An Ounce of Pretension vs. A Pound of Manure

I know there are a few of you out there trying to avoid what can easily become the money pit/grounds for divorce/frustrating cycle of doom that is wedding planning, so here are some of my tips.

Please note that none of these tips involve taking special time with your fiance to just relax and not think about wedding planning and stuff. While that's all well and good, there will come a point when you must do that or die and everyone else will tell you so anyway. My tips are those not sponsored by the wedding industry or any type of evil corporation. They're free, so you know, take that for what it's worth, which is $0.00. Well, I might say 1/16 of $0.01, but not redeemable for cash value. It's not like I have hay pennies all over this joint.

Tip one: You have more time than everyone tells you you do.

In the past couple of days, Matt and I learned from both our cake maker The Cake Lady and our florist J. Maisel's Mainland Floral (who deserve those plugs, so please click if you feel jazzy) that basically they need two weeks to get everything right. So that whole thing where all those magazines tell you to get a florist eight months out: why? Do they actually need to plant the seeds for the flowers that you order? Do they need to raise the cows for the roast beef you will be serving? Do they need to harvest the flour for your cake? Absolutely not. However, two weeks is a good amount of time to insure that 1-you're not freaking out about what everyone has undoubtedly made you think is the last minute (it ain't over til it's over, namsayn?). Also, two weeks will almost certainly guarantee that you have a place on the schedule with the psychos that planned stuff like eight years in advance. Which brings me back to my original point about how everyone says you need to take some "special" time off. If you're planning sooo far in advance, you will be putting yourself through misery every day of that. Give yourself a break! Just stop that madness. You have time. Although I will say, if you do everything two weeks in advance, you should really have your ducks in a row. Have your appointments with peops made. Know what you want your cake to look like. Or be willing to compromise--which I enjoy, on account of the amount of leisure it affords us. So in summary, I recommend doing stuff 2-4 weeks in advance. Except your caterer, which I will recommend booking about six weeks in advance or passing the task off to your sister! Yay.

Tip Two: The wedding will happen and the marriage can be great, even if the flowers don't arrive or the cake is oddly mishapen.

I haven't actually gotten married yet, but I am feeling pretty confident about all this. Most of my decisions in the wedding planning process were made from a place of deep ambivalence over a lifetime of pesky perfectionism versus a disgust for the whole corporate machine telling me how I *had* to do things, else I might doom my marriage.

Not true. While Matt and I are so honored that many of our friends and family will be there to bless and support our beginning as a married couple, we are both firm that had our resources and situation been different, we would have happily marched to the courthouse to be together.

Well, I guess there are only two tips for now, so I hope you enjoyed them. I will now take a moment to put a feather in my and Matt's caps for all that we got done this week.

-engagement photos (should be online today! stay tuned!)
-flowers
-ceremony/vows
-cake ordered
-invitations out! hooray!
-replaced my most awesome hair clip (okay, not related to the wedding, but I considered it an emotional coup as I had to accept that my old one was gone for good this time)

See you soon!

Wish you were here,
Wed Dog