No Such Thing as a Low Maintenance Wedding --Is This the End of the Blog?

Like a speeding boat that reached a no-wake zone, the wedding plans are now floating placidly in the watershed that is my life. I'm hoping they'll have a peaceful docking as The Mister and I try to book a caterer and rehearsal dinner site this weekend (of course, as my MOH told me, everything involving 'wedding' is at least twice as hard as it normally would be).

I can see that...wedding planning comes with an exponential Murphy's Law clause (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong...repeatedly).

As the wedding plans prepare to take a temporary break from my brain, house and moving plans are accelerating, and I'm being dragged along behind them --excuse me, my life vest is filled with rocks. Property of Virginia Woolf. Oh. Crap.

In all seriousness, I'm excited about moving. My living room is filled with boxes, my books have all been lovingly packed, organized by how much I love them and their function in my life. Women and literature first!

So, there's a lot going on. How am I coping?

One - I stopped lying to myself. There's no such thing as a "low maintenance" wedding unless you elope, do a destination wedding, or have no family or friends whatsoever (which would really suck)

Two - I've taken to making lots and lots of meaningless lists. (Making lists is so comforting.) I've made a list of things we'll need for the housewarming party, a list of things to get before I go to Virginia for my best friend's wedding next week, a list of things to pack for her wedding (MOH dress...check.), and I just thought of another list...possible color combinations for the kitchen/living/dining rooms. Interestingly, I have yet to make a list of "items to register for."

Three - I started painting while listening to books on tape. I'm pretty sure this behavior is just a hope, skip, and a can opener away from being a crazy cat lady, but when I look around my apartment, and I see my books are gone, boxes everywhere, and I think, boy, I really need to finish that list of wedding guests, I feel helpless, so I go to my happy spot and paint while listening to how Harry Potter and the gang solve another mystery.


It's interesting that I've just admitted there's no such thing as a "low maintenance" wedding. Should the blog continue? Have I gone from having fairly decent advice on keeping things cheap and easy to just making vague references to pulling my hair out while my internal organs quietly shut down? Well, duh.

Let's review...

-Two months ago, The Mister and I got engaged.
-A day later, we picked (and ultimately settled on) March 26, 2011 for the big day.
-We picked our attendants and other wedding party members.
-I started the guest list (which ends up being a ladies job...ladies...oh, just, um...well, good luck.)
-Under the impression we'd be paying for the wedding ourselves, we set our budget to $5,000 and made plans to cater our own wedding.

So, just over two months later, where are we now?

-The Mister's family is hosting the rehearsal dinner (yay!) and my family is catering the reception.
-The cake and photography were almost twice as much as we originally budgeted for (balk)
-The guest list is ~1/3 larger than we anticipated


...Hm...I guess that's all...the stressors are mostly financial. But, to help those of you who might be planning a wedding and have the desire to rip your hair out, here's my two cents.

***FREE ADVICE***

1-Choose your battles. If it's not the most important thing in the world, let it go. (PS: Your life will be easier the less the most important things in the world are) Keep perspective...it's one day out of your entire life. Do you want to start the rest of your life with someone who thinks you're a mega be-yotch because you just had to have an outdoor wedding with your 12 "closest" friends in it?

(In our case, the Mister actually was the one who wanted more people than I did in it --not that I don't love my friends, but I know weddings are pricey for friends and family of the happy couple, but it was more important to The Mister TO have people in it than it was for me NOT to, so I just said, "Let me know how many people you want in it.")

2-Splurge on the important things and skimp a little on the rest. No, really, brides-to-be, not everything is critically important. Mine were easy to pick --dress, photography, and cake. For The Mister, location and cake were important. So, we made sure the ceremony was where it needed to be for The Mister, and we got a pretty nice photography package ($1295 for 10 8x10 prints, ~60 4x6 prints, and an engagement session) that's still really well-priced, and the cake...it's going to be soooo good! I got a beautiful dress for less than $300, so a little bargain shopping goes a long way.

For the rest of the stuff...the decorations and invitations, which I want to be nice but don't want to break the bank on, I plan to go DIY. The paintings that I've been doing (on 4x6 plywood sheets) while listening to Harry Potter are all going to serve as background color for the reception. A few wildflowers in mason jars and fresh lemon slices suspended in water with white Crape Myrtle blooms dispersed throughout is, to me, a perfectly attractive, natural, and economical solution to decorating.

PS: Even if you have no discernible talented for painting, a nice fabric stretched over a canvas and stapled down makes for really cool background.


All right...I don't want to give it all away up front. That's just to validate the continuation of this blog. Happy stepping! (to tie in the title)