Breaking Up With Stone Fox Brides

It started out as a little peek-a-boo in my newsfeed. Every now and then, someone I’m following would like a picture that’s just slightly over-exposed and bohemian enough for me to click.

In the beginning I was only noticing flower arrangements and Indian dresses and the occasional vintage picture of a retro-bombshell or rock and roll couple naked, drooling cigarettes. The snippets of their feed that I would see, was a confusing mix of grunge-badass and ethereal goddess resting under the slogan and domain name “fuckweddings.com”. I never let myself go through their pictures however, because Stone Fox BRIDE, the latter being the key word, is not where I’m at. (I learned this the hard way when I tried to show my boyfriend my friend’s nuptial-flavored Pinterest pages and watched him gag on his heat beat).

For months I stayed away as much as possible. But it seemed that every few days another one of my friends would follow them. Friends that were single, friends that were in new relationships, friends that swore they’d never get married. And so, one day late this summer, I decided it was innocuous. The Stone Fox Bride Instagram is simply a lifestyle inspiration source, I told myself. You don’t have to be a bride, or on the road to bride, to like Stone Fox Bride, I hoped. And so I followed them. I made sure to only “heart” innocent posts: Patty Smith in black and white on a balcony in Chelsea, a flower crowned child in a field, a baby fox, an Amaro flavored veggie plate. But I could not ignore the plethora of one-of-a-kind, antique engagement rings that sat blazing between the animals and vegetables. #stonefoxring=#relationshipproblems.

Once I gave into the rings, I searched back through thousands of posts to see all of the rings I had previously deprived myself of. I couldn’t help but “heart” them, I had to remember the ones I liked, for when the time came to have an opinion about those kinds of things. Each time my boyfriend noticed another “hearted” ring, he’d pale another shade of terror. All of a sudden we went from blissful, in-love and present to having conversations where I’m talking to the site of his head in his hands explaining which diamond cuts I like and how ready I am to grow old together.

“Marriage”, I call it because I see now, wasn’t what I was pining after. I’m twenty-seven, emotionally unstable and earn about four dollars a month writing. I’m not worth marrying, yet.

What “marriage” came to mean to me was entirely aesthetic, superficial, fantasy. I wanted to have an antique stone weighing my hand down. I wanted to have pictures of a sun-soaked garden wedding with flowers in my friends hair and a testimonial on the Stone Fox website explaining how thankful I am for the drapey lace gown they made me and how happy I am that they could facilitate the sanction of my love with these aesthetics. When I came to these realizations I became really furious with SFB. I’d damn them for twenty-six seconds before asking my girlfriends how much they loved the Edwardian solitaire posted that day and how adorable creative director, Molly Guy, and her husband are …only to damn her maliciously enchanting empire a moment later.

But now I’ve decided Molly is a genius. She has created a company that speaks to everyone. Their whole “fuck weddings” slogan ropes in the non-traditionals and their expensive, gorgeous gowns and SoHo status brings in the women who have been planning their weddings since childhood.

And for the rest of us in-between, we slowly get brainwashed into thinking a wedding is no big deal. It’s just a party with color-important garments and pretty rings. It’s just a faded picture of a kiss in front of an officiator. You don’t even need to wear shoes, they show you. Your guests don’t even need seats, their rug-covered lawn photos explain. But here’s the thing: weddings are really important. (Yes, duh) Not in the celebratory sense, rather, in the official sense. It’s not just a party, it’s a life, it’s your whole life, hopefully. It’s one of the most important choices one can make in their life. Until I’m in a place where I’ve accepted the grandioseness of marriage, I want to be scared of it. I want to be painfully patient. And so I un-followed Stone Fox Bride on Instagram.  And I won’t lie, when I see them in my newsfeed sometimes I’ll heart a Bridget Bardot tribute or baby elephant portrait.

But until I’m ready and until you’re ready, I suggest not letting Stone Fox Bride influence the pace of your relationship.