A Confession

I have just spent the last hour looking at wedding pictures.

I love wedding pictures. Love, love, love them. I especially love wedding dresses. So I'm at work, and I have nothing to do (I'm a temp, not neglecting my duties or anything) and I start searching for and then examining total strangers' wedding photos.

Some of the couples were really handsome, some were fat, a few wore dumbass Ren Faire outfits (complete with swords... Jesus!) and all seemed really young. Of course, anyone younger than me is young.

My favorite was an English couple who got married in a registry office. She's wearing a brown and blue tea length dress, and flat shoes with rubber soles. A bride not in heels. Wow. There's this one photo, just before the ceremony, where they're right outside what I take to be their apartment, and they're hugging. I felt all lump in the throat-y. Same thing happened when I looked at the really handsomely designed wedding site of these two crunchy Oregon types. She had dreads, and he was really fantastic looking. They're both about 23.

I've only been to ... let's see ... six? weddings in my life. No, seven, I uh, forgot my sister's wedding for a minute there. I've never been a bridesmaid. I really want to be one! But I'm not that close with anyone who's likely to have bridesmaids.

Anyway, I am trying to keep myself from getting all maudlin, but I keep thinking, I want someone to want to marry me. And I want that someone to be really cute, too. Also, I'm dead set on a wedding dress, and I keep thinking that if I get much older I'll have to wear a tasteful pantsuit or something. Damnit, I want a gown. And, uh, a groom.

In other news, I didn't meet with Rick, but we're supposed to ge together sometime next week. And, despite my horror of talking on the phone, I did briefly speak to Olivier (also not his real name). He's French, complete with sexy accent, so my usual voice-fueled panic was moot. Instead I was thinking, "Ooooooh, he's French!" in a sort of smug way. He's a musician. That makes him the stereotypical bad boy type, doesn't it? Perhaps he has a problem with authority, too. Then we'd have all bases covered and I could go right to the "Why hasn't he called me?" stage.

Truth is, I've never been into bad boys, unless they have short hair and high cheekbones. I always, always go for the shy, awkward types. I like skinny, rumpled-looking intellectuals who are sort of goofy and endearing. And make self-deprecating comments, of course. I like 'em modest. I think it's cause these boys (they're boys, not men ... I like younger men ...) are totally non threatening on one hand, and also it's so flattering to be approached by one -- the thinking behind this is that they must really have it bad if they can fight the shyness hard enough to ask one out. Alas, with all the SRLIs (skinny rumpled-looking intellectuals) I have dated, I've generally made the first move. I think my natural state is to be fairly agressive socially (not flirting, at which I am terrible, but friendly, at which I am very good) but I try to curb this tendency cause I think it's more seemly and fetching to be chased. This strategy has its flaws, however. Mainly that it doesn't work.