You and I, we're not tied to the ground
I know I promised not to turn this into a wedding blog, but... this is the only active (well, relatively speaking) blogger-type outlet I still maintain, so you're all essentially my captive audience on this one.
It helps, actually, that most of you don't know me in real-life, too. ;)
This whole wedding planning process has been oddly revealing.
I think I started out planning the wedding I would have had 10-12 years ago - eclectic, haphazard, kind of unfocused, probably stressful to execute due to lack of planning, not perfect but fun. Basically, I thought all we needed was a field, a keg, some mason jars and a few handfuls of wildflowers and we'd be all set.
I am so not that person anymore.
My wedding coordinator tried to warn me. She told me, gently, "Honey, you think you're still that easygoing girl with simple tastes and pragmatic Midwestern roots, but you're not -- and the person you are now is not going to be happy with that type of party."
I didn't listen to her, and I wasted some time and some money before I realized she was right.
Intellectually, I think I already knew it, but it's hard to let go of a comfortable vision of yourself -- even one that's outdated or inaccurate. I think I'd tricked myself into believing that the version of me that's ordered, competitive, a little bit (okay- maybe a lot) of a perfectionist is the 'work me,' born out of necessity, and that my 'real' self is still that laid-back, slightly sloppy 20-year-old with a penchant for flip-flops and denim cut-offs. She would have loved a quirky, barn dance hootenanny of a wedding.
All this fuss over what essentially amounts to a big party seems a little silly when you're on the outside of it. But now that I've been through the experience, I get why this is often such a stressful and strange rite of passage. On the face of it, yes, it's a party. It's a party with significance, though, with implications, with a way of bringing up stuff about ourselves and our families and the trajectories of our lives that maybe we (or at least, I) didn't expect.
It helps, actually, that most of you don't know me in real-life, too. ;)
This whole wedding planning process has been oddly revealing.
I think I started out planning the wedding I would have had 10-12 years ago - eclectic, haphazard, kind of unfocused, probably stressful to execute due to lack of planning, not perfect but fun. Basically, I thought all we needed was a field, a keg, some mason jars and a few handfuls of wildflowers and we'd be all set.
I am so not that person anymore.
My wedding coordinator tried to warn me. She told me, gently, "Honey, you think you're still that easygoing girl with simple tastes and pragmatic Midwestern roots, but you're not -- and the person you are now is not going to be happy with that type of party."
I didn't listen to her, and I wasted some time and some money before I realized she was right.
Intellectually, I think I already knew it, but it's hard to let go of a comfortable vision of yourself -- even one that's outdated or inaccurate. I think I'd tricked myself into believing that the version of me that's ordered, competitive, a little bit (okay- maybe a lot) of a perfectionist is the 'work me,' born out of necessity, and that my 'real' self is still that laid-back, slightly sloppy 20-year-old with a penchant for flip-flops and denim cut-offs. She would have loved a quirky, barn dance hootenanny of a wedding.
All this fuss over what essentially amounts to a big party seems a little silly when you're on the outside of it. But now that I've been through the experience, I get why this is often such a stressful and strange rite of passage. On the face of it, yes, it's a party. It's a party with significance, though, with implications, with a way of bringing up stuff about ourselves and our families and the trajectories of our lives that maybe we (or at least, I) didn't expect.