Today, I reached a new and better place in wedding planning. Ok, so maybe that's premature to say... Today I saw a new and better place in wedding planning and I want to go to there! That place? Its called reality.
I think I once lived in reality. Sometime. Long long ago. Way before this engagement stuff and wedding planning. And since then, reality feels like a far away place told of by wedding graduates who have made it through to the promise land of marriage.
But for now I still live in Wedding Land, living in fear of the Wicked Witch of the WIC and being guided by the Good Witch, Blogda to the Wedding Zen City where the Wizard will make send me home to a blissful, love filled wedding...
Woah. Ok, that metaphor is getting crazy and needs to be put down!
So what I'm really trying to say is this: I've pulled myself away from the WIC and feel very successful in ridding myself of any pressure I feel to have a Martha worthy wedding. I can flip through a colossal bridal magazine and not be phased. I have not, however, learned to bypass the much more manageable but nevertheless intense expectations that are raised by blogs. Mainly, that we will all have a wedding where we are calm, happy, blissed out, totally in love, and supported by a loving community who helped put together this thoughtful day.
Focusing our energy on having this sort of wedding definitely is much better than focusing on a wedding worthy of a magazine spread, but it can still be stressful. Another Damn Wedding posted Friday on her hot pursuit of a blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest wedding and I couldn't agree more.
There are many stories in blog land telling of a magical day where the bride wakes up and suddenly, all previous stress and wedding worries have been wiped away. The day then continues as the bride is blown away by all the support and community love her and her involved groom feel. And they live happily ever after!
I want that! I want to know that all the things that are going to stress me out will *WHOOSH* just go away as soon as I wake up on our wedding day. That my community of helpers will be the complete and assuring support that I need. I'm hopeful. I can envision that in my future. But what if blog land has led me to believe in some sort of crazy new idea of a perfectly unperfect day?
Talking to a recently married friend about all this, my friend suddenly says, "You know what? I didn't really like our wedding. I don't look back fondly at it. But that doesn't really matter anymore. We're just happy to be married!" Now, I think that is a great sentiment and I hope that, no matter what, I will simply be happy with getting married to a man who makes my insides smile.
But that's not quite the thing a gal wants to hear in the midst of planning...and in the midst of writing checks that are bigger than shes ever written in her life! I'm hanging on for dear life to this notion that our wedding is going to be an amazing blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest. And I'm going to will it to happen.
Not in the crazy denial sense of willing something to happen against better judgment that that thing may not happy... I'm going to will it in the sense that if I wanna be blissed out? then I'm going to be blissed out! Unless some jumbo disaster occurs, I'm going to be rubber on my wedding day. And my wedding community can be my glue. Wedding stress will bounce off of me!
Is that still crazy denial of reality? I dunno. But I'm going to stick with this mad determination to have a great wedding. What alternative is there?
Question: Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd never found the wedding blogs? I am almost positive we would have eloped. I would not have had any grounding on which to build the wedding we are building. Would it have been better to elope? Maybe. Parts of me wish we had. But am I happy with our current wedding plans? Yes.
i had an epiphany this week of the same sort. i deleted my blog. we're going to have a ceremony with just our parents, traveling for a month, then coming back and throwing a party.
ReplyDeleteif it weren't for blogs, i wouldn't have gotten so stressed over planning that we formulated this plan. so i guess they're only good for pushing you to your breaking point!
getting stresses out over trying not to be stressed out kinda defeats the purpose, no?
ReplyDeletethere are good blogs and evil blogs. the good ones are pretty realistic about things going wrong, and the wedding still being a fabulous thing.
it's a difficult balance to find tho (as a married wedding blogger) because if i talk about the disasters that happened, i'm sending brides into a tizzy over all the "what-ifs". and if i talk about the perfect moments, i'm guilty of setting some high bars for some brides. and if i show you all the lovely things we made for my wedding, i'm not going into enough detail about the hard work behind it. and if i talk about all of the hard work i did, i'm essentially saying eveyone else should do the same amount of work. (i've heard complaints on all of these things)
so the bottom line is. it's gonna be like every other party you ever throw. some things may go wrong. but you can still have a blast, if you don't let it get in the way.
Holy crapsicles, Jen! Thank you for writing this metaphor-galore-post! It covers all the mixed up feelings I right now, but couldn't put my finger on. And yes, I think we do build ourselves up for a perfectly unperfect day. Who cares if it rains and we don't have a plan B, it will still be our wedding and we'll still be in love and blah blah blah? (Totally where I am right now.) But you're friend is right, what about those who are indifferent about their weddings? I think that's the part I'm worried about dealing with. We prepare ourselves for disasters (except rain!) and we prepare ourselves to have a blissed-out-cry-fest, but what about just plain not liking it?
ReplyDelete@ Holli - sounds like a great plan you've got! and lol, thats pretty funny - "they're only good for pushing you to your breaking point!" I'm definitely breaking sooner than I thought. but that just means I can simplify sooner than later! :)
ReplyDelete@ Liz I'd say I'm less stressed about not being stressed, but more determined to control what I can control - and that is my own mood - to make the day what I want it to be. Will power! ra! ra! ra!
@ Angie lol, I am a big metaphor lover...sometimes they just go crazy and stop making sense very quickly! lol!
ReplyDeleteThe one different I see between what we are doing and what my friend did, is that we are much more involved in the wedding process. We are thinking about it, examining it, effing blogging about it, etc. and I think in the end that will make it more intense to us. Thats what I think/hope/am sticking to!
oh, pooh, i forgot the credit Desiree Delgado for that photo - shes got a bunch of awesome pics on her flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/desireedelgado/
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