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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2932 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 15, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Can someone explain to me: engagement rings, wedding rings, and wedding bands?

In the normal course of events, how many total rings are involved? Which ones are meant to have big gems on them, and which ones aren't?

Are there some sort of trends in what they're made of, what gems are common to use, etc.? (I've only ever heard of diamond, but I really don't know.)

I guess following on from that: is it really a common action to do the one-knee, surprise, "Will you marry me?" thing? Would you or did you do this? If you are the recipient of a wedding proposal, how would you want that to happen?

You need to know two things:

  • your fiancée's ring size: just wait until you see her wearing some new jewelry and ask if she bought it recently, keep talking about jewelry shopping until you can ask about her size, then write the size down before you forget. Or use another opportunity to talk about it.
  • what she wants from her engagement ring: again, you want mutual plausible deniability, so send her memes with dudes proposing in public in inappropriate places, whenever someone you know is engaged mention it and see how she reacts to what they did, mention the ring that was used and look at her reaction. Women are smart and will basically tell you what they want if you let them: "on no, if someone actually proposed to me in front of so many people I would die of cringe" or "oh wow, this is so romantic!", "have you seen Becky's engagement ring? The shit's so tacky, it's like one of these Super Bowl rings. Me? Oh, I would rather wear something thin and delicate, with colored gemstones arranged in a floral motif" or "did you know that Brad proposed to Stacy with his grandma's ring? What a cheapskate, how hard can it be to buy a proper diamond ring!"

The second piece of advice applies to weddings as well. Use every opportunity and she will tell you what she wants. If she's into weddings where everyone in the party has to wear identical suits/dresses and fewer than 300 guests is unthinkable and the wedding cake has to have fifty layers, just run, don't even break up with her, just ghost her and move to another state.

As an addendum, if you find it impossible to get her to start talking about the topic but really want to marry her, it's better to have a straightforward discussion and ask her preferences than to try to guess. The risk of her saying "Oh... no" after a public proposal isn't worth the gains of a happy romantic memory if you're not already sure what her answer will be.

everyone in the party has to wear identical suits/dresses

The rest is debatable, but come on! It's so nice going to a black tie event where people follow the dress code and everything looks neat and tidy and aesthetically pleasing. Modernity is already so ugly, dress codes already so rare. Let us have this.

How many people actually own a tux these days? And I was talking about stuff like "all groomsmen will wear dark green double-breasted suits" and "creative black tie".

How many people actually own a tux these days?

I’d say most middle/upper-middle class British men do, in my experience. The Austrians like their balls, too.

For what it's worth, almost nobody owns a tux in the US. The only time most people will ever wear one is if they are groomsmen (or the groom) at a wedding, and they rent one for that. So asking everyone to wear a tux is a bigger ask here.

High school proms also feature a lot of tuxes, though those seem to be less popular than they used to be.

Yeah, I know, although I’d say it’s a little more common than that in the upper middle class on the east coast, I’ve attended black tie wedding receptions before in NYC.

To quote Vladimir Lenin, they form but a narrow group. They are very far removed from the people.

There's a difference between having a dress code and having everyone wear the same color. It's such a tiresome imposition on the guests to buy or rent clothes for this one event.

Black tie is even a step worse into the ugliness of modernity. The Dutch Reformation basically killed colors in formalwear and now we all have to live with the consequences. Let people wear some colors, as people have done for thousands of years before the Protestants fucked it up.

People wear ugly and garish colors all the time though, just look at modern streetwear. If this was corporate life in Japan or the City of London in 1957 then a healthy opposition to bland dress code conformity would be fair. But it isn’t. Today, black tie events are one of the only kinds of occasions when the holistic beauty of a crowd, that symphony of aesthetic harmony, is actually visible. Even office jobs now see a huge variety of outfits, colors and cuts. And rooms just sing when everyone’s in black tie, your eye isn’t immediately drawn to the people and their dress but to the whole space, the event, the vibe, man as collective becomes visible. It’s beautiful, in a way even a collection of fabulous but varied outfits could not be.

I can't hear you over the sound of my novelty suit :V

(The sound is ゴゴゴゴ )

Do I have to be wary, perhaps, of touching doorknobs?

Agree, though this is all opinion. I am a great fan of the dinner jacket/tuxedo. I was very tempted (and still am) to get a custom tuxedo made for myself from a guy I now refer to as "my tailor" in Bangkok (he has made suits for US presidents--this to me speaks of quality of material and detail, if not style). I am a dinner jacket fan when I have only worn a tuxedo twice in my life and probably would have to search for reasons to wear one again. A man can always add a bit of sprezzatura by throwing in a unique pocket square, or cufflinks, or even socks if it means that much. That said, I am from a part of the world where the term "suit" is akin to "straightjacket" and most men would happily show up in a black t-shirt and jeans to any affair, including weddings, funerals, or the dubbing ceremony of their son by the King of England. I sometimes wonder if this is why I left. It's probably part of it.

Nah, the high status dress in most big cities is neutrals. Just open up an Eileen Fisher or Everlane catalogue.

You're entitled to like black tie (obviously), but it's decidedly a feature of modernity. Acting as if it's a rebellion against it is totally incoherent. People did not dress in black and white until comparatively recently.

People didn’t dress in t-shirts until comparatively recently. And I think you’re being a little unfair: yes, a lot of people dress in neutrals and shades, but the vibe of a bunch of people in thirty shades of tan/beige/blue/black quarter zips and slacks of various colors, or generic women’s office wear, still isn’t as coherent or visually impressive as outfit consistency is. It’s still a huge, varied cacophony of cuts, fits, shapes and colors, even if neon green and pink are rare (although not as rare as you seem to be suggesting, at least in high fashion or in events where people are really showing off).

Of course black tie is modern, it only replaced white tie less than a century ago, and even that wasn’t very old at that time. I don’t like it because it’s old, I like it because it’s coherent and because it’s a uniform. A dress code is a rebellion against (recent) [post, if you insist]modernity, where the increasing casualization of business dress, dinner dress, theater dress, party dress and every other kind of dress code is perhaps the single most notable trend in fashion. If I could enforce white tie or morning suits (both, depending on time of day of each event) at my wedding I would, but alas, as an American, it would be considered unfair on my guests.

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