Mom, sometimes you are crazy!

My mama and I have a great relationship...most the time. But I swear, there is something about wedding planning that takes us normal people and flips that switch to crazy. And the drama switch. And some chemical reaction just melts are brains so nothing makes sense any more and the smallest decisions seem monumental. ("But what if our cake stands don't MATCH!?!?")

And as the wedding day nears, I'm nervous. For lots of reasons. And one of them is freaking out on the day of as we set up and get ready. Me freaking out. My mom freaking out. My mother-in-law freaking out. All this freaking out making my future hubs freak out! and then it'll just be chaos! chaos, I tell you!!!

Not if I can damn well help it!

Me and my mums had a lovely conversation the other day where I told her I was just slightly worried about us freaking out. At first she seemed a little affronted, and then she said, "Yeah, I'm worried I'm going to freak out, too." So I asked, "Mom, how can we go about not killing each other the day of?" and we came up with a plan to not commit murder on the day of the wedding.

• First thing Mama said was that my organization really helps her. So having lists of what she is supposed to bring, what she is supposed to do, whats happening when, etc. and letting her see these ahead of time is a big plus. Seeing them ahead of time lets her ask questions, clarify items, and make sure we are all on the same page.
  
• Second thing we both noted is that we have a tendency to get annoyed, hold it in, and then burst. Instead of bursting, we are both going to try very hard to voice our issues sooner if they arise.
• Third, to avoid frustrations, being clear is key. And a lot of this is going to start with me. I need to be clear on what I'm expecting of people. I am also going to make a point to tell people that I need them to be helpful and do what we ask...this is not the time for opinions! Its the time to DO! Also, I need to be clear on how thankful I am for their help. No one wants to help a pushy, ungrateful bride.

K, so that's it I guess. The three things we've come up with so far to help us not kill each other. Now I just need to figure out how to do the same with my MIL...hmm....

Any suggestions on how not to kill people?
Any suggestions on how to broach this topic with a MIL or other helpers who might be troublesome?

Peace!
Jen

* Image from Five Film Plus, fun story: growing up, my mom would get frustrated with my brother and I for whatever dumb stuff we were doing and get whipped into a yelling fury. Sometimes, instead of being scared or behaving...we'd run around in circles yelling "Mad-mom-martigan! Mad-mom-martigan!" I'm sure that really help my mom's temper at the time. :) Love you, Mom!

I wanna be perty!

One of the things on my list of to dos is to go browse the beauty section at Target Boutique. I'm thinking of a cleanser, some whitener for my pearl yellows, spiffy eye shadow, foundation, and waterproof mascara.

But why? My daily beauty routine is to rinse my face off. That's it. Maybe moisturize. And then when I'm going out and want to feel fancy I throw on some mascara, a little eye liner and a touch of eye shadow. Very minimal. With the wedding looming, though, I feel like I need to do something special for that day.

I am going to talk to my friend who does magic with makeup and try to find some extremely minimal products to give me a little shining up on the day of...but I want to make sure to look like my normal self. Just a really great version of my normal self!

So less products...more natural beauty! To help enhance my natural beauty, I'm trying to remember a few instant beauty tricks:

• Smile! This is the quickest, easiest, bestest way to bring out your natural beauty. Plus, its contagious! So you will be helping to make everyone else beautiful as well! Aren't you nice!
• Stand up straight! Again, super quick and easy and will immediately improve your look.
• Arms off your sides! Many of us are worried about the dreaded fat arm photos. Its a hard problem to avoid. But instead of trying to lose enough weight to take arm flab off and then buff up arms to look toned (even though women develop muscle in a way that looks like fat anyway...sucks), I say just learn your angles and keep your arms off your sides instead! That will keep them from squishing against your side and looking mondo sized!
• Be confident! Look in the dictionary because confidence and beauty are side by side. They pretty much mean the same thing. So laugh, smile, be yourself and know that you rock!
  

Thats it. You just read the secrets to beauty! Great, huh? No more need for magazines or commercials telling you all the stuff you need to be beautiful - cuz you already got it! WIN!

Image via sushla

Categories

I was reading Angie's post over at One Cat Per Person today and got to thinking about categories. About how we need them, love to put everything we can in them, and how hard they are to ignore. For wedding planning there seems to be the indie camp and the traditional camp. Two categories of weddings that wage an "Us" vs "Them" war.

But what about the in betweens?

Some days I feel like people are going to look at our wedding and go "WTF!? They call this a wedding!?" because we are skipping a lot of tradition and sometimes even subverting it. Then the next day I may be feeling like, "Holy crap, our wedding is so WEDDINGish! WTF happened? I thought we were going to be unique and special and have a wedding that is totally us!? OMG!" *spaz spaz*

First of all, if I were to describe us as a couple...I would not use the word indie OR the word traditional. We are somewhere in between. So our wedding is going to be us and be somewhere in between.

But like I said, we all love to put things in categorizes to help us better understand them. To give them a framework so we can say, ok, I see what is going on.

When planning our limited decor with my mom and my aunts, they kept trying to put a 'theme' or category to it. I'd say how I liked birds and saw this cute little bird that I wanted to hide in the branches of our centerpiece and suddenly they were off planning a bird themed wedding! Our wedding is involving trees in a few ways and is going to be kinda low key, so at one point they decided this meant it was an eco-garden party! Off they went, super excited about all the garden or bird theme items we could include.

They really, really seemed to want a cohesive 'theme' or category to be able to decorate by- something easily identifiable. So I had to keep reigning them in and explaining that no theme (besides my declared theme of "happy") was going to be happening. It was just going to be a mix and mash of pretty things that generally go together. Colors, fun poof balls, maybe some lanterns, some tree pieces worked in....but nothing really easily identifiable.

Now, I'm kinda pointing my fingers at my poor mom and aunties about their need to categorize, but its me too. In some aspects we are having a "eff it" wedding and in some we are having a traditional wedding. And I need to get over trying to fit our wedding anywhere. But that's a hard natural urge to get over - the desire to fit in, to be 'normal'. And for something as public and personal as a wedding, its no wonder that desire is stupidly strong. Even when I thought I was a big girl who was over the junior high insecurities and could be comfortable in my own skin... I think I finally am comfortable in my own skin, but I'm not so comfortable yet in my wedding/couple/public declaration of love skin.

So brain, take some notes, because heres the biz: Forget trying to fit our wedding into any category because 1) it may not fit anywhere 2) it doesn't need to fit anywhere.

I do hope that people come to our wedding and say, "Woah, I've never seen a wedding like this!" Some will say that with a smile on their face, thinking how fun it is to see a unique wedding, while others will scowl at our disrespect to the sacred institution of marriage!

Whatever.

It is what it is and its our own.


Image from ChernobylBob

Peeling Back Another Layer

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.

Too many weddings

We are at that age when every summer is full of weddings. And this summer, it feels very different to be a part of that. We are getting married, I will be in one, attending a hand full, and starting to hear talk of a wedding for two of our closest friends in the coming year. Its a very busy time!

I'm finding that it also adds a very difficult element to our planning. I've talked before about all the crazy expectations that come with planning a wedding and trying to stay true to our goals in the face of many differing (and very vocal) opinions. One side of the family thinks our wedding isn't going to be formal enough ("This is your wedding, Jen! Not a child's birthday party!") while the other side can't believe what we are spending and that we are having such a "large" wedding. All very encouraging, thanks families.

And as our wedding represents, we fall somewhere smack in the middle. Our 94 person guest list is the right size for us and includes all of our first ring relatives and close friends. We definitely hurt some feelings and drew some uncomfortable lines to keep it that small, but its what we choose. And I don't feel like its a large group or a really small group. Its just right! (This guest list is too big! This guest list is too small! This guest list is juuuuust right!)

Our budget reflects what we wanted as well. Meaning: a full meal, a place to eat that food, a photographer, a white dress, a suit, and some things mixed in that look pretty. We luckily have the means and partial financial support from my parents to do this and will not go into debt for our wedding. The budget definitely got bigger than we imagined...but we found out very quickly into the planning that the budget we imagined was not realistic for what we wanted. We are sacrificing money instead of sacrificing a day that will represent us and be meaningful to us. *insert cheesy phrase here about making memories to last a lifetime or something*

All these decisions were made with care to fit us as a couple in this particular moment in our relationship and lives.

Enter the wedding season.

I've been talking to a friend of mine whose wedding will be in July. Inevitably, weddings are the major portion of our conversations, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. We are having very different weddings and I want to avoid comparisons. Me comparing our wedding to theirs and her doing the same.

But once wedding season gets into full gear I don't know how to avoid it. I'm scared of attending weddings this summer, seeing what they did, and feeling the expectations all over again. On the flip side, I DO think our wedding is going to be completely awesome...and I don't want to share awesome details that we are doing in case it sounds like "oh yeah? check out what we're doing! isn't that GREAT?" or that I'm gloating about ours.

Anyone else dealt or dealing with this? Advice on how to avoid comparing weddings?

Wedding Represent!

I was having a fit of insecurities about the wedding yesterday. One moment I’m worried that our wedding will be judged too cheap, us too lazy, or the style too “whimsical”.* The next, I feel like its turning into some formal, boring, stuffy, soulless, totally not unique wedding. I worried about regretting decisions, about not feeling like our wedding represents us well enough, and about spending all this money for nothing. Pretty much just a hot mess of worry where the worry is like wedding acid and disintegrates all happy thoughts and not even my beloved garlands are safe!**

Mid mild freak out, I was clinging to any and every sincere piece of our wedding I could find. The ring warming ceremony. The awesome charity favor idea that we are doing instead of useless crap. The awesome, concise guest list that we retained total control over. The two amazing ladies I will have standing up for me. These pieces that I feel good/great about and am excited for were like my wedding security blanket.

But I'm sick of fight back wedding insecurities. Its silly, annoying, and not productive. Insecurities do not check things off the Mondo To-Do List! So insecurities really just need to die. Die and never come back.

They are not dead yet, but I'm working on it. And here for you today I have the top 10 things I've learned to battle insecurities:

1) Remember that I'm marrying a completely amazing guy. Total win for me! Beat that, insecurities!
2) We wanted a big, fun party and that's what we are doing. And because this big, fun party is our wedding...well, its going to look a lot like traditional weddings. Whether we feel 'traditional' or not, that's part of the wedding territory.
2.5) because wedding = tradition. By extension: our wedding = traditional.
3) We are going to have 90 or so guests at our wedding. This means mixing lots of different family and friends. I'm pretty sure ALL of them will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. But our goal is not to please them. Our goal is to have a meaningful wedding for us.
4) Its ok that they will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. That doesn't mean they are going to look down on us. Different choices for different people.
5) If they do look down on us, they are weenie heads.
6) This is the first wedding I've ever planned (and I hope the last *crosses fingers*) and don't really know whats going on most of the time. I'm learning as I go and making lots of it up as I go. So me, give self a break.
7) Of all the important details, I have control over the most important of all. My mood. If I don't want to be upset, I don't have to be. Magic.
8) All the details are meant to set a celebratory mood and the detail that does that best? A couple who is giddy with love and excitement and beaming smiles wins over any arrangement of flowers or vintage anything.
9) The wedding planning - fun parts, stressful parts, insecurities, all of it! - is a great learning experience. Ya know...the whole "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" bit.
10) And again - WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! Eff the rest! WEEEEEE!!!!!!

* Story: I was getting together with my mom and two of my aunts. Before I had arrived, they had put together two mock up tall centerpieces. One was something my aunts came up with and was very beautiful and could have come straight out of Martha Stewart Weddings. The other was based on the ideas I had been throwing around and was very colorful and different. They showed them off to me, compare and contrast, pros and cons, and then one of my aunts asked, "Ok, so which one do you like? This one, which is very classic and elegant... or this one... which is... well, lets call it 'whimsical'." (with disapproving tone on "whimsical") Can you guess which one was the creation of my brainstorming and creative, cheapskate juices? Can you guess which one I picked and which one we are going with for the wedding? Can you guess how auntie wrinkled her nose at my proclamation that whimsical was the complete winner over Martha inspired centerpiece? le sigh.

** Over dramatic much?

New vibe in town!

So far, most everyone around me is pushing for a traditional wedding - parents, in-laws, awesome-and-helpful aunties, the big, bad society, and so on. But the vibe just changed.

One of my best ladies, lady of honor, sister-from-another mister, just got back in town. She was off living the ski bum dream but is back for the non-ski season! Its great to have her back in town and I can't wait to have her help for the wedding. We totally vibe together and I don't think I would ever hear her say anything along the lines of "Well, traditionally people do this..." or "You should do this - thats the way its normally done!" Such a relief not to have another person pressuring me to do dumb crap that costs way to much! :)

At the same time, this wedding is well underway and has been swayed by the traditional wedding forces. Its hard to avoid when all I have is people telling me to do things one, traditional, big, white, expensive, crazy way! I like to think that I've done a good job holding my ground and making our wedding what we want it to be...

But then I enter the What If zone. What if Ski Bum Bridesmaid had been here helping steer me away from crazy? Would our wedding look different? Is our wedding too big and crazy already? EFF!

Ok, really, I'm fine. No worries. I just feel pulled in two directions. The super hippie, chill, just let it flow direction and the traditional, heart attack, consumerized wedding direction. Hopefully I can fall into some sane middle ground where our wedding will look like us and feel like us and just be happy. Because that is my theme. When asked at our engagement announcement about colors/themes/whatever I just told them that our theme is going to be "Happy" and I'm sticking to that.

Dress stress - a decision?

I'm definitely keeping that question mark on the end. I'm making a dress decision and lack of time is making this decision final, but I'm sure doubts are going to resurface. And that's ok. I'll just have to deal with it. Because I've given this a LOT of thought and I have to trust myself in making this decision. I have to know that I made the best decision for myself that I could in this moment...and however it turns out in the end - whether I love or regret my dress decision - that's all I can ask from myself.

I'm sticking with my current dress and am going to focus my energies on making that dress mine. Its a great, flattering dress, and I'm sure it will make me feel special. Plus, my mister's jaw is going to drop. And that is all I need to feel great in any dress!

Now on to the Dress Stress Lesson of the Day!

Our culture puts enormous pressure on women to look beautiful on a daily basis. Mucho money is wrapped up in the beauty industry – they show us these false, unattainable ideals and the dollars flow in as we try to achieve that photoshopped look. (Ok, we stand no chance when up against a photoshopped Jessica Alba. Not even Jessia Alba stands a chance against a photoshopped Jessica Alba!) It’s no wonder then, that with “one big day”, the pressure is just unimaginably amplified. And I’m not sure how to combat it. There are lots of great discussions about it, and I think the best we can do it support each other and work to reaffirm ourselves. Over and over. Because this shit is well ingrained.

Even with my best efforts, I feel prey to expectations hardcore. I may have tried to deny it, but I was totally shopping for the ‘one’, ‘perfect’ dress. Even though I think that ideal is BS, I wanted it to be perfect. And I somehow expected to find this one perfect dress for under 500 bucks!? What bizzaro world was I living in!?

One of the things I most feared most was looking too ‘bridal’ (whatever that means). I don’t feel like a typical bride, so I didn’t want to look like a typical bride. I was scared that if I did people would place typical judgments on me – like spending frivolously, being shallow, being bossy, and all those horrible, stereotypical, and downright nasty labels. It’s hopeless to worry about what other people think, though. No matter what I choose, there are going to be people who think I should have done it differently. So eff it.

Perhaps the best thing I learned through all this dress stress and searching for the perfect dress to represent me is this; I simply can not be summed up by one dress. No dress, no matter how beautiful or well crafted, can represent the complex person that is me. I am bigger than any dress. I can shine more brightly than any fabric put together can. The dress is merely going to provide, for one day in my life, an accent to my already bright self– and that’s all I need. It may not be the "one" but its MY dress.


(Note: That’s my pep talk to myself. But I also want to say thank you all for your support and helpful comments! The blog community has been crucial for keeping my sanity. I can’t even imagine the mess I would be in without the safe and sane sounding board that blog land provides. Thanks you thank you thank you!)

Mama Dearest

Mama "We should have a lot of color. The room is so big and white that it needs a lot!"

Me "Yes! I'm all about loads of color!"

Mama "Which color is going to be your main color?"

Me "Um...all of them?"

Mama "You need to pick one main color and then accent with your other colors."

Me "No, I like all of them and I can't pick just one!"

Mama "You are already pushing it having three wedding colors."

Me, frowning and shaking head, "Speaking of that...I think we should have more. I want them ALL!"

Mama's turn to frown and shake head.

(Bless my mama. She takes some time to nudge out of tradition, but in the end she always supports me in what I want to do.)

Taboo Talk: Budgets

There has been some great discussion in wedding blog land about budgets. Another Damn Wedding has a fabulous post that mirrors my feelings exactly, and Meg at A Practical Wedding speaks sanity and gives amazing advice - as always. Both ladies are spot on.

I think we are all (myself very much included) guilty of judging other weddings - whether this be the magazine weddings that are worth the total of my undergraduate education or the blog weddings that are ridiculously DIY/DIT and amazing and cost a few months rent. We are constantly comparing and judging.

And in the end everybody loses.

By judging and comparing our weddings to other weddings, we slowly lose focus on whats important, and it becomes a race to impress. Our wedding must be full of stunning details which are totally unique and we must have a memorably delicious cake with details to match our perfectly coordinated theme... but we don't want to be one of those crazy Knot brides (oh, Knot, how we love to pick on you!) so we must craft it all ourselves for super cheap (preferably vintage) and you better hope you have talented family and friends willing to help or how else are you going to look calm and cool in your beautiful, artsy photographs that are going to make everyone jealous on Facebook?

**deep breaths**

All we can see of these magazine or blog weddings are pictures - still images of one day in someones life who we know nothing about. Perhaps some captions or a story that tell us how they put it all together. But what do we know about the couple? their lives? their love? their wedding!? Damn little - that's what we know.

As I said, I'm completely guilty of all of this. I judge and compare and lose my mind in the details and design. For me, a lot of this has to do with the immensely personal nature of weddings. I'm an introverted Minnesotan, and I feel like I'm really putting myself out there with our wedding. Not only are we publicly declaring our love and commitment, but our wedding is a showcase of us as a couple. Our style, tastes, eco-ethics, religious beliefs (or lack there of for us), class (which Accordions and Lace wrote an excellent post on), generally where we 'fit in', how traditional we are, etc. will all be on display. How are people going to react? What are they going to think of it all? Will they judge us? Some scary prospects.

But the same fact that can make it scary is what makes is sane. Weddings are personal and we have to make personal decisions about ours. We all fall at different points on the range of budgets, how traditional we are, etc. And in planning our own, we have to find the confidence to stand by our personal decisions and feel secure enough as a person and as a couple that we made the right decisions. It won't be perfect, but it will be ours. Not matter what the Knot says.

Note: In the name of full disclosure, I'd like to share that our budget is going to fall roughly around 10,000. I believe that putting real numbers out there to go with all our pretty pictures helps take away the taboo and helps us understand better what weddings cost. I wish I had had examples of real wedding budgets before we started planning. I had no idea what 10,000 would get us. So. There is my number.

How Typical

Before we were engaged, I was reading wedding blogs and starting to think about our wedding and about getting married. Then we got engaged and my organized, list-making, control freak self went into overdrive and became engrossed in Wedding Land. I read wedding blogs daily, had many many Google documents full of ideas, links, and photos, and started to fill my wonderful and nerdy wedding binder. My brain was wedding grand central.

During this time, I was lucky enough to find some sane resources (A Practical Wedding is my wedding savior!) to help me muddle through many wedding issues. I came to terms with spending thousands on one day. I understood that weddings can actually mean something more than just pretty details if you let them. And I began to pull myself away from the various pressures and all the various labels (WIC, indie, alternative, vintage, 'green') so that I could determine what I wanted.

Unfortunately, I think I left my Mister behind in this. I didn't share the important parts of my Wedding Land journey like I should have. And he wasn't really that interested to begin with. He is usually pretty happy with the way things are while I continually want to analyze, dig deeper and make things better - like our relationship, the wedding, our to-be marriage.

So yesterday we had a bit of a fight. Well, it was probably more like a break down on my part. The story goes like this. The Mister wanted to elope. I wanted a big, fun party. I didn't want a ceremony but he did. In the end we are having a big, fun party that looks like most other weddings but should represent us very well as a couple. I am paying for half of the wedding and my parents are paying for the other half. The Mister's work situation has left him with not much money in the bank.

He is still stuck on the cost of the wedding and since he isn't paying for it, feels like he needs to forfeit his opinions and input. I understand where he is coming from, but I need to feel like he is invested and interested in the day. I need to feel like he is looking forward to the wedding that I'm spending so much time, money and effort on.

We made the decision together to have the wedding we are having - but I feel like its all me. And that only adds to my wedding insecurities and makes me feel like I'm the dreaded bridezilla who is getting my way while her groom sits helplessly by. And it only adds to my insecurities that we are spending too much or that the wedding is being blown out of proportions or that I'm just not doing this wedding thing 'right'.

Last night involved lots of tears and mood swings from sadness to despair to anger back to bleak sadness. We talked it out a bit, but I think we'll need to talk more. Tears and running noses doesn't make for a very good discussion. But I think we both understand where each other are coming from and now we just have to move forward in a new direction. So that we can have a wedding where we are both invested, interested and active participants.

*phew* Ok, I feel better to get that off of my chest! Thanks, blog land.


Photo from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swirlingthoughts/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

No, really...I don't care

There are areas of wedding planning that I think are really fun, pretty, exciting, meaningful, etc etc. There are areas of wedding planning that I think are horrible (favors. screw favors.) and want to avoid all together. And then there are areas in between where I just don't really care. I don't care much what our centerpieces look like. I don't really care what the ladies standing up for me wear. And it has surprised me that I don't really care about the cake. As long as it makes it to my mouth and is tasting good, I'm happy!

But this doesn't work so well in wedding planning. And I'm getting frustrated with the expectations of me to be this all knowing bride who has everything figured out and knows what she wants and can make snappy decisions on demand!

Now, I know that I do need to make these decisions because they are mine to make. My mister generally cares less than me and defers to my opinion on most things wedding. I need to be the captain and the anchor of this wedding and make solid decisions, but sometimes I don't know what I want or just haven't seen an option that I really like. So in the meantime I sit on my hands and when asked about these topics shrug and say, "I dunno! I'll get to that later!"

Photo by Alfred Cheney Johnston