robots heart me: another reality

As I’ve ranted about before, we’re planning a wedding on a teeny budget, but want something that is us, and kind of seamless. Call me superficial, but I don’t want my wedding to look like it’s in a high school gym. Since decorating a large hall is not my area of expertise, sifting through online galleries & magazines was one of the first things I did. Of course, I’ve come up against this problem: though it’s rare for me to find something that I like, when I have find a dress that makes me crazy with desire it turns out to be $5-20K, which is about $4.5-19.5K out of my price range. Many magazines will say something like “You won’t believe what you can get for under $750!” & it’ll be ONE crappy David’s Bridal dress that probably was made out of something close to shower curtain liner material, just shot with a soft lens. And then, there’s Martha Stewart, whose empire is based on making women feel bad about themselves when not only do they not make their Christmas cards by hand, but can’t get to printing out the impersonal address labels until January 27^th. In spite of this, I must admit that I love ogling the fabulously scrumptious dresses of Vera Wang, Junko Yashioka, Oscar de la Renta, Reem Acra, Anna Maier/Ulla-Maija, Melissa Sweet, Claire Pettibone, Jenny Packham, Lela Rose, and on and on and on, even though it makes me a little wacky & sad all at the same time. I will never have the chance to wear something as immaculate as these:

I have to say though that this kind of lust isn’t limited to wedding related items. As a child, even though we lived in small apartments and then a tiny house with 1 bathroom (which seems crazy to most people), I'd flip through Architectural Digest & the real estate section of the Sunday Times & daydream about living in those houses. In middle school, a friend & I actually called a number of the places to have them send brochures of the estates. We’d try to put on aristocratic British-type sounding voices, so they didn’t know we were little kids with no trust funds. When I was in elementary school I apparently drew pictures of myself riding in limousines because that's just how I thought my life would turn out. As a teenager, I imagined I would eventually live in a massive loft in Soho. That's just how I roll. Come to think of it, even when I was in college, I saw that Dark Island which is home to the Singer Castle was up for sale, furnishings and all for only a few million dollars (which, honestly, was a steal). My friends & I would get baked & talk about what we’d do with all those rooms (whose themes had a very small range that included weed, rainbows and the Beastie Boys).

Okay, so as I said before, I am a materialist. However, because of my mother who made all our clothes when I was growing up, drove a white Toyota from the early 70s with gray AND orange doors and fenders well into the 80s, I have a hard time spending money. And when someone says “Oh, I like that dress!” or “Those shoes are adorable!” I have a really hard time not telling them how little I snagged them for. I also have a really hard time spending $20 on a shirt, after a life of sifting through by the pound thrift shops.

So, I take it back, maybe it's not really possible for me to be an actual materialist, per se, since I rarely get the expensive things I drool over. However, I do carry lust in my heart for many beautiful things in this world ranging from the Panton S chair to Robert Bruno’s Steel House.

Obviously I can’t or won’t have these things in this life, but I with each object I can imagine another life where I do. And so here are portals into my other lives (aka my most coveted things):

Wait, before I start I must say that this may just turn out to be a list of chairs as I love chairs & think of them as works of art. Okay, now we go:

Panton S Chair