Anyone who has ever planned a wedding knows that it can be a little…stressful. When it came to planning our wedding, Richard and I ran into many hurdles. Vastly disproportionate family sizes, asking almost every single guest to travel, not wanting to spend an exorbitant amount of money, complete aversion to most wedding ‘traditions’ and about a hundred other things; this lead to some hilariously out-of-the-box wedding ideas. (All of which I probably would have really done.)
Nine months into our engagement, we still had no idea what we were doing. For a couple of months my brain imploded and I didn’t even think about the wedding. I started to feel disgusted with the whole process. I was not even excited about having a wedding. I just wanted to get married to my puzzle piece.
It was time to tackle the controversial question of what a wedding is ‘supposed’ to look like. Actually, we didn’t tackle it so much as we scratched and clawed at it. Then we started talking about what a wedding looked like to us. After much searching, we managed to find the common thread in our thought. That is when I decided that I really did want to elope. This was shocking even to me. I love parties and I love my family more than anyone can understand. But when I saw it in my mind, it felt right. And Richard wanted to elope too! And then it happened…I finally got excited about planning our wedding! We were not going to have a big, impersonal, showoff of a wedding and we wouldn’t be any less married.
A wedding is a personal thing; to each his own. Cover everything in flowers and serve lobster to 300 people if that is what you want. Or hang out in a barn and drink beer while a country band plays. But for us, a wedding is very intimate. And I can’t think of anything more personal than tying your heart to someone else. Except maybe giving birth and is that something you want a bunch of people witnessing either? That was the real problem I was having. I felt like it was about everyone except us. We were beating ourselves up trying to accommodate everyone and everything.
And so the decision was made. We are going to have a beautiful day together doing the things we love to do. We will get to eat the food we want. We won’t have to worry about where anyone is sitting. We won’t have to do the damned electric slide. We won’t have to stand in unnatural formations with our loved ones for photos. We will spend the day worshiping each other and fully understanding how lucky we are.
We hope you will think of us and send love.
From our hearts,
Jennifer and Richard
I'm super stoked for you and look forward to hearing all about it - or anything you want to share about it. :) You don't have to make all more traditional weddings sound so bad though, haha. XD I felt the same way in many respects, but sometimes there can be lots of other factors that come into play. I am thrilled you two have found a great fit for yourselves, though, and wish you all the best!
ReplyDeleteI did not mean to make traditional weddings sound bad. I love weddings actually! But when it came time for me to do it myself, there were so many factors that just made it too much. Trust me, if all of our family members lived in one place, we would definitely be having a more traditional wedding.
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