Oh no, there goes Tokyo
As some of you might know, I am getting married in two months! And while I have zero ambivalence toward my beloved, I have to admit that I have been very ambivalent about “planning a wedding.”
Because although a wedding can be a lovely outpouring of affection and support for the newlyweds, it can also be a uniquely fraught situation where lots of tricky and deeply-felt things come together — family relationships, gender roles, religion or lack thereof, budgetary concerns, even food allergies. It is a lot to hold in your head, and a lot of different people have strong expectations which they can’t help but project on you.
And there is a fuckload of minutae to deal with. Where will it be? Who will be invited? What kind of food? What kind of flowers? Assigned seats or no? What’s the ceremony going to look like? What kind of music? What kind of favors? Should we have a gift registry and if so what do we register for? What are we going to wear? How can we do this within our budget?
It goes on and on and on, like a fractal, and you can zoom in on infinitely tiny levels of detail if you want to.
And you are supposed to want to! There is this weird pressure — magnified in the internet age — to make your wedding day perfect, to personalize every little detail, to make it special and unique to your particular brand of love.
Which is sort of sweet, I guess, but can also lead to getting obsessed with tiny tiny things in a way that excludes the BIG thing. Which is, at the end of the day, you’re going to be married to this awesome person you love.
All this intimidated me. I feared that, as soon as I started planning our wedding, I would grow both scales and a veil and take down all of the Eastern seaboard in my search for the perfect tablescape. So for more than a year, I put it off.
Luckily, I am hooked up with a guy who is good at taking big problems and breaking them down into smaller ones. “Let’s just think about a place,” he said. Then, once we had a place, we could choose a date, and were able to make other decisions more easily, too.
So, thus far in the planning process, with my beloved’s help, I have successfully avoided most wedding-related crazypantsness (touch wood). Here are a few things that have helped:
* Big stuff, then small stuff.
Don’t start by thinking about napkins or rings or how your invites will be worded because starting with the minute level will definitely make you want to jump off the tallest building in your town.
Instead, start by deciding how you want your wedding to feel in broad strokes. Do you want a big raucous party? Something quieter and more contemplative? We knew we wanted a small wedding where we could get married outside in a beautiful setting, then walk inside and eat. This feeling led us to a venue and date, which then helped guide our further decisions.
* Think about what’s important to you, and focus on that. Let everything else go.
For us, good food is important, as is having a casual-yet-elegant-feeling party where we can all just hang out and enjoy each other’s company. We don’t care at all about fancy place settings or gobs of decorations so we’re sticking to simple options for those.
* Keep it small, or keep it simple. Or both.
Take the number of people invited to your wedding, and multiply it by how fancy it’s going to be on a scale of 1 to 10. This figure is your projected craziness level. If you want to reduce your craziness, you’ll need to either invite fewer people, or make the day simpler. We invited only fifty people, the wedding and the reception are in the same place, and we’re not having showers, favors, assigned seating, or “Here Comes The Bride.” Small + simple = sane.
* When you start to feel overwhelmed, just stop.
There have been a few times when I’ve started to get manic about the wedding — when I’ve got fifteen browser tabs open and find myself thinking about rings and vows and cake and fascinators and photography all in the same breath. When I notice this happening, I stop. I let the wedding go for now and get stuck into another project. This way I can avoid setting sail on the SS Obsessive Bridezilla.
* DIY if you want, but don’t bite off too much.
I really enjoy being crafty, so I’m doing a few projects for our wedding — paper flowers, hand-printed invitations, custom bridesmaids dresses. But I’m not trying to do much more than that. And the things I’m doing can all be done long before the day itself, so that on the morning of the wedding I can focus on more important things, like my hair.
* Work hard at being less crazy about your body in the lead up.
How much weight can I lose before the wedding? Ugh, why am I thinking so much about that question? Deep breath. Step back. Be less crazy. (This may warrant another post at some point!)
Have you ever been impacted by wedding-related craziness? How did you keep your head together? Enquiring minds (mine!) want to know!
Thanks for this awesome photo, SebastianDooris!
I once had (usually totally sane) friend break into tears when I purchased wedges (as opposed to spike heels) to wear as an attendant in her outdoor, in the GRASS, wedding. Also, they were the “wrong shade of beige” for my $250 dress. Please keep in mind that I also bought a $500 plane ticket to attend said wedding. Let’s not go into the hotel.
Weddings are the lightening rod of crazy.
i am so glad i haven’t been involved in any weddings like this! but this is exactly what i feared might happen to me. luckily, it hasn’t so far — touch wood!
This is great advice. I felt the same way about my wedding, I handled it in much the same way, and it really worked.
Also, it’s a good idea to designate someone you trust to handle all the things you’re concerned about the day of the wedding. For me, that person was my dad, but several of our groomsmen and bridesmaids stepped in also. Giving another person the responsibility to make sure everything goes smoothly left us free to relax and enjoy the day.
that’s a great idea, jen — i’m going to steal it! we’ve got so many friends and loved ones who want to help out, may as well let them!
I had a DIY wedding, and it was WONDERFUL. Best day of my life. I have just a couple of additional hints to add to your great list:
1. Let other people help. Taking everything on yourself is too stressful, and the folks who are closest to you will feel included and special if you dole out tasks appropriate to their interests/abilities. My mom’s neighbors loaned us tables, brought serving pitchers, and other things (some were heirlooms) for the reception.
2. USE THE INTERNET. My husband and I spent the year before our wedding comparison shopping for the items we really wanted (cake topper with thistles on it, for one). He kept a tally of the money we saved by comparison shopping instead of just grabbing the first thing we found. We saved over $5,000 just by looking around a little.
3. Think of your guests, not just yourself. If your wedding guests will mostly be older family members, perhaps a blaring, roaring DJ’ed reception is not going to be the most enjoyable for them. You will have the rest of your life to blare disco and death metal in your own house. Some of your guests may have traveled a long way and at some expense to celebrate your wedding – give them a couple of hours they can enjoy without bleeding eardrums! We compiled several CDs of 1940′s music for our reception, and the dance floor was never empty. Those not dancing could actually hold conversations without screaming. Everyone was happy!
I wish you the very best of everything, and am looking forward to seeing the wedding photos! I WANT TO SEE THE DRESS!!!!!
great ideas, marcheline! and thank you! we are getting married in a frank lloyd wright house that has a cushy delicious living room for the oldsters to chill out in while the kids (haha we are all like 40) have a wicked dance party downstairs. hoping that works out for us!
the internet has been a great resource, too, but i find that ODing on other people’s weddings starts to make me feel inferior over time. like, hey, they have handcrafted napkins and tons of decorations and we should, too. i need to be mindful of how i’m feeling when i dive into the ‘net …
Oh, Madge – perhaps I did not say what I meant to say. I wasn’t saying to use the Internet to look at other people’s weddings… no! I was talking about comparison SHOPPING… as in, the first place you find your dream cake centerpiece may not be the least expensive place you can find it!
By using the internet for shopping, and comparing prices of our dream items, we saved over five thousand dollars… definitely worth the extra half hour or so of clicking the mouse! Sometimes someone on ebay will be selling the exact thing you are looking for, but for less than half the price of buying it in a department store! Very exciting, but then again I lead a sheltered life.
Good luck!
Parents (non-mormon) friends who talk trash about my engagement = less invitations for me to make:) HAH!
haha nice! so far, no one’s had any trash-talking to do about us, at least not that i know of, which is fine by me
Okay, enough with Godzilla … WHERE’S THE DANG DRESS, YOU DANG WOODCHUCKS?!?
First wedding: 35 people, morning (less alcohol costs), made my own dress, told friends what I wanted from them as wedding gifts: friend 1 gave me photography, friend 2 gave me flowers, friend 3 provided music as a gift, friend 4 designed invitations (all better than toasters). His stepson videotaped.
Second wedding: My three kids, his brother, his mom, his two nieces, his brother’s fiance. Courthouse. Grocery store flowers and a sheetcake from a mix at home after. One relative shipped us a turkey and a ham and we had sandwiches with that too. Cell phone pix.
Even though the first marriage didn’t work out, both weddings were lovely and memorable.
I never wanted a wedding at all. My husband talked me into it. At 24, I didn’t want a big princess-weird-fakey event to be the spot where I made the most solemn promise of my deepest heart to always be with him. How did he talk me into it? He convinced me that it’s for the other people. I was just old enough to start to get it. It’s like being left out of someone’s party – you did that and I didn’t get to come? I had a few friends with kids and you have that certain special proprietary feeling about the people you’ve known and cared about and watched grow. And you want to celebrate with them. So we let people celebrate with us. And it made the whole thing so much easier. All the decisions were not “what will be the most ultimate ___ for me?” but “will that help people be more comfortable, have more fun, enjoy themselves?” We made it traditional enough for everyone to be comfortable while staying true to ourselves, and let the rest of it just be the best party we ever threw for our friends and family. 9 years later, not a single regret.