Since I’ve been on a gay marriage kick this week, Ben thought it would be a good idea to write about our wedding planning. I was a little hesitant because I normally like to talk about things that I have some sort of expertise in and can pass on knowledge to others. Wedding planning is not one of them. Then I was reminded that that you can learn a lot from other people’s experiences. So here we go.
I wrote a post right after we got engaged about financial considerations when getting married. While I think the fundamental premise behind my post was solid, I was a little naïve in thinking I could somehow logic my way through the planning process. After all, it’s still robot Brian and emotional Ben that we’re dealing with.
Even in the short time that we’ve been engaged and even shorter time planning, I’ve asked myself a few questions that have surprised me.
1) Who knew it was going to be this involved?
Everyone except me apparently. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “how is the wedding planning going?” At first I thought maybe it was just a way to create conversation. Then I realized people were asking because we should have been wedding planning a month and a half ago (the day after we got engaged).
We’ve had several conversations about abstract ideas of our wedding, but we only really got down to the nitty gritty this week. We started with the guest list because we were told that dictates everything else as far as venue, type of wedding, etc. Just starting the list lead to so many other things: how many people can we pay for? How many people who we invite will actually come? Is food really $100 per person?
And just creating separate lists and bringing them together lead us to question #2.
2) You mean we don’t have the same vision of what this wedding is going to be?
I probably should have seen this conflict coming. Ben and I have been together for 12 years, and I’ve learned a lot of things about how we interact. And if I know one thing for sure, we can sometimes see the same issue very differently.
I knew before Ben wanted simple. But with a guest list of over 200 people I figured that just meant a party and not really an involved ceremony. Turns out he was meaning simple, as in 40 people. And the initial shock of the guest list has freaked Ben out.
Luckily, we can agree on the fact that we want something that is low key, fun, and celebratory. So hopefully we can use that as a starting point for a joint vision. But getting stressed out only a week into it, makes it seem like wedding planning won’t be fun at all.
3) Is it worth it?
I found myself asking a couple of coworkers who had recently gotten married whether they thought it was worth it. The amount of planning, the tension and stress, and just the sheer cost. Can one day really be worth all of that? They both said it was. And they think we would regret just absconding by ourselves and not celebrating with others. So that’s what I’m focusing on. Knowing that stressful and frustrating times will come, but in the end we get to create whatever we desire. And we will love it. Hopefully. In the meantime, we will just keep plugging away with the planning.