i was talking to the boy one night about random things as we usually do when he asked me if my friend from college had set a date yet for his wedding.
i told him how their planning had grown “stagnant” and he couldn’t believe how hard planning a wedding could be. he made it seem so simple: pick a date, who to invite, location, select invitations and, there, you have a wedding.
but it’s harder to plan a wedding. besides, not everyone has the time during the day to just sit and cull ideas together like i apparently manage to do. and some people don’t have the obsessive planning trait that i have. i like to call those people “normals.”
there are a lot of little things that go into a wedding. you have negotiate the guest list issue with two sets of parents and all of their “friends” and suddenly an intimate wedding with 100 of your nearest and dearest has exploded into an “event” of nearly 300 people, most of which you don’t know. then there’s the deceptively simple act of picking a date. april 25th won’t work because your great-aunt agnes’ gout flares up in april and she wants really badly to be at the wedding and it’d be rude to exclude her so just push it back to may 16th. except may doesn’t work for your cousin, who’s also a bridesmaid, because she has finals and is graduating from college that month, so why not push it up to march 28th? but your cousin’s cousin is getting married in march and why would you want to “steal another couple’s thunder?” so let’s try to push it back to august 15th. perfect except august 15th totally isn’t going to work because its bad luck.
and that’s before you factor in a venue, invitations and the rest of the guest list. oh, and all those other details that shape this oh so special day.
but why can’t it be that simple? why can’t we plan a wedding like it was a birthday party? then you can just think of it as a “marriage birthday” and say, “this is date it’ll happen, the time and location. i hope you’ll come. oh! and you don’t need to bring a present and there will be lots of cake!” and people say, “sure, sounds like fun! i’ll see you there!” or “no, i’m terribly sorry. i can’t make it. but i hope you have a great marriage birthday! have an extra slice of cake for me!”
why do people [myself included] feel the need to make things much more complicated than they need to be? i’m not talking about the wedding industrial complex [commonly known as the wic], because i can ignore them since they’re not funding my wedding [and some of the ideas are really kind of a bit…much for my tastes]. i’m talking about the pressures from those we can’t ignore. people like our parents, grandparents, friends and our selves to host the most perfect day ever known to man.
the thing is, everyone has an opinion on how they think a wedding should be like, whether a quick ceremony at city hall or a ginormous black tie affair. and so you’re tasked with the superhuman responsibility of putting together a wedding that reflects your personality as a couple while balancing everyone else’s opinion of what your wedding should be. it’s not easy but it’s not impossible.
the only thing i can think of saying that could possibly be helpful is to know that there will always be a critic. now that that’s out of the way, just go do what makes you truly happy instead of fretting over what other people will think or say or whether or not emily post would be rolling in her grave if she heard what you have planned, though i don’t think the prim and proper would actually roll. or even what that one girl so rudely said on some wedding discussion board that one time [you remember, when she called you "tacky." oh snap!]. just do what is considered the norm for your area.
and be thankful you don’t have to invite her.