Sunday, November 14, 2010

It's Been A Year?

Really? Holy cow does time fly! Ah well, lots of changes have been going on with me, so this will be the first in a series of posts (hopefully) talking about them.


Reflections on Planning a Wedding:


Planning a wedding is a pain in the ass. First of all, everything is expensive.  Like, really expensive.  Every time we went to buy something, I had to adjust what my opinion of "reasonable" was.  It's like that old joke where a $1 pencil costs $5 at Disneyland; flowers only cost so much, but we'll triple that price if the word "wedding" is used!  Awesome!  It's like the worst type of Monopoly every because no matter what you do, it's always uber-expensive.  There's a Catch-22 of getting married during a recession as well.  On the upside, money is tight for businesses so they offer good deals: for example, the location of our wedding, Etiwanda Gardens, normally charged a 20% service fee for weddings.  For us, it was dropped to 10%.  Nice.  On the flip-side, since it was  a recession and my work had reduced my hours, the price cuts weren't as useful as we were still flat-ass broke anyway.  It's still something to keep in mind though.

Second of all is trying to do it all yourself.  Now, everyone (including me!) will offer to help you do whatever you need, but with very few exceptions, no one will.  And part of that is out of necessity.  When you decide to make all your centerpieces one random Friday night, there aren't always too many people who actually can help.  But just as often, you would ask for help and no one would be able to.  And I understand that.  Everyone has busy lives and other schedules they have to meet, but just be prepared for it.  The exception of course should be your Best Man.  My Best Man was like an extension of my being - about as close to a clone as you could get.  He handled shit.  Especially as the wedding neared, if something needed doing, he was there to do it.  Honestly, I'm not sure I could've survived it without him.  And our wedding went smoothly!  So choose wedding party members wisely, my friends.

The last is everyone's family.  Families are families so they add stress without really meaning to.  Daughters are being married away, sons are getting married, in-laws are being introduced, often family members who haven't seen each other in years are meeting.  It's stressful.  You're going to upset someone - probably lots of them.  Just keep in mind that it's your wedding and if they don't like it they can get married themselves.  Do your best not to piss anyone off too much, but don't sacrifice the wedding  you want just to appease someone.

Overall, planning a wedding only reinforced my belief that weddings should last a lifetime.  I mean, who would want to go through that all over again?  Not me, that's for sure.  Planning a wedding takes about 81,000 little details and despite all the online help and everything available, it's still a huge pain in the ass.  My closing suggestions to anyone planning a wedding: Plan early, plan often, and when you procrastinate be ready to triage.

I'll talk about my actual wedding next time.

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