Greg Burks Photography
A piece of advice to all future brides: don’t let the wedding voice take control.
I’m a grad student, a blogger, and I work for a start-up. If Gmail and Google Drive aren’t jockeying for my computer real estate, then Blackboard and WordPress are. It’s all enough to make a person dizzyingly unfocused. Add the wedding voice to that equation – a subconscious bit of evil that crouches in the ebb and flow of your thoughts – and focus is obliterated.
I’d like to be dancing from one school/work/blogging to-do item to another, but inevitably, the wedding voice interjects and to Pinterest or Google I go. But how can I trust that DJ? Where am I going to find antique gold bridesmaid dresses? Why haven’t I thought about invitations yet? I am behind. I am losing this race.
If you haven’t submitted your wedding entirely to a planner or simply submitted to the universe, chances are the wedding voice has (or will) catch up to you too. Mine did right around the nine-months-out mark. Up until that point, my wedding planning was breezy, natural, and more importantly, it didn’t consume my life.
Why have I caught this bug? Us would-be brides have made the disease increasingly deadly to our own kind. We look to compete and outdo, impress our guests, and show off our DIY stamina. I’ve regressed to that teenage girl who’s eyeing up the other girl across the hall thinking about how she could wear that outfit better.
When you plan a wedding it is given that you want the best, but wedding planning for me has become wanting it to be better than yours. I need a jaw-dropping venue. Check. My food has to please everyone. Check. My dress must captivate my audience, feel bridal, but be just different enough. Check. (Side note: Woohoo! I found my dress.)
I don’t blame this ridiculous behavior entirely on myself, or even on Pinterest. This month I decided it was time to book a flower vendor, so reached out to two recommended by my venue, asked them about availability, and began daydreaming of fabulous table arrangements. Both vendors had horrifying answers for a person who prides herself on keeping procrastination shut out of her world. “We’re booked. I’m sorry. We simply can’t commit to any more flowers on May 30.”
I’m sorry, but when did booking a flower vendor more than nine months out become the norm? My breezy dreams of a better-than-yours wedding shattered into a thousand trampled rose petals. That’s when the wedding voice appeared.
Greg Burks Photography
What’s amazing is that even procrastinators pull off amazing weddings. And perhaps that’s because when you strip away all of the Instagram filters, themed place cards, and unnecessary Pinterest recreations, a wedding is actually simple: food, drink, flowers (maybe), feeling fancy, in a place, with the people you love, and the person can’t live without. And while I’m fantastic at losing my phone, I’d have to be pretty worthless to forget one of these pieces when planning my wedding.
A friend recommended an unassuming flower vendor who I’m sure will make that flower piece happen in the most simple and lovely way. That’s another thing to check off my list, and also another reason I should choose to ignore the wedding voice that keeps drifting in.
Like with other life events, the tension we build up in ourselves to try to outdo others as we plan this giant party can almost suffocate. Perhaps we need a bit of rejection, and a reminder of what we’re actually planning – a celebration! – to breathe again. – Jasmine Touton
