Wedding Plan blues
Listen to this articleI am still having a terrible time communicating with my wedding venue. Now they can’t meet with me until July 13th to discuss wedding issues. I guess I should have pre-arranged all of my wedding appointments, silly me! Then our Jeep broke down — a $2,000 repair and there goes the fancy honeymoon we had planned. THEN my fiance was driving my little Honda and gets rear ended by a tractor trailer and for reasons that are boring and would take way too long for me to explain, the insurance wouldn’t pay for the damages.
It was at this point I really had a moment where I thought, “Why don’t we just cancel this ridiculous affair, take the money and run?”
Just because you get married in city hall doesn’t make it any less special. And you can save over $10,000 of hard-earned money, not to mention your dignity and sanity. Bonus: You won’t have to listen to the opinions of family and friends over everything from your napkin colors to why they can’t bring a date. (Seriously, on a side note, why do weddings make everyone in your life seem insane, including yourself? It’s an evil, evil tradition.)
I even thought about what we would do if we did cancel. We could let everyone know the wedding planning just got too stressful. We could call the venue, photographer, DJ and caterer, cancel our orders and recoup some of our money. I already bought my dress but who says I can’t wear a beautiful lace-covered mermaid gown to city hall? I can wear what I damn well please! (That’s another thing weddings make you: self-indignant, arrogant and defiant.)
We would get married at city hall, then have dinner at a nice restaurant with just immediate family. We could still go on our honeymoon in Rehoboth Beach because it would just be like taking a regular summer vacation. And when we come back, our bank account will be fat and we won’t have to worry about paying for car repairs or any other weird emergencies that pop up seemingly every day of our lives.
I put a good 30 minutes into daydreaming about canceling the wedding. Then I thought about how much I want our family and friends to be a part of this epically significant day in our lives. I thought about how my brother will be officiating our vows, how my sisters will be standing next to me under the pergola, how my parents will be walking me down the aisle so I can marry my best friend. I thought about how happy my 90-year-old grandmother was when I asked her to be my flower girl, and how excited she was to find a flattering outfit that she feels beautiful in. I remembered how much effort my sisters and best friends are putting into making sure our wedding goes smoothly and that everything goes the way I want it to.
Most of all I thought about walking to the person I love more than anything in the world, looking him in the eyes, vowing to love each other through good and bad (like stress and anxiety about certain events in life) and finally making our lives come together until death do us part, with all of the people we love the most looking on and wishing us a life of happiness. And that’s what really brought me back to reality — knowing how much love will be filling that space at that time. How could I say no?
Emily Campbell is a perpetually single, 20-something girl-around-town who loves Shakespeare, old movies, Natty Boh, and of course, long walks on the beach. A sales manager by day and freelance writer by night, she was recently forced into a life of involuntary celibacy when her last relationship fizzled out over a text message. She’s tired of settling for second – or tenth – best, and she’s ready to find Mr. Right. Or, Mr. Nearly Right. No one’s perfect…which she has learned the hard (but hilarious) way.