We Can't All Go to Vegas
If we all ventured to Las Vegas for our weddings, this book would be useless. In fact, perhaps you picked up this book, became thoroughly frightened by its exhortations against the Big White Wedding, and promptly booked your ceremony at the West of Memphis Chapel and Casino.
Or perhaps you were always set on Vegas, and I flip my veil to you. I hope this book serves as a phenomenal paperweight.
But we all can't go to Vegas. Some of us are hellbent on that Big White Wedding, or even a small wedding in our hometown, with our pictures by a quaint gazebo, the one that Thomas Kincaid uses. Some of us thrive on planning, and think organizing the celebration of the most personal event of our lives to be shared with gaggles of people we may or may not know is a real gas.
For the Control Freaks, Compulsive Planners, and Marthas among us, I feel you. I have schemed up all of those white wedding visions, and clutched tightly to that bridal binder, and roused myself from sleep to write those very same I stick 'em notes. I, too, would have been greatly disappointed if I had not had the opportunity to plan My Big Fat Irish-Korean Wedding in my hometown.
Since planning a wedding is, on the rictor scale of insane things to do with your time and money, just shy of calling off work to watch a really good infomercial, you MUST learn to focus! If you do not learn to focus, you will soon be wrapping your fiancee and Fido up in tulle. In fact, maintaining a personal focus is my raison d'etre, my mantra, my advice to you for successful, enjoyable wedding planning. Without focus, you may attempt to micromanage every aspect of your wedding. Without focus, you will become miserable and you will diffuse that misery to everyone around you.
Obtaining and maintaining a proper focus while planning my wedding are two goals I was able to achieve through lots of shock treatment and street drugs.
Yeah, no. It took a great deal of internal processing, heaps of prayer, and a lot of prioritizing. Spending time in prayer for me was essential. Second to that was making a List of Wedding Day Priorities. This is a list of non-negotiables. Consider it like this: On your wedding day, you and your guests are all enjoying yourself, snacking on salmon-encrusted hors d'veours and gushing about how great you look. Then! A wave of amnesia befalls everyone in the reception room. Minutes, maybe even hours are subtracted from your conscious lives! The damage is irreversible. You are left onlywith a few select memories of the day. Thus, if you were able to select what exactly those memories would be, which aspects would you handpick as the must-haves? This is an important question to ask yourself when deciding whether to monogram your cocktail napkins in gold? Or not? Would you rather the memory of Great Aunt Betsy wrapping her dentures up in your fancy shmancy serviettes, or would you rather savor the taste of the carrot cake that was the best thing since spray-on hosiery? Of course your wedding day will be wrought with moments that you could never imagine to be so beautiful and flawless. However, keeping a list of Wedding Day Priorities is vital to wedding planning/wedding day survival and enjoyment!
My List of Priorites was simple:
1.) I wanted an irresistible wedding dress that I would never have the opportunity to wear again, except when laid out in my casket.
2.) I wanted the most delicious, mouth-watering cake ever baked on earth.
3.) I wanted to share the wedding day with both of my grandmothers.
In the end, almost all of my priorities were satisfied. Unfortunately, one of my grandmothers became quite ill the weekend of our wedding and was unable to attend. I was crestfallen. Still, I am sure that Meatloaf would agree that 2.5 out of three ain't bad.
Focusing on your List of Priorities will help you to remember that regardless of what the magazines and websites tell you - sometimes less is more. Wedding Planning Media (WPM) are not inherently evil, but sometimes they promote greed and lust and gluttony, among other vile inclinations. Sometimes just reading those online message boards caused me to question whether weddings were really just competitions, or the ultimate round of "show and tell." You will most likely encounter at least one bride writing in to lament, "I just spent $8,000 on invitations and the polka-dot swan design is alll wrong! I only have 3 more years until the wedding day. What should I do NOW?"
It would be unfair to advise against venturing onto those message boards, or looking at the magazines and how-to-be-a-bride books. They are not all written in the voice of a vapid valley girl. They do offer unique ideas for keeping costs low and adding extra pinache to your ceremony and reception. However, sometimes the message boards reminded me of a bad sorority rush party where all the girls were sizing one another up and deciding whether she? Ugh! She is totally Not Alpha Brida Brida.
Consider yourself forewarned.
Maintaining a personal focus is not only important as you navigate your way through WPM, but also as you interface with your Wedding Planning Cohorts (WPC). Share your list of priorities with your WPC: your fiance, your parents, your nail technician. These are the people that are sincerely jumping around the room at the news of your engagement. Maintaining your personal focus ensures that they will be right there with you, jumping around the room on your wedding day. They may endure a lot during your wedding planning - maltreatment of their wallets and egos - as they support you through the process. They may even utter the term "Bridezilla" under their breath in your presence. Which leads us to a very necessary discussion on a girl you may already know...
Poor Bridezilla
Or perhaps you were always set on Vegas, and I flip my veil to you. I hope this book serves as a phenomenal paperweight.
But we all can't go to Vegas. Some of us are hellbent on that Big White Wedding, or even a small wedding in our hometown, with our pictures by a quaint gazebo, the one that Thomas Kincaid uses. Some of us thrive on planning, and think organizing the celebration of the most personal event of our lives to be shared with gaggles of people we may or may not know is a real gas.
For the Control Freaks, Compulsive Planners, and Marthas among us, I feel you. I have schemed up all of those white wedding visions, and clutched tightly to that bridal binder, and roused myself from sleep to write those very same I stick 'em notes. I, too, would have been greatly disappointed if I had not had the opportunity to plan My Big Fat Irish-Korean Wedding in my hometown.
Since planning a wedding is, on the rictor scale of insane things to do with your time and money, just shy of calling off work to watch a really good infomercial, you MUST learn to focus! If you do not learn to focus, you will soon be wrapping your fiancee and Fido up in tulle. In fact, maintaining a personal focus is my raison d'etre, my mantra, my advice to you for successful, enjoyable wedding planning. Without focus, you may attempt to micromanage every aspect of your wedding. Without focus, you will become miserable and you will diffuse that misery to everyone around you.
Obtaining and maintaining a proper focus while planning my wedding are two goals I was able to achieve through lots of shock treatment and street drugs.
Yeah, no. It took a great deal of internal processing, heaps of prayer, and a lot of prioritizing. Spending time in prayer for me was essential. Second to that was making a List of Wedding Day Priorities. This is a list of non-negotiables. Consider it like this: On your wedding day, you and your guests are all enjoying yourself, snacking on salmon-encrusted hors d'veours and gushing about how great you look. Then! A wave of amnesia befalls everyone in the reception room. Minutes, maybe even hours are subtracted from your conscious lives! The damage is irreversible. You are left onlywith a few select memories of the day. Thus, if you were able to select what exactly those memories would be, which aspects would you handpick as the must-haves? This is an important question to ask yourself when deciding whether to monogram your cocktail napkins in gold? Or not? Would you rather the memory of Great Aunt Betsy wrapping her dentures up in your fancy shmancy serviettes, or would you rather savor the taste of the carrot cake that was the best thing since spray-on hosiery? Of course your wedding day will be wrought with moments that you could never imagine to be so beautiful and flawless. However, keeping a list of Wedding Day Priorities is vital to wedding planning/wedding day survival and enjoyment!
My List of Priorites was simple:
1.) I wanted an irresistible wedding dress that I would never have the opportunity to wear again, except when laid out in my casket.
2.) I wanted the most delicious, mouth-watering cake ever baked on earth.
3.) I wanted to share the wedding day with both of my grandmothers.
In the end, almost all of my priorities were satisfied. Unfortunately, one of my grandmothers became quite ill the weekend of our wedding and was unable to attend. I was crestfallen. Still, I am sure that Meatloaf would agree that 2.5 out of three ain't bad.
Focusing on your List of Priorities will help you to remember that regardless of what the magazines and websites tell you - sometimes less is more. Wedding Planning Media (WPM) are not inherently evil, but sometimes they promote greed and lust and gluttony, among other vile inclinations. Sometimes just reading those online message boards caused me to question whether weddings were really just competitions, or the ultimate round of "show and tell." You will most likely encounter at least one bride writing in to lament, "I just spent $8,000 on invitations and the polka-dot swan design is alll wrong! I only have 3 more years until the wedding day. What should I do NOW?"
It would be unfair to advise against venturing onto those message boards, or looking at the magazines and how-to-be-a-bride books. They are not all written in the voice of a vapid valley girl. They do offer unique ideas for keeping costs low and adding extra pinache to your ceremony and reception. However, sometimes the message boards reminded me of a bad sorority rush party where all the girls were sizing one another up and deciding whether she? Ugh! She is totally Not Alpha Brida Brida.
Consider yourself forewarned.
Maintaining a personal focus is not only important as you navigate your way through WPM, but also as you interface with your Wedding Planning Cohorts (WPC). Share your list of priorities with your WPC: your fiance, your parents, your nail technician. These are the people that are sincerely jumping around the room at the news of your engagement. Maintaining your personal focus ensures that they will be right there with you, jumping around the room on your wedding day. They may endure a lot during your wedding planning - maltreatment of their wallets and egos - as they support you through the process. They may even utter the term "Bridezilla" under their breath in your presence. Which leads us to a very necessary discussion on a girl you may already know...
Poor Bridezilla
posted by The Grammarian @ 10:19 PM
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