I’m getting married in less than 190 days. If I’m not thinking about the wedding, I’m e-mailing about the wedding or discussing the wedding. I never wanted to be That Girl. That Girl who only talks of her wedding. That Girl who quotes lines from wedding magazines to her fiancé. No one wants to be That Girl!
I have moments of pure happiness and excitement, immediately followed with panic. I’m not the girl who spent her life planning her wedding. I’m planning this thing mostly blind and hoping for the best…. While staying on a tight budget.
My fiancé has been mostly laissez-faire about it. He checks in when he needs to, ooh-ing appropriately over rings and flowers. Eating cake and going to registry parties. Keeping up with his appointed tasks. He’s excited and happy about getting married, but for now he chooses to allow me the “privilege” of wedding magazines and looking at floral arrangements.
I’m discovering that reading wedding books, magazines and TheKnot.com, overwhelms me with “helpful suggestions” and pretty pictures, and doesn’t give me what we want. I don’t look like any of the brides I’ve seen in the photos. The brides are stunning and flawless with their perfect straight teeth, perfect white dress, perfect makeup, ridiculous bling. Not a lash out of place and beaming next to their freakishly handsome, beaming manscaped grooms. What the hell is this, some sort of Stepford Spouses situation? The one day in your entire life where you are supposed to feel, according to one book “like a goddess” and I couldn’t feel more insecure.
I’m roughly mediocre. I work at a place for less pay than I can afford, managing student loans, insurances, bills and a wedding. I’d kill for average. I’d kill for an average job with average pay. I’m never going to have that bridal shower with friends who are dazzled by salad spinners while drinking mimosas. Through all of this I’ve figured out we have to do what’s right for us. It’s a wedding. More than an excuse for families to drink. It’s a ceremony, binding us into average ever after. It won’t be an extravagantly perfect wedding,
We hope it will be a meaningful wedding with great food, good family and a day of happiness, fun, eating, photos and dancing. That sounds perfect enough for us. Average, but perfect and happily-ever-ours.
In the future, we won’t have lavish vacations, a BMW or a baby prodigy speaking Chinese. It’s going to be us and probably some weird kids.
A weird, crazy, exhausting, loving, good life.
About the Writer
Jenn Robinson is a long time blogger at Jenni has gone out of her mind, but is spending what little free time she has planning a wedding without becoming a Zilla. She has her baking and pastry degree from the C.I.A and her fiance is a chef. If she isn’t cooking or baking she’s probably making a mess elsewhere. She’s the reason why they can’t have nice things.
About Guest Writer
I bet everything turns out sheer perfection!
And weird is good. Weird is better than lavish.
Weird is fun. And you always, always want fun in a family!
Great read!
Twitter Name: ASassyRedhead
“I’m never going to have that bridal shower with friends who are dazzled by salad spinners while drinking mimosas.”
No. Because what you have and what you are is far too real for that.
Love this – taking on the image of perfection and the craptastic wedding industry in one fell swoop.
Have I told you lately that you’re awesome?
Twitter Name: ReadilyAParent
Hey, I had the perfect wedding. You know why? Because it accomplished all we needed; a symbolic joining of families. We wore normal clothes (slacks and button up shirts for men, whatever the women wanted with the only exception that tradition, in my case, required women to refrain from showing cleavage and that they cover their shoulders and knees, and everything in between). My gown was a nice, floor length lavender dress that I still wear, and the groom wore khakis and a dark blue, short sleeved, dress shirt. It was in Buddhist temple and no one wore shoes and I forbid waring ties (after all, it’s not a lynching, right?) It cost us only a donation to the temple and the reception was a pot luck in a plane hangar.
You know how everyone says the marriage is more important than the wedding. Well, they say that because it’s true! After all the time and (my parents’) money spent on the wedding, people told us two things made the day special and memorable: that we were truly, radiantly, head-over-heels excited to be getting married to each other and that because of our joy, the reception was crazy fun. Oddly, no one commented on all the details I stressed about..
Your day will be amazing because you are marrying the man you love. I think most brides will stress no matter what, because they do want a beautiful day. I stressed – I wanted the perfect day – but not for others, for me! I was excited! I was getting married! I was going to start a family! Those are the things I dreamed about for a long time. And I wanted everyone to have a blast celebrating with me. But remember to smile. Smiling, happy, fun brides are beautiful even with imperfect teeth and grooms with a 5 o’clock shadow. You can stress about all the details now, but make sure you smile and have fun THAT day. Leave the details to everyone else! Congratulations!
Twitter Name: HeatherSchiavo
That’s how I feel! I’m just so excited to start our life together I just want to have a great party. I’m more worried about crying all my make-up off than smiling!
The people in the wedding magazines are makeupped, lit and Photoshopped within an inch of their lives. If you fell over one of them in grocery store you’d probably never even recognize them because they’d look a lot more like you.
My wedding consisted of about 30 people, including the bride and groom. Every person there has told me it was the best wedding they’d ever been too. I focused on the ceremony, the food and the intimacy of having our nearest and dearest with us to celebrate. We just passed our 18th anniversary in October.
The wedding will be over before you know it. Relax, have fun and focus on the important part: the marriage.
Twitter Name: msmegan
Ahem. Been to. Not too.
Twitter Name: msmegan
Yeah, that’s my basic mindset, I keep telling myself that no one is going to remember your first dance, your invitations, the music or the flowers, so my fiance and I are just doing what is special to us and what matters to us. While we are excited to have both our families together and share in the day, it’s really what’s going to be memorable to us. I need to keep remembering that is our day, and our memories, and that I got to stop planning through their eyes. You know?
My cousin got married in a field at a retreat center. (He and his wife got legally married at the courthouse the night before, then read poems to each other and such for the field part). A friend of their catered the reception. There was a bouncy house. Somebody had a guitar, so we sat out on the porch until all hours of the morning having a sing-along. It was awesome.
Twitter Name: MamaKaren