real talk: wedding planning

When I wrote this, I had stars in my eyes and wedding blogs on my mind and was so, so innocent. Now, seven months later, I am a little bit... emotional. Somehow both overemotional and emotionally drained at the same time, actually.

Weddings cost money.

source: Once Wed

A lot of money. Even when you don't want them to or plan for them to, they just surprise you. And of course the things I care about the most – photography, location, food & drinks – are the most expensive elements. And of course I have a giant family and Brian has a big family and we both have a lot of wonderful friends that we really want to be there to celebrate with us (and of course people tell you the guest list is the first thing to drive up the price but of course I scoffed and said I could figure it out and now I'm realizing what they tell you is one thousand percent true). And of course I want to be one of those laid-back, easy breezy brides but I'm not sure I've ever really been laid-back about anything in my life.

I'm a perfectionist and I'm neurotic and I'm type A and I'm my own worst critic.

All of these traits would make me fabulous at planning someone else's wedding, I believe. But when it's my own my emotions get too involved and I kind of freak out.

It's a hard thing to talk about. It's hard to say that planning this is making me do things and be someone I don't want to be. It's making me care way too much about things that are silly. In fact, a grand theme of wedding planning (at least when it is your own) is to care about things you don’t want to (and really SHOULDN’T) care about. And you know it’s totally silly to care about it, but you DO and you can’t HELP IT and you feel dumb but that doesn’t change anything.

For example, there is a surprising downside of wedding blog addiction (you know, besides millions and millions of hours of my time trickled away into the ether [and besides the inevitable envy at their Louboutin wedding shoes and multiple dresses and breathtaking decor (basically, all the things that half-million-dollar budgets can get you [seriously, do they think they are kidding us, calling a wedding "DIY-chic" when I can see that the shoes are Manolos and the dress is Vera?])])...

Where was I?... Oh yeah, a surprising downside is that it starts to seem like everything has been done before. When I first started perusing the wedding web, I found some engagement pictures that I fell in love with and immediately planned to blatantly rip off for our own save-the-dates. Then I saw similar ones on several other sites and started thinking I need to come up with something new and different and original (we ended up copying the idea after all). Same thing with the hanger for your wedding dress saying "Mrs. So-and-so" (will probably get scratched anyway for budgetary reasons) and peacock feather decor (will likely still be some, but scaled back from my original plan). 

It’s even worse when your friends beat you to it. Three of my favorite ideas for our wedding (Scrabble tiles and bridal TOMS and putting your mom's dress on display) have already been done by close friends of ours and even though we had the ideas completely independently and in the end it really doesn’t matter at all, I feel like if I do them I will be copying someone else’s big day. Which is dumb, but honest. 

On the other hand, flowers are something I never figured I'd care much about in the grand scheme of my wedding – not that I don't love receiving them in real life, hinthintBrian – because they are expensive and there are so so many things to buy. I just wanted something simple inexpensive, but beautiful. Then I see about seventy billion breathtaking bouquets on various blogs and suddenly I'm thinking, "well maybe I do want a fancy schmancy flowery thang to hold on to..." Which only leads me back to the budget and the millions of other things and I'm defeated all over again. 

I was never one to find eloping particularly appealing or romantic, but lately I've started thinking those people – the ones who reclaim their weddings from the hype and expense and all the people trying to tell them what they "should" do or what is "appropriate" and instead of worrying about offending people, they just go off to celebrate getting married and starting a marriage, which is the whole point of a wedding after all – might have the right idea.

Don't worry, I'm not eloping. I'm just saying I appreciate anyone who just says "screw it" and does it exactly how they want. After all, a wedding is about the bride and groom (or the bride and bride or the groom and groom, I'm all about equality) making a promise to each other, not about anyone or anything else. That's what I need to remember.

So there it is. Real talk. I promise to crop Penny's head on something ridiculous next time to lighten the mood, but it feels good to share.