Rosen Guy - Stone fox bride: Love, Lust, and Wedding Planning for the Wild at Heart

W HEN I WAS PLANNING MY wedding, I couldnt find a single book that spoke to the amount of angst the whole process was giving me. They all used words like playful updo and were super chipper and prescriptive. Like: make the flowers look this way, plate the chicken that way, everything in this peppy, creepy tone that was kind of terrifying. Not my styleat all. In fact, the word advice sends a cold chill down my spine; it reminds me of my big sister yelling at me in middle school. Im a sensitive, porous Pisces. If anyone ever tries to tell me what to do, I want to crawl under a rock. Its like: chill the eff out, stop shaking your finger in my face, and lets just sit down in a quiet caf for coffee and a mellow convo. Maybe well get somewhere.

Interesting, honest, and generous women with great taste are my jam. In fact, they were the inspiration for the Stone Fox Bride brand from the start. My original goal was to create a retail space for creative gals to navigate the wedding industry from a place of authenticity. To find their dream dress in a mellow haven that basically felt like a living room. Then it became a collection of gowns. And then a blog. Then I was like: Well, I might as well translate the whole thing into a book, so any bride out there can hop aboard the Fox Train and settle in for the ride.

So if youre a bride-to-be, hopefully youll find it helpful. Pick it up while youre peeing, skim it on the subway, blot your lipstick on its pages, then set it on fire while dancing in a satanic circle screaming Destroy the Patriarchy at the top of your lungs. You can also just close the whole thing now and read Us Weekly magazine. Whatever the fox you want.

MOLLY ROSEN GUY

P.S.: Feel free to disregard my choice of (hopelessly heteronormative) pronouns throughout the text and substitute whatever words apply to your experience. Just cuz I appreciate a good penis, doesnt mean you have to.

B EFORE I MET M, I was in single lady hell. I spent Valentines Day at the local bookstore reading magazines. On my birthday I attended a media conference for Jewish people in Texas. I was on tons of Prozac, my best friends were my cats, and I had such bad sciatica that I sometimes walked with a cane. Evening activities included meditating, crying, and listening to Landslide on repeat. I remember looking at my BlackBerry one night before bed. It read battery drained, which perfectly described my state of mind.

My dating life had been one disaster after another. If you took a look at my roster of boyfriends over the years, you would think I grew up in a highly dysfunctional broken home with cold, rude parents who never taught me a thing about love. Not so much. If my childhood was a movie montage, it would be a blurry haze of bushy hair and bellbottoms (Mom), big beard and Birkenstocks (Dad), and lots of Shabbat candles and cats and dogs and birthday parties and earnest talks postSunday stew about the importance of growing into a responsible Jewish woman of dignity and grace. Unfortunately, not much of it stuck.

Lets just say, the men I gravitated toward were not, as my mom would have liked, NJDs (nice Jewish doctors). They were often quite brutish, with criminal pasts and brown teeth. If one happened to use a condom or buy me a burrito I would sigh, What a gentleman. Every now and then, a more socially acceptable suitor appeared, but for the most part, the cast of characters had many of the same traits as barn animals.

PROUDLY SHOWING OFF MY CALIFORNIA TATTOO (WHICH HAS SINCE BEEN LASERED) IN THE EAST VILLAGE, 2003. RIGHT AFTER THIS PIC WAS SNAPPED, DAVID SPADE WALKED BY AND ASKED FOR MY NUMBER.

I had been through lots of breakups and boyfriends and felt super cynical about it all. There had been the hot-tempered TV actor with dyslexia and a 69 Dodge Dart. The tattooed fashion photographer who dangled my cat out the window. The other fashion photographer who called me really fucking crazy and threw fried calamari at my head. The comedian who cried during a BJ. The list goes on.

It took me a long time to get the memo that having crazy-electric chemistry with someone does NOT mean that person is your soulmate. Definitely take advantage of the feeling for a few weeks: have crazy sex while sobbing, tell him everything about your past, demand that he nurture your every tender emotional wound, then scream Fuck you wildly when he doesnt. But afterward, run away as fast as you can. You want to smear hot oil all over this mans penis in a dim-lit hotel room while laughing maniacally and blasting Kurt Cobains version of Where Did You Sleep Last Nightnot, for the love of Goddess, walk down the aisle on his arm.