Wedding planning challenges me as a female in ways I’m not ready to deal with or care about. It brings my inadequacies in the fields of cooking, domesticity, and liking the colors purple and pink further to light. People who know me mild to moderately well assume that because of my semi-neurotic personality, I will have this wedding planned down to the minute with the metallic text on the cocktail napkins meant to highlight the groomsmen’s cufflinks and bridesmaid’s glittery eye shadow. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
We got engaged in early September and with mild enthusiasm I picked up a few wedding magazines to start figuring out colors and other big picture ideas. Almost immediately I had people asking me what my colors were as if I should have owned the bridal magazines before getting engaged (because that makes any man want to drop to a knee and hand you a diamond). For weeks I tried to dodge the color question. Finally, some girls got fed up and asked me if I hadn’t been thinking about this day since I was little? Playing wedding with my barbies? Or dress up with white towel for a veil? No, the simple fact is my mom always preferred pink or blue towels to better match the bathroom. I never stood a chance.
So with about exactly six months to go, I have a lot of big wins to share (not that I can ever remember them when people ask how wedding planning is going): a ceremony and reception site (menu, décor TBD), a DJ, a dress, a wedding party et flower girl, a photographer with completed engagement pictures, the start of a wedding website, and yes, colors. I picked the wedding location sight unseen and the DJ is the first one who was recommended to us. I’m well aware of what I don’t have done thanks to daily emails from the Knot- a website for brides-to-be who want to check last six-year trend of the weather for their wedding date and location. I’m serious.
In a brave moment, I opened a Knot magazine. In the front of the magazine is a section for questions on wedding etiquette that elicits reader questions such as this burning question, “My wedding is in 87 days and no one has offered to throw me a bridal shower yet. What do I do?” Now if I were the editor in chief, I’m sure I would have told her what she could go do or why people didn’t feel interested in throwing her a bridal shower, but instead, I just closed the magazine disheartened. Sure, there’s the book Wedding Etiquette for Dummies (which I own) but there are no solid resources for girls that don’t particularly care about the minutia of their wedding and don’t have the money to pay for a wedding planner. Girls who care more about having their friends and family being all in one place at one time than the personalized postage stamps for the invites. Girls who are too busy with work, charity, or grad school to travel a circuit of parties to listen to different DJ’s play the same list of songs in different orders. Girls who can’t care.
This month, the Knot says I should pick out my accessories, select my florist, and order invitations. This month I’ll be lucky to get out Save the Dates or register for something more important than razor refills and beach towels. What I will get done this month? Celebrating the holidays with some of the loved ones who have offered to throw me bridal showers 1xx (?) days out, sparing me the trouble of creating a bridal pseudonym for a national magazine’s question section so that I could be covertly uncouth. Phew.
