Greetings from my new lil office space upstairs! I hope today’s note finds you all well and enjoying this refreshing lack of snow. *laughs*

Now that the blood clot is no longer in my brain and I’m no longer taking blood thinners Chuck thought it would be a good idea for me to move to someplace other than on the couch in the living room and so here I am on the second floor at my new IKEA desk sitting in my new pink IKEA chair writing to you.

I know that I said Pop Culture Ramblings was a new daily feature but it may have to move to biweekly or perhaps weekly. The truth is some of the shows I love aren’t really grist for the pop culture mill. I love Parenthood and Harry’s Law and Off the Map and I suppose I could recap the shows for you but there are plenty of sites out there with better writers than myself that do that sort of thing on a daily basis.  For the time being I think I’ll stick to writing about wedding reality shows and the Jersey reality shows though I think that after this Sunday I’ll be down to one Jersey reality show. I think that this Sunday is the season finale of Jerseylicious.

Speaking of the Jersey reality shows. Did you hear that the next season of Jersey Shore is going to be filmed in Italy? Now how silly is that? I was opposed to the move to Miami and I’m opposed to the move to Italy. How can MTV continue to film a show entitled Jersey Shore in places other than the Jersey Shore? If they’re looking for new places to film there are plenty of towns that would welcome the tourism boost. Why not move to the South Jersey Shore to Wildwood or Atlantic City? There are plenty of Italians to be found in South Jersey too. Why are all these Jersey reality shows filmed in North Jersey? Inquiring minds want to know.

Well it’s Friday night kids, time for my weekly doses of Say Yes To the Dress and Four Weddings. I’m sorry I’m a week late rambling on about last week’s show. I’ll do better next week. I promise.

I’m growing sort of bored with Say Yes To the Dress. I’m sorry to say that I don’t love any of the dresses. To use a term I’ve seen on Television Without Pity’s forums, many of the dresses look like Stripper Fairy Wedding Dresses. I really can’t argue with or come up with a better description of the sheer corseted dresses covered in crystals. Even the most modest of brides end up leaving with strapless dresses. Don’t they make dresses with sleeves anymore? I got married in November in Philadelphia. I’d have frozen to death in a strapless or spaghetti strap gown. What do all the winter brides do? Freeze? Wear a wrap?

The two notes I took about last week’s episodes were about Antonella going $600 over her budget to buy the dress she fell in love with and about Liza spending $17,000 on her first wedding dress for the wedding in Nigeria and then choosing to spend another $40,000-$50,000 for her second wedding in Canada. Now obviously Liza’s family was fabulously wealthy, but Antonella obviously was not. I don’t see how people can just spend $600 above their budgeted price. Not to put too fine a point on it but is more than half of one of my paychecks when I was working. A $2,600 dress would take almost three full paychecks for me to come up with. That’s without spending money for food, rent, other wedding expenses, utility bills, etc. If you put $600 dollars away per pay period it would take 2 ½ months to save. $600 dollars is easily rent or two car payments, or groceries and essentials for a month (@ $150 per week). I don’t get it. How can these girls justify just blowing the budget for a dress that they are going to wear for a few hours on one day of their lives? I know the prevailing thought on all of these shows is that it’s her “big day” and that she should have the absolute very best money can buy. But in reality we aren’t all fabulously wealthy with money to burn. What happened to living within our means and buying the best dress that you can afford? I know people use settling like it’s a dirty word but that’s the way life is. I don’t see how you can have a happy life always wanting more than you can afford. Okay, preaching over or at least until I get to Rich Bride, Poor Bride.

My other Friday night wedding reality show is Four Brides, which I absolutely adore. I get to see four weddings in the space of an hour. I will say that sometimes I don’t think it’s a fair playing field in terms of budgets but this week’s show had some of the closest budgets I’ve seen. Tanisha and Janitza both spent $25,000 for their weddings while Rachel spent $35,000 and Hannah spent $40,000 theirs. These were also probably the least bitchy and whiny brides I’ve seen on the show lately, which was nice. I wish TLC’ website gave more information about the weddings because I loved Rachel’s venue and I’d love to know if it was an active church or a converted space that utilized the church’s beautiful architecture. Rachel, who ultimately won had some wonderful ideas. I loved the rose petals raining down from the balconies as she walked down the aisle and the bag pipers who were part of her walk up the aisle. She pretty much lost me after that. Her and her soon to be husband are performers and pretty much performed throughout the ceremony. Call me crazy but I feel that marriage is a sacred act and I feel you should honor the moment you’re giving yourselves to one another. Carry on all you want at the reception but treat the wedding ceremony itself with the weight it deserves.

Permit me one final note about last Friday evening’s TV viewing. Last Friday night Keith Olbermann signed off the last time on MSNBC. I enjoyed his show and will miss his Friday’s with Thurber as well as his intelligent and thoughtful commentary. I hope he finds a new home soon. I’ll watch him wherever he goes.