February 10 2010: Extravagant Wedding Expenses
Filed under Style with 18 Comments
A local radio station here are holding a wedding dress party, to give women a chance to wear their wedding dress more than once. Fantastic idea when you think about it – why have a dress you can only wear once? Each day, they have different ways of giving listeners a chance to win tickets to the party – whether it be getting people to call in if they have the most expensive wedding dress, the strangest themed wedding, etc.
A woman called into the show yesterday, telling of her $25,000AUD wedding dress which was made in Italy. That is just obscene! $25,000AUD could be a third of a deposit on a house! It could buy a new car with change left over! There’s extravagant, then there’s pointless expenditure – $25,000AUD for a dress to be worn once? Ridiculous. I wouldn’t even spend $25,000AUD on a whole wedding.
Personally, I already have a plan for my own wedding dress. Because the style I want is so specific, there’s no way I can buy off a rack – the dress will have to be custom-made. So the idea is to:
- Purchase luxury bridal silk and lace fabrics at Clegs, which is a luxury fabric store in Melbourne.
- Take base pattern ($30AUD for a strapless dress pattern from Spotlight) to Shanghai when I’m on a family visit home
- Get a local Chinese made-to-measure dressmaker to create my dream dress for a fraction of the price
So, rather than forking out $8,000AUD-$10,000AUD for a dressmaker to make a dress for me here in Australia, I’d fork out about $700AUD for materials purchased in Australia, and a dressmaker in China to create a dress perfectly fitted to my body, with an extra $2,000AUD in a holiday back home to see family before I get married (as they’re unlikely to be able to come to the wedding). That’s less than a quarter of the price of getting a custom-made dress in Australia, and less than a tenth of the cost of this woman’s $25,000AUD dress!
February 2 2010: Social Butterfly: Never Say No
Filed under Friends & Life with 13 Comments
Along with my semi-resolution to not purchase any item of black clothing this year in an attempt to act my age, I have also decided that I’m not going to say no to any invitations this year unless I have a genuine and logical reason. It’s part of the attempt to stop being the social hermit that I was last year, and to get out, have fun, and meet new people. I will willingly admit that as we were in a new relationship, Dylan and I got entirely too caught up in each other last year and declined all invitations in order to stay snuggling in bed together – which really, isn’t at all socially healthy. We need to be our own people and have our own interests too.
Of course, this resolution does pose a problem when I’m Facebook-invited to a gig that someone’s band is playing – something that really, I have no interest in whatsoever because it’s entirely not my scene. Seeing a bunch of boring and mundane people from high school that I have nothing in common with isn’t high on my to-do list. Yet, I can’t exactly say no because of this stupid resolution and I have no other real excuse to give.
So, my solution is to hold my own event so I have an excuse to say thanks, but no thanks. I’ve decided – zombie movie marathon on Friday night anyone? Anyone?
January 29 2010: How Does One Do This Career Thing?
Filed under Uni/Work with 30 Comments
I’d like to know how some people manage to just magically know what they want to do as a career – and then manage to pursue it and stick with it for the rest of their life.
Four years of a bachelor’s degree, one year of a Masters degree (plus two to go), and seven years of work experience in a million different fields later, I still have no fucking idea. This indecision really fucking pisses me off, considering that I’ve prided myself on my ‘adultness’ in all other aspects of my life, yet I can’t figure out what I want to spend forty hours doing each week.
Give me your insight. How do you know what’s right for you? Because right now, I’m just going off a hunch that maybe this potential upcoming career change will be right for me, but I just don’t know. How do people get that certainty about jobs and careers? Why the fuck don’t I have that one consuming passion that I can turn into a job the way others do?