Posted on: Monday, January 5, 2004
ABOUT MEN
The bride and the groomed: The excessorizing of her guy
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By Michael Tsai
Advertier Staff Writer
Weddings are all about the bride. This much I knew going in. Forget all that hooey about celebrating man and woman togetha 4-eva. Wedding day is Bride Day.
Don't get me wrong, that's exactly what I liked about the whole project. No pressure, right? As explained to me early on, all I had to do was show up on time, smile on cue and try not to slouch.
What my married friends and family didn't tell me — what they hid from me — is that the aura of brideness grows so powerful during the preceding weeks and months of wedding preparations that it has a feminizing effect on anyone who stands too close.
Me, in other words.
Our wedding was many months in the preparation and my bride, little Martha Stewart that she is, was chock full of wonderful girly ideas for every phase of the event — design motif for the invites, miniature crane arrangement, gift packages for the kids, Japanese umbrellas to shield the ceremony guests from the sun, and such and such.
I was all for the cause, but to be honest, it was all the old glands could do to keep squeezing out testosterone amid growing mountains of rubber stamps, cutesy paper punchers, centerpiece pitchers, beaded angels, streamer sticks and bridal magazines.
The final months before the wedding were truly transformative. Even though it was understood by all that I, groom-guy, was to be little more than a prop on the big day, there apparently were steps — plenty of them — that needed to be taken to make me a presentable prop.
So off came the braces that for the last year had engaged in a historic battle with my unruly, nonconformist teeth. (They go back on this week.)
Without the braces, of course, it was much easier to see that my pearly whites were more like cruddy browns. So — swipe, swipe, swipe — on went four applications of bleach and off, off, off went 20 years of coffee stains. In one afternoon at the dentist, my teeth went from dark double-espresso to pale latte on the color chart.
The problem was the exact opposite on my head, where my thinning forest of brown hair has been increasingly undermined by a clidemia-like invasion of grays.
Personally, I like those wan little strands because they're just as good as a second ID at the liquor store, but consensus was they wouldn't look too hot in the wedding photos. Thus, the dearest, plying me with promises of red meat and red wine, maneuvered me over to Macy's for a date with the dye.
Yes, I had my hair done. I crossed the line from slobby guy to two stops past metrosexual.
Of course, once you get the dye job, the slope is slippery indeed. Next thing I knew I had consented to a wash, a trim, a thinning out (nature had a head start), and a vigorous round of spraying or moussing or whatever the heck happened up there.
Not that any of this prettying up really helped.
When it came time for those all-important wedding photos, our photographer quickly recognized my best angle:
OK, bride, turn toward me. Good! Now lift your chin so you catch the light. Oh! That's beautiful! Beautiful!
Now, groom. Um ... Turn a bit to the side and face her. No, no, that's no good. Keep turning, keep turning, keep turning. Good! Now take a few steps into the background. A few more. A few more. Good! Now, one big step out of the frame ...
Beautiful!
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.
