Wednesday 13 March 2013

Wedding Planning and Me: the Unlikely Duo

It's been a year now since we got engaged. Amazing to think of that startlingly sunny day, the daffodils out and the sun warm on our skin during a picnic lunch, when it is still so bitingly cold outside this year. Every time I think back to that weekend I get a pang in my stomach of enduring joy and also sadness that it's over; back then I was naïve to the inevitable trials and stresses of planning a wedding, and the tears and questions that it would bring!


I've been purposely quiet about our wedding plans over the past six months. After being a guest at the most wonderful wedding of one of my closest friends in November I realise how powerful a wedding day can be when the details are kept secret between the bride and groom. I want to keep it all to myself until September, but at the same time I'm bursting with impatience, wanting to tell everyone about the tiniest details that I have planned, should they go unnoticed in the bigger picture of our wedding day.

The amazing thing about a wedding (and I want to point out how separate the ideas of 'wedding' and 'marriage' are to me here: in no way am I ignorant to the fact that a wedding is, in its entirety, about marriage) is that it's about making an internal vision come to life. I know some people have their weddings planned from 'being a little girl' (Yuck. Since when was the wedding just a female institution?), but for me this wasn't the case: Daniel and I each took some time to think about our ideal wedding, then put the ideas together to make a picture of what we wanted. Over time this picture has developed and changed quite dramatically, and what we have now resembles only very basically what we originally came up with. A lot of the process has been about compromise; I wanted a very small wedding with only our nearest and dearest, but we are now planning for around 80 guests thanks to the sheer number of wonderful people in our lives!

And those wonderful people have been the best part of the process so far. I finished off the first of our wedding invitations yesterday, and there it was in front of me: exactly what I had imagined our invites would be like so many months ago. Thanks to artist friends and seamstress friends and gardening friends and countless other friends, we're getting something that resembles exactly what we want. How often does that happen?

 
I'm also enjoying the thought processes behind everything; the parts that people really won't see, but that I can enjoy knowing that we've done everything we can to make the day represent the values that we share. I could talk about the wedding food here (which has been considered (and tasted) in the most careful detail), but I want to keep that quiet until the day, when I'm hoping that even I will have forgotten how glorious it will be. From sourcing paper for the invites to re-using materials for stationary, from determining what we'll eat and drink on the day to creating the perfect wedding dress and flowers: everything is thought out, the result of careful discussion and decision, research and creativity. I'm not planning to have the 'perfect' wedding (the notion of perfect simply doesn't exist in the lexicon of my life), which takes the pressure off and makes the whole thing so much more fun. Instead we're creating a jamboree of all the things we love and care about, from our favourite tastes and scents to the things that make us laugh or inspire us. It won't be the most delicate and beautiful wedding in history, but I'm hoping it will be a lot of fun, and a wonderful metaphor for the years we've already shared together and the lifetime as a couple that we are committing to.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think you could ask for anything more from your wedding day.
    If there is anyone who will take the time to make considered decisions about what they know and feel to be important I know that'll be you, just from the short time I have 'known' you in blogland.
    Lisa x

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