Why is it so difficult getting gifts?

Speaking of registries... The registries have been one of our biggest trouble makers in this planning process. And I think that is weird. Shouldn't receiving gifts be easy? We put together a list of what we want...and those who want to give us gifts give us those things. But no. Not quite. Because it just wouldn't be wedding planning without a dash of drama and a healthy dose of indecision!

Its probably because we are running into the common problem of not wanting much STUFF. We've been living in sin for quite a few years now, have a home set up, and don't need (or want) much. (and have very little room to put said stuff in!) But a lot of people don't like giving money - even if its in the awesome form of honeymoon gifts on Traveler's Joy!

We've had family telling us that we don't have enough on our tangible item registries and that we need more. That we should set up another registry all together to give lots of choices. We even had a family member set up a registry for us because they reaaally wanted us to have this extra registry. And people telling us that the stuff on our registry isn't nice enough and that we should take this opportunity to get china or or crystal or other fancy stuff (stuff that would definitely fall into the "don't want or need or have space for" categories). People telling us that the white dishes we picked out are boring (because he wanted super dark dishes and I wanted super bright dishes....so we just went with classic-never-fail-will-always-match-and-never-go-out-of-style white).

Talk about unsolicited advice! Such strong opinions on what we should ask for for gifts!? wtf

Are/did any of you have similar registry problems?

Image from Kol Tregaskes because while some of you are dreaming about babies...I'm dreaming about puppies!

Type A What!?

You know things are getting good when you have lists of lists. And "make lists" is part of your to-do list! And your list of things to bring includes lists! OMG its MAdNEsS!

Naw, just kidding. Its not madness. Its pure bliss for this Type A gal! I see my lists and I breath a sigh of relief. With my list in hand, I won't forget something, everyone will know what they are supposed to be doing and when, and I will get shit done!

Here is my growing core of lists for The Wedding Day.

• Timeline for the day
  
• Things to Bring
• What decorations go where
• Day of Duties for all our helpers
• Contact info for all relevant parties

Ahhh, so therapeutic! If lists are the saviors of my sanity, then right now the calendar is the devil. I avoid the calendar as much as possible! Getting ridiculously close to being in the same month as the wedding!? don't wanna know! don't talk to me about it! LALALALALA not listening!!

O_o


(oh. and go enter to win!)

What do with with a wedding decision gone wrong?

I was going to write a post on this today...and then I realized I shouldn't. I have a wedding decision gone wrong, but I am not sure yet what exactly I'm going to do about it! So instead of me saying blah blah thoughts blah blah ramble, this is more of an open discussion.

• Have you made a decision for your wedding that you regret?
• What (if anything) have you or are you going to do about it?
• General advice?

Note: There are a ton of decisions that I fret over. But only one where I know I should have done something different and want to change it. Possibly more to come on this in the future.

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?

Wedding Insecurities

After my last post on budgets, I was contemplating why weddings (and their budgets) are such a tough and touchy topic. I've come up with a few thoughts... 1) They are events that take your personal life and broadcast it publicly. 2) Expectations galore! (Um..I designed my wedding when I was eight. Hows that for building expectations?) 3) Tons of money is wrapped up in the WIC and our insecurities. Our willingness to pay to calm those insecurities makes the WIC happy.

But my last realization has to do with where weddings meet feminism (and they meet quite a lot).

Our culture has this crappy habit of looking down on anything related to what is considered women's domain. Showing emotions? Weak! Enjoying your decorations and flowers? How frivolous! Being in any way "girly"? Well, apparently we all fail from our girly births.

Brides are stuck between a rock of trying to meet traditional and often ridiculous expectations and the hard place of trying to be a chill bride who isn’t “too interested” in her wedding for fear of being judged or being called the dreaded B word. And its near effing impossible. Oh, I'm supposed to put together this super elegant, traditional, mondo party without going all crazy bridezilla on your ass? yeah, right. One more person telling me that whatever isn't “formal enough" or that I "have" to do something and I will mutate into a giant, city-destroying lizard and poop on their head.

So F all that biznass!

I'm gonna plan like mad for months and enjoy it! I'm gonna spend a load of money and not go into debt! I'm going to search etsy for hours and ooh and aaah at all sorts of pretty things! I'm going to spend significant amounts of time on *gasp* my wedding blog! And most importantly of all, I'm going to invest myself and care about the the beginning of my marriage to the person I love - and that's our wedding

With that, I'll end with something to make you smile:

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.

Chemical Reactions

Before we get too far along, perhaps now is a good time to give a little info on why I chose the title "Me, Myself & Bride".

There was some crazy chemical reaction or something when I said a simple "Yes" to a simple question of "Will you". This chemical reaction turned me from a normal person...suddenly into a bride! I didn't know what this meant, but all of a sudden my life was consumed by wedding this and wedding that! and oh my gosh, so many things to do! The Knot told me that I was already late on 90 items of my 370 item to-do list! WTF!?

Whether I wanted it or not, I was slapped with the label of bride and all that goes with it. Advice and suggestions started pouring in. My schedule filled up with things to do. And I suddenly had a binder. A crazy (but awesome) wedding binder that came with me everywhere!

I can't say this was all involuntary. Parts of it were fun (like the binder...I LOVE organization! weeee!) and there are lots of aspects of the wedding that I was/am honestly excited for and anxious to start on.

So. One day I was me, myself and I.....the next, I had changed to be Me, Myself & Bride with a significant portion of my identity now wrapped up in getting married/having a wedding.

The other reason for the title is simply that I can be horribly indecisive - especially about things that are supposed to be "perfect!" for your "BIG day!" AAAHHH!!! So much pressure! And now its like having split personalities with a new "bride" persona in the mix. Me and myself aren't sure how to handle this new one. Hopefully they all learn to get along soon. We've got a ways to go.

Photo from Sara Björk