What Not To Ask Your Bridesmaid To Wear #1

#1-Anything with huge, puffed sleeves

I do not care if they ever come back in (which I seriously doubt), they flatter nobody!

If your shoulders are tiny, they drown your frame. If your shoulders are stronger or broader in frame, they make you look huge. Even if you have emaciated arms, they do nothing for you. Sleeves are one of the best way to add dignity and elegance to any outfit or event. Huge puffed sleeves just make you look like you should be in a costume drama. (Yes, that is right! No Civil War era or costume gowns either!) Or worse, they make your dress look like it belongs on a little girl!

Innocence is Beautiful

Why do so many advertisements, movies, and magazines depict women in expressions of aggressive, domimating, almost violently intense lust. This is sometimes referred to as "provocative" or "seductive" or "aggressivly sexual" but all of these labels are misleading and a trifle insulting. Women are naturally seductive (coming from the Latin "se" and "ductio", meaning "to lead someone after one's self). Women are naturally sensuous, beautiful, powerful, and when healthy, the are confident in their power and charm. Women are naturally provocative to men as well. This is not just because of concupiscence. Which leads me to my next point.

Women are called by God to be happy in innocence. Do not misconstrue innocence as naivete, or ignorance. Women are ideally supposed to be happy, confident, secure in their power, free, passionate and innocent. And in all of those qualities...women are breathtakingly beautiful. Instead, what the culture is too often trying to persuade us is that beauty is not only taut, half-starved, strained, never at rest, unnatural, painful and extremely rare but that it is dirty, slavish, masocchistic or sadistic, dominating or submissive, relentless or needy, obsessive, insatiable, and dehumanizing.
I am enamored of beauty. In fact, I worship the God who is Beauty itself. I want to see women like me portrayed as they are suppossed to be, peaceful, joyful, loving, nuanced, captivating, multi-faceted, mysterious, powerful and innocent.

My Bridal Bouquet

Flowers often bear symbolic meanings. I love the artistry of a well-arranged bouquet or floral arrangement. My cascade bouquet is going to have white roses, white lilies, white amarylis, white azalea, white gardenia, white jasmine, white orange blossoms and white stock.

Flower Meanings:

Rose- Love

Lilies- Purity, Innocence

Amaryllis- Splendid Beauty

Azalea- Romance

Gardenia- Joy

Jasmine- Sensuality

Orange Blossoms- Fertility, Good Fortune, Everlasting Happiness

Some more dreams coming true

This is going to be a year of dreams. I began this New Year with some more dreams off my infinitely long list of things to do and see and experience coming true. Some of them are too personal to mention even here. This is the one that is the most important though: "Become engaged to the man you love best who loves you more than any other man in the world."

One more dream that came true

In the last post I mentioned a list of dreams and aspirations. The night before last, I just achieved one more goal off that list. Ever since when I was a little girl, my mother went to a Sing-Along concert of Handel's Messiah. She played the music for me over and over again. I fell in love with the piece at a tender age and informed my mother that some day I was going to go to a Sing-Along concert of Handel's Messiah as she had done. The night before last, I did. It was at the Kennedy Center, we were an audience of about five hundred people. I sang it more enthusiastically than I had ever sung that piece before. I have a rather big, strong sopranic voice. And I love beind in places where the structure of the building carries my sound. It was a positively soaring exhilaration, to be able, at the proper places in the piece, to sing as LOUDLY AS I COULD! I have been blessed with many occassions in my life to sing my heart out. It was such a supremely sweet gift from Jesus to let me sing for Him on His birthday yet again. And he knew that I had always wanted to sing that piece for Him in a concert.

The conductor said that in all the years he had conducted these Sing-Alongs, he had never heard it sung so well by the audience. I believe him. It was wonderful. Thank you, Jesus!

On My List

The night before last, I achieved one more of my life goals. I have a long list of dreams, aspirations and goals to go through on this earth. Here is just a sample of that list.

1. Become a saint.
2. Save the lives of at least one hundred people.
3. Tour Europe.
4. Visit Italy.
5. Vacation in a Beach House by the sea.
6. Drive a motor boat.
7. Learn to speak Spanish.
8. Learn how to sew.
9. Start my own business designing and sewing and selling beautiful modest dresses that make women who wear them feel like princesses.
10. Write, finish and publish great novels.
11. Get a driver's license.
12. Get a car.
13. Get a Liberal Arts education and degree from a great Catholic College.
14. Ride on incredibly daring roller coasters.
15. Become a teacher or tutor.
16. Do some missionary work.
17. Swim in a fountain.
18. Befriend every person I see who needs a friend.
19. Get married.
20. Have about a dozen children.


The list goes on and on and on. Every Christmas I take my heart with all of its dreams to Jesus, because every year Jesus asks me for that same gift, my heart.
I give it to Him every year, such as it is, and every year he makes some more of my dreams come true.

I have swam in fountains, ridden roller coasters, befriended every person I could, driven a motor boat, vacationed in a beach house by the sea, gotten my drivers license, achieved my education and college degree, and I have become a tutor. There are many other things on this long list that are still works in progress. I have started at least three novels that I think will be great when they are finished and published. I still am trying every day to become a saint. I have only saved the lives of a handful of people.
Other things on the list, like learning to sew, speak Spanish, get a car, and get married, I might have to wait until at least another year for. Merry Christmas All! May your dreams come true!

On Colors

When I was little, my favorite color was pink. For my fourth birthday, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
I answered, "Pink!"
"Pink? Pink WHAT?" my mother asked.
"Pink, PLEASE!" I answered more carefully.
Trying to get me to understand the metaphysical impossibility of my request, she tried to get my toddler mind to focus on the subject, not the accident.

"Do you want a cake, Maria?"
"Yes, please! Pink Cake!"
"But what would you like for a present, sweetie?"
"PINK!"
"A pink WHAT?"
"Pink present!"
"Pink present?"
"Pink present please," enunciated as clearly as I could.
"I can't just give you "pink", baby. I can give you SOMETHING that is pink."
"Yes, something that is pink."
"But what?"
(I paused and responded carefully) "Something that is pink."

My mother ended up giving me the greatest birthday bash a four year old pinkophile could dream of. She dressed me in a frilly pink dress with a crown made out of rose construction paper. The cake's frosting was pink and the strawberry ice cream was pink. The present was wrapped in pink foil wrapping and pink ribbons and the rosy little baby doll inside wore a pink dress.

It is amazing an peculiar and wonderful how colors can move a person. It is no accident that we tend to describe symbolic meaning to colors. Part of it seems intuitive, even though interpretations are frequently different.

As an adult, my favorite colors in order are blue, white and red.

When I see the color red, it immediately evoke images of fire and blood. Perhaps that is why we associate the color with courage and daring. Because of its vivid richness and eye-catching quality it is also predictable that such a color is associated with passion and romance.

White evokes images of the immacualte. Perfection, cleaness, innocence, purity, honesty, goodness, and honor, are the most common symbols associated with it. That is why in the West, the bridal gown is tradiationally white, to symbolize the innocence of the bride and the purity of her love for the groom.

Why is blue my favorite? I could try to give you reasons. It is calming, soothing and yet exhilarating at the same time. Perhaps that is why the sky is blue. It calms and excites us mysteriously in the same instant. It cools like water and stirs like wind. It is a color in which I can easily percieve the commonly applied symbol of loyalty, truth and wisdom.

The real reason of course, is more emotional and more mysterious. Why do some of us prefer one color over the other? Why is it that some colors seem more beautiful to some and less so to others? That is a mystery no man shall ever discover in this life. It has its origin in the same source that made every human eye and every fingerprint unique. The colors He created for the eyes that He created stir the hearts He has created back toward him by reflecting faint glimmers of His eternal beauty.