Controlled Chaos?

I felt like June and July were fairly smooth. I jumped on top of the planning process, made contacts, kept notes organized, and made some crucial decisions. Then August rolled around and I found myself having to re-visit some areas and re-evaluate some choices. While having the opportunity to improve  certain aspects of my wedding before they are finalized is ultimately beneficial, the stress of now second guessing myself has made this month a little more bumpy--not so much in terms of the wedding planning itself but in terms of my attitude toward the wedding planning.

As much as I enjoy organizing, crafting, creating, and celebrating, it might not be the best idea to put an introverted, indecisive, perfectionist in charge of a wedding. Especially when you want to make everyone happy (including yourself) and everyone has an opinion. I don't mean this in a bad way--others' opinions allow me to see decisions from a different point of view and include things I'd never thought of before. However, not all opinions mesh (how I love it when they do!), and not everyone will love your brilliant ideas for bouquets. Some may even wrinkle their noses at your choice for first dance song.

Easy decision: The wedding band. Wanted something simple and delicate.

Harder decisions: Sifting through all possible flower girl dresses and accessories.
Wanted something cute and on theme. Way too many options.

"It's your wedding," is a phrase that has come up a lot this week, but it's not entirely true. Or if it is, I don't entirely believe it. A lot of people invest a lot of time, money, thought, and love into a wedding. Like a graduation, a wedding is for the bride and groom's special moment, but it's also for the families, the friends, the people in one's life too--why else would they be there? If it wasn't for them, the couple could just elope. I think the better way to think of this phrase is that "It's your wedding first." You want to make decisions that make you happy (especially if you're the one funding them) and that are meaningful to you, because you may not get another chance to celebrate your love and future in such a big way again (unless you do a vow renewal or host a huge anniversary party, but not everyone may have that opportunity or desire).

So you want to think about what you want first: The bride. The groom. And then the rest of the people who shouldn't necessarily make the final decision but who should have the opportunity to express their thoughts: The parents of the bride--it's their wedding second. This is their chance to celebrate and say goodbye to their little girl. Plus they often put quite a bit into the wedding to make their daughter happy, so their opinions should be valued. The parents of the groom. They often fund major expenses like the rehearsal dinner and honeymoon. The bridesmaids that are investing in a $200 dress, shoes, and a bachelorette party to Maui (not me, I'm thinking more like Malibu). The people who are close to you (family or friends) who you want to include. And then let it stop there. Your guests can certainly share their opinions (hopefully not in snide remarks behind your back), but they will be getting a free meal and a fun party out of it regardless, so try not to take a few wrinkled noses to heart.

What I keep running into myself this month is just anxiety over trying to make sure that the people who the wedding is for second and third and so on feel their opinions are valued and they aren't be excluded from the process. I fear leaving people out because I was told they wouldn't want to be involved. I fear including people that actually don't want the responsibility. I fear making too much work for others. Not saying the right thing to honor the people I want to honor. Spending too much money. Asking others to spend money on me.

I want a big party. I want a beautiful celebration. I want to see my loved ones--both family and friends--who have been and still are a part of my life. I want to leave with happy memories and feel warmth every time I look at the photos from the event. I know not everyone will find my tastes to be their tastes, but at the very least I want people to have a good time and not leave feeling outright upset.

To relieve some stress, and to cross something else off my list, I worked on escort cards today. While I haven't sent out official invitations to receive any RSVP cards yet, I wanted to get the design ready to go: library cards rubber stamped with table numbers. It was a fairly quick process overall, but it almost broke my brain every time I stamped something crooked or got a little bit too much ink on a card. Heaven forbid something smudged! So I made a LOT of extra cards to have backups. And then I decided to just toss them on the floor. Not because I was fed up. I needed to let the ink dry. The resulting scatter of library cards was somehow soothing. A representation of something I love--not just my profession and the library theme. Each card represents a loved one who will be my guest at a pivotal moment of my life in the future. It didn't hurt that the somewhat controlled chaos seemed the perfect outward representation of my mind for the past couple of weeks.

A sample of the sort of finished project!

As much as I'm stressing myself out, I really do believe that things will work out in the end. I just have to not let changes, opinions, or decisions weigh too much on my mind as I work on moving forward. It can be a bit overwhelming when you have a full-time job and other responsibilities too, and your wedding is only 3 months, 22 days, 18 hours, 55 minutes, and 30 seconds away (I downloaded a countdown app for my phone).

Next, I just have to handle the decisions that come with the rest of this week: plated dinner tasting and cake tasting! Now these I plan to enjoy!