At the suggestion of a friend of an old work friend (funny how the 'net connects us in weird and interesting ways, no?) I checked out the blogs http://www.apracticalwedding.com/ and http://2000dollarwedding.com/. I am amazed at how much better, more hopeful, and less stressed about wedding stuff I feel after reading about how other like-minded people have dealt with the social mores surrounding weddings. I was really feeling trapped by them, like I had no recourse but to follow the traditions because I had never entertained the idea of carefully keeping the ones I liked and throwing the ones I don't like out the window. I feel so much more grounded about the process right now. I may even steal the 2000dollarwedding idea for the dress - an DYI embelleshed target sundress! I was so focused on doing a stripped down version of the traditional that I never entertained doing what I usually do. Do I usually shop at JCrew for dresses? No! I go to Target or Kohls! But I looked at JCrew and thought, oh, only $600 for a dress? That seems like the least I can do for a "real" wedding dress... (Not that I will cancel my order now...but when it comes, if it isn't comfy and if it doesn't fit, it is going right back - not to the tailor's as I originally had in mind)
I think having a fight with my dad has helped in this matter too. He was going to contribute $4000, but he has been really overbearing since he said that so I told him to keep his money and if he was going to be so unreasonable, then stay at home that day, too. Of course I don't want my dad to not be there, but he needed to have a shock to his system. And I needed it to - now that I don't have that money as a financial crutch, I've been scrutinizing many more of the things I thought I just *had* to have. For example, I hate cut flowers. I think they are a waste of money. They are dead plants; I would much rather have alive ones to enjoy for a whole season. I was going to get them anyway, because people just didn't seem to be able to handle a wedding without flowers. But you know what? Screw flowers (in the traditional sense, anyway). I heard an idea for just getting a supermarket bouquet and doing your own with ribbon. I recently found a lot of wide cobalt blue ribbon in the $1 bin of Michaels, and I can do that just fine. For someone that doesn't give a crap about flowers, it seems like the perfect solution.
This is a work in progress for sure, but I think that with my new appreciation for just doing it our way and not feeling pressured into squeezing our values into social norm molds we will have an easier time from here out.
Thank you Adrienne!
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This is so wonderful to read! I'm glad you are feeling so much better. Another book that I read very early in my planning was The Offbeat Bride, which basically drove home the idea that we can do whatever we want, however we want, and it's still going to be awesome. We are inviting people who love us and will have fun no matter what we do. I really recommend it for further jolts of confidence to be untraditional, so you can avoid letting the threat of disappointing someone else direct your planning. The woman who wrote it has a website, too, offbeatbride.com, and a forum that is full of women who are planning things their own way, offbeatbride.ning.com.
ReplyDeleteI agree on the flowers. Waste of money! Our venue comes with a rose on each table as their standard setup, and that's more than nice enough for me. I think that taking money from parents is a slippery slope, because then they want to have a say in how things go. We prefer having something much more scaled back within what we can afford, so we can do everything our way without apologizing. Even with this, though, it's surprising how much pressure there still is from parents. "Blue shoes?! Oh no!" "How about you invite just these four more relatives, and we'll pay for the difference?" The best part is that through it all, Christian and I are making the decisions and working together as a team, and it will all work out!
It is a slippery slope. Tom's parents want to pay for the alcohol, but I am really afraid they are doing it so that they can buy only enough for a glass of wine per person like at his sister's wedding that they funded. Not that I'm an alcoholic, but that was just lamesauce. They also offered to hire their friend's jazz band because they hate our taste in music and want to impose theirs on us. We are still mulling over whether that would save us enough to take them up or not - but we are leaning towards not. Now more than ever, I realize that money is power!
ReplyDeleteLuckily our caterer will provide a ton of free votives for table decorations, so as long as I come up with a cute-and-cheap way to demarcate the table numbers, we are set!
Blue shoes...now that's an idea! I was thinking of flip flops, because I hate wearing shoes at all and thats the closest to barefoot I can get.
When I went home and exploded new philosophy on Tom, he seemed much more willing to deal with wedding decisions. I think I was scaring him away this whole time! Good thing I realized this 2 months in...