Disappointment and Excitement

I wanted to blog a bit about how this wedding-planning process can be such an emotional, up-and-down roller coaster ride. The emotional stuff that has to do with my own issues about marriage, fears of commitment, high expectations of myself and my partner and family stuff was to be expected, as was the excitement around planning a big wedding and gathering all our friends and family together to celebrate with us.

What hasn't been as expected for me is having the disappointing experience of friends who've been less-than-supportive of H. and my vision of the wedding trying to impose their visions and ideas of what weddings should be on our process. Notice I said friends and not family. Our family has been surprisingly cooperative and accomodating--especially considering that H.'s father and my mother are paying for most of it--and even though they haven't been super-excited about every element of the wedding (e.g. my mom saying in a less-than-approving tone that the simple wooden chapel where we're having the ceremony looks like a 'country church'), they've pretty much held their tongues. I take that as a sign that 1) they know we're not going to change our minds even if they protest; and 2) they recognize us as adults now who can make our own decisions and, more importantly, have the right to.

It's been very disappointing to have one close friend--I won't get into details but if you're an IndieBride Kvetch member you can probably find my post there--who, I think because of stuff going on in their own life, has called me 'very self-absorbed' about the wedding planning and really stressed me out one day by trying to make us rethink some important decisions we'd made, supposedly in the name of helping us 'strategize'. Around what I'm not sure, and the advice was not only totally unsolicited but also completely unhelpful, but this friend has all but blamed me for the argument that ensued, although I tried my best to be patient and explain why we'd come to our decision. It was a fascinating experience of human nature and the clash of needs, and I hope that my friend can soon understand why we can't do it the way they wanted us to, and why their approach wasn't helpful.

It was exciting and helpful, on the other hand, to talk to other folks that are helping to plan the wedding and find out that they're not only happy with how we're moving things forward, but also down to do whatever we need them to for our wedding. These are the folks that I want to stand up for H. and I during our ceremony as our wedding party--people who know that this day truly is about our relationship and the vision we have for how we want to share this ritual with others.

I'm trying to let their excitement take me out of my frustrated and disappointed state when I think about my other friend, but it's hard. Even H. was starting to feel despondent about the wedding, telling me yesterday, 'I wonder sometimes how excited people really are about our getting married.' That made me really sad, and so I shared with him all the supportive words that our friends shared with me, and reminded him that at our next wedding planning meeting (we meet about once every six weeks), we'll get a nice shot of enthusiasm and support from our crew.

So please send positive, uplifting thoughts and energy our way. We're in the home stretch now and we'll need all the help we can get.

DIY vs. 'Traditional'

H. and I--and our fabulous wedding crew of 'bridesmaids' and 'groomsmen', for lack of better terminology--have been trying to plan our wedding in a fairly DIY (do-it-yourself) way. H., a graphic designer and DJ by training and background, is designing our wedding invitations, fairly elaborate affairs involving ribbon, 'matchbook'-style cover and multiple inserts, as well as pulling together all the musical elements of the event. I have worked as a professional event coordinator and my attention-to-detail-meter is so scary that I created a 12-tab Excel spreadsheet to track everything from the invite list to the menu to the budget to the tasks/timeline. I also wrote the wedding party processional order during a moment of inspired compulsiveness when I was waiting for the bus a couple months ago.

So we are definitely lucky to have these skills, both from a budget perspective (people spend craploads of money on invitations and DJs/sound equipment, and we'll have custom-designed invitations and at least three DJs for less than $1,000 for everything) and from a quality control perspective. I also know that there are cheaper and more fun alternative ways to do just about everything--like hiring our own waitstaff so that we can completely control our dinner menu for the reception and keep the per-person food costs down to as little as $15, including drinks! Or like researching the cutty, out-of-the-way halls and ceremony sites that only locals know about but that cost a fraction of what the 'popular' wedding venues cost (we're paying about $1,000 for both the ceremony and reception venue combined). But a lot of people who don't have experience planning events, working with vendors and organizing multiple volunteers and paid staff for a project like this just wouldn't know that so many cool options exist. Or, they do know and they just don't have the time or inclination to deal with it, so they hire someone like me to do it for them. (And believe me, after going through this wedding planning process, I am very much considering hiring myself out as a wedding coordinator! Not only is there some good money to be made but also many brides' nervous breakdowns to prevent).

So from where we sit, it's fascinating to see how the wedding industry, which is an $86 billion industry in the US alone, plays to people's lack of these skills and knowledge by making brides especially feel that in order to have a really fabulous wedding you need things like a wedding coordinator (upwards of $40/hour), a wedding web site (can cost $50 a month!), letterpress invitations (literally thousands of dollars) and of course, a fabulous dress ($1,000 for a bridal gown is considered 'budget' by most wedding web sites and magazines). I rail a lot on this web site about how the 'bridal industry' pushes this image of an ideal wedding that, oh yeah, happens to cost upwards of $40,000. And I rail against it because I find myself falling for some of their tchotchkes and gimmicks. ("Oh, sweetie, let's get a personalized silk-flower heart-shaped banner that says 'Just Got Hitched' for our limousine for when we leave the ceremony site!"). It's fascinating to observe and experience my own inner little girl getting giggly and swoony over things like letterpress place cards ($200) or heart-shaped personal mini-fondue set wedding favors ($24 each, which would mean over $3,500 for our wedding of 175 guests!).

Don't worry, we're not actually BUYING any of these things, but as a self-confessed marketing sucker, I do admit that the constant bombardment via email, wedding web sites, and yes even junk snail mail of cutesy, adorable wedding trinkets starts to wear down even this hardcore DIY bride. Fortunately, H. and I don't have the kind of flexibility in our wedding budget that would allow us to seriously entertain any truly frivolous expense, so you won't find me making an impulse buy of Lord of the Rings champagne flutes anytime soon.

And that is a damned good thing.

And Away We Go!

H. and I had our first planning meeting today over brunch with our fabulous crew of friends who are going to be in the ceremony and help us make the big day happen. I feel so blessed to have such an amazing group of people in our lives and helping us plan our wedding. And if this first brunch is any indication, our wedding's going to be a blast! We had some yummy food--homefries, veggie and maple chicken sausages and scrambled eggs with spinach--cooked by H. to perfection, then we did some fun story-sharing about how we'd all met each other and then we did some brainstorming and planning. THEN, my good friend A., by request, did an impromptu salsa dance lesson, which surprisingly everyone participated in. It was so much fun and totally reflected me and H.'s values: music, friendship, good food, dancing and just a generally grand time had by all.

Here's a picture of the impromptu salsa lesson:


And what a talented and connected group of folks this is: my other friend AR can get us a hookup on a digital projector which we'll use for a slideshow and even offered to help GROW some flowers so we wouldn't have to buy as many for the wedding; MR is the decorations and flower diva; two friends named A. are helping to settle on a reception venue (see my earlier panicked post), and everyone pitched in to help do our Save the Date postcard mailing. A. and N.'s new Baby K. (all of four months old!) made us all coo and smile with his cute lil' self as well.

And of course I was the event coordinating queen and had easel pad paper up to help us all with the planning structure (I can't help myself, I love event planning!):




We had a great time and look forward to more meetings like this one--where we can really be ourselves and have others help us visualize and manifest our wedding in meaningful and fun ways. Being around our friends today made me realize how lucky H. and I are, and how amazing our life already is, and how amazing it will be post-September 20. Blessed indeed.

Frackin' Around...

...with my template! Tsk-tsk if you were thinking I was going to talk about naughty, sowing-my-wild-oats-before-settling-down kinds of things. I would NEVER discuss those kinds of things in my blog. (Wink)

Seriously, though, I've been really irritated with the new template/interface on Blogger (I couldn't figure out a way to enable comments for God's sake!) so I finally reverted back to the 'Classic' template, et voila! My comments have magically appeared. But I'm still figuring out how to not make the links I add show up in a different font than everything else, and how to make things look a little bit nicer. I know a grant total of like two short lines of HTML code, so I will be enlisting the help of none other than my lovely fiance, H., to help me. You see, he's a web programmer/designer on top of all the other fabulous and lovely things he is.

So please be patient with me and my blog as we tweak and work out the kinks. Oh yeah, and I'm having the first meeting of my bridal party this weekend! We're going to come up with a more interesting name for them--they're all good friends that are helping us plan our wedding and who will be in the wedding in some way. It should be a fun meeting.

And as far as the other f**kin' around, believe me I've lived my fair share of party days and wild young nights. One of the reasons I'm getting married and looking so forward to having kids is that I'm quite content with my memory of those years, and the fun I had, but I'm also quite ready to get domestic, stay home, clean my kid's snot from her face, and let H. make me brown rice and veggie stir-fry. Ah, the glorious boredom of settling down!