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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Budget, Part 1-- My Head Tries to Talk Some Sense into Our Wedding

A few months into planning our wedding, I had a major crisis.  Call it a crisis of conscience, call it an anxiety attack--call it what you will.  My panic caused to me reexamine what was essential to our wedding.  So join me as I look back on my wedding "epiphany," and how I nearly cracked to get there...




I came across this gorgeous wedding by Maggie Harkov via Brooklyn Bride and my jaw dropped.  This wedding is all at once sophisticated, sweet, simple, and elegant.  It's everything I want our wedding to be.  But there's one huge difference staring me in the face--






All images via Brooklyn Bride / Photos by Maggie Harkov

we're not eloping and nothing about our wedding is simple.


This beautiful City Hall wedding tugs at my heartstrings.  I need the simplicity of it.  I want it.  There is something that keeps pulling me back to a teeny tiny wedding at city hall.  These gorgeous images certainly have something to do with it.  But there is so much more.  


The wedding we're having is all wrong.  It's keeping me up at night.  


...here goes: 

I don't feel like I am at a place in my life where I should be spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on anything.  Not even the celebration of our marriage.  When I think about the amount of money we are planning to spend, my head starts to spin a little and I become overwhelmed with guilt.  I've worked really hard to get myself on track financially over the past few years, and it's hard to reconcile the cost of this wedding with anything that remotely resembles fiscal responsibility.

Yes, there is so much more to a wedding than money.  When will we ever get to be the center of attention again?  When will I ever get to be a bride?  When will we ever have our nearest and dearest in one room again?  The thing is, I don't feel like I want that attention.  I don't feel like a bride.  I'm not good at taking compliments or letting anyone take care of me.  And, this may sound like sour grapes (it's not), but I can't help but wonder if our wedding would matter as much to our guests.  It sounds silly, it really does. Because when I look back at all the weddings we've attended, and I remember how how happy we were to share those special days with the couple.  But for some reason I can't see it for us.  

And I can't for the life of me come to any conclusions of what I want our day to be like outside of the words "elegant, simple, and joyful."  Wouldn't we be just as joyful in a courthouse?  In the end, wouldn't we be just as married?


Is it fair for me to plan this huge wedding without input from my husband to be?  Is it fair for me to plan a big celebration when in all likelihood, most of his nearest and dearest will not be in attendance?  Is it fair to ask our vendors to change our date, repeatedly?  Would they even do that for us?  Are we setting ourselves up for losing a ton of money by planning a wedding without a schedule that's set in stone?

I don't know.  But this has been gnawing at me since day one.  Let me apologize if anything I said above has offended anyone--I don't want to go back and edit myself outside of spelling, since it was really just a train of thought that I had to put out there. So let me just say, that if I offended you, I'm sorry.  But I'm still working through this.  And obviously, this would be something to talk to the Mr. M about when I hear from him again (though I feel terrible for even bringing this up, and I wonder if I'll have the guts to say anything).  

Enough.  My thoughts are racing.  Need to take a time out. 




Present day Miss Marmalade here!  Looking back on this post was tough, I wrote that post in a pretty frenzied state. But I'm really happy I thought things through before they got out of control.  


Has anyone ever had to take a moment to pause your plans and really come to terms with what you want and need from your wedding?

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting this. I agree 100%. We ARE having the huge-honkin' wedding and more than resentment... I'm starting to hate it! All I keep telling my FI is "I just want to be married to you" or "I don't know why we need all this *stuff* to get married?"

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  2. @ Dancy-- Thanks! It's a daily back and forth struggle with myself. Wait for part two.

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