  My legs are ready to collapse.  I am ready to collapse, which really isn’t all that unexpected considering what happened the last time I attempted to perform a three minute solo at lightening-speed, but The Wedding Date is in his element and he seems so damn pleased about us having found a new “couple’s activity” that I tell myself to suck it up and keep going.

A few minutes later, we’ve just about reached the part of the trail where the park ends and the Wal-mart parking lot begins.  I know this because I take this trail all the time with my dad to walk the dogs but The Wedding Date, having had the cheek to settle down somewhere other than Philadelphia, has never been here before.

“If I sprint to the end of the trail, can I stop?” I plead.

“Sure,” he says, “You’re more of a sprinter, aren’t you?”

Yeah.  That’s it.  That’s my problem—not that we’re running, but that we’re doing the wrong kind of running.

I kick it into high gear and somehow make it to the start of the parking lot without having a heart attack.

Three seconds later, The Wedding Date is back at my side, looking rather disappointed.  “Is that it?” he asks.

“Yeah.  This is the end of the trail.  Now we turn around and walk home and eat bagels.”

“Nah, this can’t be it.”

“Look for yourself!  There’s Wal-Mart, there’s Old Navy.  There’s the horrid arts and crafts store where I used to work when I first moved back from London and couldn’t find anything better to do with a Masters degree in Dance Anthropology… this is the end of the trail.”

“Then let’s do it again.”

“Are you serious?”

“Kat, we haven’t even gone two miles.”

“That’s fine by me,” I reply.  I can already taste the bagel waiting back at the house with my name it.  I’ll take a nice long shower, change into something comfy, pour myself a cup of coffee… but then a sudden revelation stops me dead in my tracks: relationships aren’t just about compromise.  Relationships are about growing together whilst simultaneously giving your significant other the space they need to do their thing.

“You go ahead.  I’ll walk back to the head of the trail and do yoga until you’re finished.”

“Are you sure?” he asks.  “I’ll walk with you if you want.”

“No, you go.  It’s fine.”

So I walk back to the head of the trail, stretch for a while and find a nice flat rock near the edge of the water.  Then, I listen carefully for The Wedding Date’s footsteps as I go through my sun salutations (is it just me or is downward facing dog the least sexy yoga pose ever?) and I think to myself, “Hmm… this is kind of nice.”

In fact, I could get used to this.

Not the running part—I’ll never get used to running—but to the compromise-whilst-retaining-your-independence-part.  Perhaps there’s hope for me yet.

PS: I *believe* my Good Morning America segment will air tomorrow morning at 7:00am (6:00am Central) on ABC– will keep you posted!

PPS: Scratch that– it’s been changed to MONDAY!

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“Maybe they’re not coming?” I venture.

It has, after all, been several days since I’ve spoken to the producer.  I thought we’d settled on Tuesday at noon but I was so busy setting things up for a photo shoot with The Inquirer that I didn’t realize the weekend had come and gone with nary a word from Good Morning America.

“I should have called them to confirm,” I continue.  “But I didn’t even think of it until this morning!”

“It is what it is,” my mother says, “these things happen.  And you can’t even get mad because then you’ll never get another TV appearance.”

“I know…”

I decide, as I always decide when faced with such matters, that I’ll add it to the list.  Not the list of desirable qualities in a mate, but the list of humiliating anecdotes that I’ll eventually work into a speech someday, once I’m truly an accomplished writer and am asked to give a key note address to a crowd of young hopefuls.

“Back when I was 26,” I’ll tell them, “I got a call from one of the producers at Good Morning America requesting an interview for a segment on ‘single bridezillas.’  I spent four hours ironing my grandmother’s wedding dress and practicing my very best sound-bites.  I dragged my poor mother to every Produce Junction within a thirty mile radius and spent a fortune on flowers so that the producers could film her making mock centerpieces.  I bought a brand new cashmere sweater to wear for the shoot and woke up at the crack of dawn to do my hair and would you believe it?  The bastards never showed.”

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

“I see cameras!” my mother exclaims.  “They’re here!”

And so begins the slow process of transforming Casa Richter into a bone fide film set: cameras, lights, tripods, microphones, more lights, more cameras… I can’t quite believe how much stuff there is.

Nor can I believe how many people are involved.  There’s the camera guy, the producer (who’s nearly eight months pregnant) and finally “the talent,” a highly made-up blonde who puts my own attempts at proper eye shadow application to shame.

They seem to think I know what I’m doing, probably because I’ve got my very best “Development” face on (thanks to my days in the fundraising office at the Walnut Street Theatre) and I’m offering everyone tea and coffee like I do this sort of thing all the time but really, I’m scared out of my wits and I’d really like somebody to tell me what’s going on like the producer for last month’s CNBC shoot did.

Before I know it, I’ve got a microphone up my sweater, hooked onto my necklace, and I’m holding a white piece of paper towel in front of my face.

“Closer” the camera guy instructs.

I move the paper towel closer.

“Closer!” he says again.

The blonde, who’s to conduct the interview just smiles, but I can tell what she’s really thinking.  She’s thinking “Jesus Christ!  This girl doesn’t have a clue!”

At last, the white balance (or whatever it’s called…) is set and we’re ready to roll.

Three hours later, we’ve finally made it to the finish line.  And I’ve nailed it.

At least I think I’ve nailed it.

Who knows what the editing process will entail—I’ll probably end up looking like a complete lunatic on national television and The Wedding Date will decide that he wants nothing to do with me, but I’ve agreed to finish watching Star Wars with him on Friday and I am, despite my previous aversion to all things intergalactic, quite curious about the ending, so let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

PS: I believe the segment is scheduled to air on Friday… will keep you posted!

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Plenty of women start planning their wedding’s before they have a groom in mind.  Not only are we essentially programmed, as little girls, to start thinking about our big day (and the dress we’ll wear, the flowers we’ll carry and the handsome Prince Charming we’ll marry) but it’s virtually impossible to escape shows like “Say Yes to the Dress” and “Wedded to Perfection” these days.

Plus, that’s not the real reason that I’m a “Single Bridezilla.”

I’m a “Single Bridezilla” because I think it’s ridiculous to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding when those tens of thousands of dollars could be better spent on a house.  Or a trip.  Or a new business venture.

So I’ve been collecting things slowly but surely over the years: first my grandmother’s wedding dress (which I’ll be modeling for the ABC folks later this afternoon), then an inexpensive and less-restrictive alternative to wear for the reception because it was TWELVE DOLLARS and how can you pass up a wedding dress for TWELVE DOLLARS?

Yes, I have tons of dress patterns and bridal magazines and hairpieces and assorted odds and ends (I was a bit surprised, actually, to see just how much I’ve amassed) but I never paid full price for any of these things.  In fact, most were given to me, or purchased on clearance, with coupons or at flea markets.

So I’m not crazy.

In fact, I’d like to think that I’m the opposite of a “bridezilla.”

Which is exactly what I told The Wedding Date when I called to explain that I’d be doing an interview about wedding planning on national television and that the producers would like to interview him as well.

At first he didn’t believe me but then, once I assured him that I was in fact telling the truth, he said he’d think about it.

“I’ll come for moral support either way,” he said, “but I’m not sure I want to be on TV.”

“I totally understand,” I said.  “No hard feelings.”

A few hours after that initial conversation, I got a follow up email from one of the producers.  “Just as a reminder,” it read, “we’ll want to talk to you, your mother and your boyfriend.”

My boyfriend?

Hold on a minute.

I don’t even call him that.  Aside from the title of yesterday’s blog post (which was really for the sake of convenience more than anything else), I’ve never called The Wedding Date “my boyfriend.”

I’ve published several guest posts on the subject—“the subject” being of the friend-to-boyfriend conversion— one written by friend Siobhan (Of Pandas and Pigeons, or How to Bag a Brit) and one written by my friend Meghan (Crossing the Rubicon), but I’ve said very little on the subject myself, mainly because everyone else seems happy enough to define our relationship for us.

At my friends’ wedding in Boston earlier this month, a relative of the bride introduced herself to us during the cocktail hour.  After congratulating me on the quality of my reading, she asked, “So where are you two from?”

“I’m from Philadelphia,” I replied, “and he’s from Jersey.”

“So you don’t…?”

Her voice trailed off but the implication was obvious: So you don’t live together?

“No,” I replied.

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s rather recent,” I explained.  As in “It’s only been six months and for five of those six months I was still sort-of seeing someone else.”

The deacon was curious too.

“So he’s just your ‘Plus One’ then?” he asked just as I’d popped a cube of cheese into my mouth.

“No, not quite,” I replied.

“So you’re good friends?”

“Well, we’re more than that.”

“Special friends then?  Or perhaps friends with benefits?”

I don’t remember what I said in reply, except that I was getting tired of answering everyone’s questions and couldn’t wait to get dinner over with so that we could start dancing (because when The Wedding Date and I dance together, I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re more than “just friends”).

For the record, I did ask the man in question how he wanted me to be introduced.

“Are you fine with being just ‘The Wedding Date?” I inquired.  “Or would you rather be ‘My boyfriend, The Wedding Date?’  Or ‘My friend, The Wedding Date?’  Or… or whatever?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.  “I haven’t done the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing since high school.”

“Since high school?  Seriously?”

This seemed absolutely ludicrous to me—not because I care what The Wedding Date and I call one another but because it’s always seemed like such a big deal in every other relationship I’ve had or haven’t had.

Of course, to further complicate matters, I’ve started hanging out with a lot of Quakers over the past few years and with Quakers, it’s always “my partner this” and “my partner that.”

I told The Wedding Date (in jest) that I would simply start referring to him as “my lover” and he seemed quite keen on this idea but something tells me this wouldn’t go over so well at weddings or family get-togethers…

Thoughts?  Is the term “boyfriend” outdated or is it simply too soon to adopt the title?

Related articles

• Blogging and Boyfriends Do Not Mix (fieldworkinstilettos.com)
• My Marie Claire Debut: What Every Man Wants to Hear (fieldworkinstilettos.com)
• Biscuits in Bed and Other Shenanigans (fieldworkinstilettos.com)

Did you know, for example, that The Wedding Date and I went out for sushi on Friday night?  Or that at my parents’ New Year Eve party earlier this month one of their friends cornered him behind the martini bar and proceeded to demand, in Spanish, “Are you in love with her?  Is she the one?  Do you think you are going to marry her?”

(I know this only because The Wedding Date relayed the entire conversation to me in English a few minutes later.)

(And yes, he also translated his response but that’s going to require an entire blog post of its own.)

Did I tell you what he got me for Christmas?

That it was the sweetest thing anyone has gotten me for Christmas in ages?

Did I mention that I’ve started watching Star Wars?  (And that I actually kind of enjoyed it, despite the fact that my falling asleep in The Wedding Date’s arms just as Hans Solo shot that Greedo guy would suggest otherwise?)

How about the fact that a film crew from ABC’s Good Morning America is coming to our house tomorrow to interview me for a segment on “Single Bridezillas?”

(No joke.  One of their producers read the article in Marie Claire.  And asked if she could interview both my mother and The Wedding Date too about my planning-my-wedding-before-I’ve-got-a-groom tendencies.)

Finally, did I tell you about the question The Wedding Date asked me in Boston?

More importantly, did I tell you of my response?

No?

Well, like I said: blogging is a single girl’s game.  But I promise to do better this week.  So stay tuned.

And on that note, it’s time for me to go finish ironing my grandmother’s wedding dress.

Related articles

• My Marie Claire Debut: What Every Man Wants to Hear (fieldworkinstilettos.com)
• How The Wedding Date Became MY Wedding Date (fieldworkinstilettos.com)
• Since when is “Friend” a verb? (katrichterwrites.wordpress.com)