Anyone who knows me may have been confused by the title of this post. Not because I bought a book (which I do far too often), but because it has to do with weddings. Since last April when Brad and I got engaged everyone has been pretty much been driving me crazy. Sure, I was excited/happy/shocked/ when we got engaged, but I also realized I was going to dread part of it too. I generally like to keep to myself and have always been pretty defensive to other people prying into my life with all their questions. It’s not that I hate everyone, but I just like to do things in my own time and on my own terms. I get overwhelmed when I start to take all these questions in. Not even 30 minutes after our engagement happened my dad calls and asks, “Did you pick a date yet?”
“It’s been 30 minutes, what do you think?”
Since that day there have been tons of questions, comments, suggestions, etc. I know everyone is excited (I actually am too!) and I understand that, but I just haven’t seemed to acquire the “wedding bug” or a sense of calm/excitement/whatever about the whole planning process that I guess most people do and because we aren’t having a “traditional wedding” a majority of the time I feel annoyed by these questions and suggestions.
Warning: Rant starts here.
A majority of my aggravation comes from the 3 million things that I HAVE to include in our wedding. I don’t understand why I need to follow all of these rules. Why do I HAVE to have a wedding party? Why do I HAVE to wear a veil? Why do I HAVE to have a first dance when we aren’t even having a reception or a dance party? Why do I HAVE to have a wedding shower? (I have given in completely to this one.I’ve even said ok to some of these wedding shower games as long as no one is getting wrapped in toilet paper.) Whenever I speak out about not wanting any of these things I am met with eye rolling and complaints. “I’m just being stubborn and defiant April.”
I guess my issue is that I don’t understand why I have to do certain things just because they are called tradition. Who’s tradition is it anyway? I’m fairly certain that the entire point of the wedding is to have a ceremony where Brad and I stand in front of our friends and family and exchange wedding vows followed by a celebration of said vows. It’s our wedding ceremony so why shouldn’t the reception look and feel like I envision it? Where are these wedding laws written out where you go to wedding jail if you fail to follow them? Have you ever looked up the reasoning behind half of the traditions out there? Check out this list of 11 Popular Wedding Traditions Explained. It’s seriously ridiculous why people do these “traditional” things.
Anyway, I digress. All of this aggravation has led me to purchase a wedding book. The book is called A Practical Wedding and the reason I decided to buy it was because of a blog post on Etsy, a blog and one simple sentence: “I will not remember what my wedding looked like. I will remember how it felt.” Our wedding is about us, our family and our friends and NOT about what we are “suppose” to do to please the masses. I want to remember it as a wonderful day where everyone had a great time, not months of haggling with vendors, stressing about the cost or planning things we are suppose to do, but care little or nothing about.
The author of A Practical Wedding states: “The wedding industry is based on our fear of regret – if we don’t do XYZ, we’ll regret it, so we better do it just in case. And what I learned during the planning is that you almost never regret following your heart (or gut), but you almost always regret doing something just because to were told that you had to. I learned that a firm, “No,” when something isn’t right for you, spares you endless heartache. And I think the cultural noise around having kids is similar, ‘DO IT OR YOU’LL REGRET IT.’ ”
End rant. :)
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