I have a teeny tiny bridal confession to make. Sometimes, I hated wedding planning.
I loved reading bridal magazines … before I became engaged. I read Offbeat Bride every day …. before I became engaged. I was obsessed with Four Weddings and Say Yes to the Dress … before I became engaged. I loved absorbing everything about weddings until it was finally time to plan my own. And then the constant barrage of options became too much for me. And the wedding mags (for which I purchased subscriptions) started piling up, my Google Reader grew cobwebs, and my TiVo ran out of space. I honestly thought there was something wrong with me, as a bride. I had been dreaming about weddings my whole life, and once I got deep into planning, the thought of gawking at wedding p0rn gave me nausea. Brides, does this sound familiar to anyone else?
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| Big stack of rediculousness |
I was inspired to write this post after reading the brilliant Gala Darling‘s recent post entitled “Happiness is Simple: Why Too Many Choices Makes Us Miserable & Five Ways to Improve Your Life.” Too many choices. With the popularity of the internet, modern brides are absolutely inundated with options, things we might not have even thought about. Do I want my side ponytail on the right or the left? Should the invitations be simple or a tri-fold pocket? How many items is the correct amount of items for a Welcome Bag? These are all stupid things I didn’t know I was supposed to think about until the internet told me I had to. If you go to TheKnot.com and pull up “Pink Wedding Flowers,” you are given 547 pictures to chose from. Are you kidding me? No wonder modern brides are pulling their hair out.
When I first started wedding planning, I had a vague vision of how I wanted our event to look and feel. I started trolling the wedding blogs and “pinning” things I thought fit my vision. But then, oooh, look at what this other couple did, that’s pretty, too! Oh, sparkly table cloths, I never even knew that was a thing. No, I don’t like mason jars …. OR DO I????? The life of a bride is DIFFICULT, y’all. About one year before our big day I told myself “ENOUGH!” I had to force myself to step away from the magazines, the blogs, and the TV shows and start making some darn decisions. I had to tear myself away from looking at other peoples’ weddings so I could start planning our own. Once I did this, the planning and the decisions started to flow a bit easier.
There were still bumps in the road. Anyone who was unfortunate enough to discuss wedding planning with me heard this more than once, “I wish we could afford to pay someone to plan this wedding for us.” Most of my bridezilla meltdowns (I only had a small few!) came about because I was exhausted from making decisions. I sighed out of envy when Pandora on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was presented with a few options for wedding invitation samples that her planner brought to her, and she looked them over and said “I like this one.” Oh, for it to be so easy for us common folk! Planning such a large event – impressing your new husband’s family, impressing your own family, impressing your friends – it all takes a major toll on the bride. I admit there were several times I was jealous of my maternal grandparents’ wedding in the 1940s. She got a new dress from the department store, they went to a little chapel with their one witness, took ONE picture, had some cake, and boom – that was it. A much simpler time of which I am very jealous.
I just started reading The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss (Amazon Affiliate link). I have only read a bit so far but last night I read a chapter about setting goals and timelines and getting things done. The author makes it seem so simple – write down what you want, when you want it, figure out how much it will cost, and then do it. He even suggests highlighting your top three goals and working on those first. I scoffed at this notion, because some things honestly just aren’t that simple. But wedding planning is. And I realized that is exactly what I did at some point during our planning:
If you’re an engaged couple struggling to make decisions, I highly recommend you follow these five steps to wedding planning bliss. It works, I promise.
