Living single, living fabulous

Highlights and tips from the Asiatino/Mexinese wedding:

1. Don't drink too many margaritas during the rehearsal dinner. It makes a 7am appointment with Peter for hair and makeup really really unpleasant.
2. If you're supposed to bring Grandma to the church at 10am for an 11am wedding, don't go for a jog at 9:30am and show up at 10:50am. It makes the mother of the bride go INSANE.
3. Make your guests figure out how to get themselves around town because juggling three cars and multiple airport pickups and dropoffs is not fun for anyone involved.
4. Herding Asians and Mexicans for post-ceremony pictures is a Herculean task that most photographers are not cut out for
5. Reassure the Caucasians that it's normal for brown people and yellow people to make a lot of jokes about their ethnicity.
   
6. You can definitely write a quality maid of honor speech in the car ride to the church.
7. Hire the Vietnamese Trio for your next Houston wedding -- one does the hair and makeup, another does the flowers, and the third does the cake. And it's all phenomenal.
   

All in all, despite some of the craziness, the weekend was so great! It was so much fun to see people I haven't seen in probably 10 years and, of course, I saw my little sister get married. I still hardly believe it. She looked so glowy and happy and her now-husband was just the sweetest thing ever during the whole Asian Family Insanity.

If there was one downside, it was that everyone seemed to want me to get married. The hair guy thought I was the bride. My own father accidentally referred to me as the matron of honor. The pastor asked the groom to take me as his wife during the rehearsal instead of my sister. Many, many, many people wanted to know when it was going to be my turn. I don't know if all this happened because it was my younger sister who got married, or if I'm getting old, or if it's some combination. I've never before been bombarded with this many inquiries about settling down -- and never before have I been fazed by it. I usually shrug off those comments, crack a joke, then forget about them. Me and marriage live in different zipcodes.

But I was fazed this time. Completely unsettled and left feeling like everyone was looking at my life and shaking their heads sadly. I began to wonder when or whether I'd find someone to marry me. I found myself really wanting the ring, the wedding, the settling down, the family thing. The situation worsened when we went to church on Sunday and, I kid you not, everyone I saw who looked my age was married or engaged! Feeling wretchedly demoralized, I followed everyone back to brunch -- only to have a woman I had just met tell me that I am intimidating to men. For a split second, I regretted nearly every aspect of my personality and the choices I've made -- having ambition, some degree of intelligence, education, opinions. If I had just toned it down a few notches, if I hadn't worked so hard at school or office, if I had subjugated my ambition to some man's, then maybe, just maybe, I'd be one of those girls with a gorgeous ring on her hand ...

Then I realized I was being stupid. And that Houston, where the average marrying age seems to be 21 and older women still talk about getting an "MRS" degree, is not good for my emotional health. I need to be around my fellow professional, urban, single women! And not in a man-hating, male-bashing kind of way -- in a living single and living fabulous kind of way. It's gotta be better than pretending to be a flight attendant to snag a husband, as Maureen Dowd wrote today.

So, crisis averted. I didn't run off with the first available male in a desperate attempt to marry into happiness and I harbor no bitterness toward anyone who suggested I settle down and get married.

Maybe someday ... but not today.