Well, I find it hard to believe that you all want to know more about my wedding plans, but everyone keeps asking me, so I’ll continue with the stories and advice.
You know, I’ve always heard horror stories of people fighting about weddings, and I always thought that it was really quite immature.
I thought, “What could be so bad about planning a wedding?”. well, now I know! My mother and I had our first big fight the other day.
It may seem ridiculous to you now, as it would have to me, but you ladies beware: this will happen to you. When John and I went to our first engagement seminar, there were couples there just trying to escape the horrors of wedding plans.
I remember one distraught girl in particular.
We asked incredulously, “What is there to fight about?”
She looked at us with wide eyes and said, “You won’t believe it. You guys will get in fist-fights with family members over whether the flowers should be silk or live.”
I remember thinking that was crazy and we would never allow ourselves to get in so deep, but now I can see exactly what she meant.
There are so many things to worry about, and don’t even try to take the attitude that it doesn’t matter to you and you’ll just go with the flow. If you do that, unwittingly, you become an ungrateful brat for not expressing your deepest gratitude for all of the sacrifices being made for you.
The most recent knock-down, drag-out was over our rehearsal dinner. My mother thinks that the rehearsal dinner is supposed to be a fabulous event at a fancy restaurant as a token of appreciation to the wedding participants.
I agree that it shouldn’t be McDonald’s carryout, but I don’t think that it is necessary to spend $600. If the rehearsal dinner included only the wedding party and a few close friends, maybe we could handle it, but we are at about 40 people and still counting. John and I would have to forfeit our honeymoon to provide a feast for that many people.
I think we have finally settled on a nice little restaurant in between the two extremes, which is still going to set us back several hundred dollars, but I swear I see resentment oozing from my mother whenever I mention it.
Yet another thing: be careful whose help you seek in decorating and planning.
I have noticed that it is much easier to spend other people’s money. No, I do not want to be out $1,500 for flowers. They are only going to die and then what will we have left – a bank loan for flowers?
Here’s one more little tidbit: we just found out that the pastor who is coming from my old church in Pennsylvania to marry us must be licensed in Tennessee to perform legal marriages.
Obviously, he’s not. So, we either have to go through the process of getting him licensed, or we have to have another pastor to pronounce us and sign the papers. The second option seems more practical, but I think it’s such a shame. I would hate to follow something through so far and then have to pass it on to someone else for the finish.
It just seems as though he’s doing all of the work, and someone else gets the credit.

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