Wedding Stress Resolved(ish)

Remember that time when I said I got engaged? You know how I promised to share wedding stuff?
Yeah, sorry about that.

Since getting engaged I relized something about myself.......   Planning weddings is not my thing. 

I don't think it's my fault. I am just not a details person. I can throw a kick ass party, but things like decorations? Come on, I'm surprised I remember that I have things like serving dishes to put food out on. There is also the fact that my mom is not that kind of person either. You know how much planning she put into her own wedding? She went with her mom to the bridal salon to pick the dress out.  And by pick the dress out I mean she was the body it was on. (Okay, exaggeration? Maybe, but my point is its not her thing either.)

Now, this lack of caring about details would not be that big of a deal if I had people around me that were willing to help in a way that was actually helpful.  Or if I wasn't getting conflicting stuff from both sides about my levels of enthusiasm.

Examples? Okay:

My family knows this isn't my thing, so the way they deal with it is by asking me NOTING for months, then jumping down my throat when I don't know about something I should have planned months ago. Oh, was that important for me to do by now? Maybe you should have said something. All the wedding guides say send save the dates at 6 months, but 2 months in I was getting emails wondering if I was EVER planning on letting anyone know when the wedding was going to happen. Shesh. OK sorry I am delaying your planning of your trip to Cabo in 14 months.

M's family, sweet and interested as they are are constantly asking me how things are going with the planning, and then are disappointed that I have no updates, because I... you know.... still have a non-wedding life that I deal with most days, and don't wedding it up every day. They then precede to tell me about their wedding, or so and so's wedding and how beautiful the monogrammed napkins were.... wait, I have to monogram napkins? huh? and I leave feeling very flustered about what it is I need to be doing.

Also, what is the deal about keeping every detail a secret? I have never tried on wedding dresses before, so needing help knowing what looked good on me I posted a picture of a wedding dress on facebook to get an opinion. Within an hour I get a phone call from my grandmother who doesn't even have facebook saying that the family is in an uproar that I am ruining all the surprises. I asked who it was, and it was all people who I don't know well enough to put on the guest list. And I wasn't even considering buying that dress. 

How do you balance that with people wanting to know every last detail of how I decided on which color was my accent color?

I was starting to feel like I must be the only person who feels this way, especially after reading blog posts about what exactly you should do with yourself now that you no longer have a wedding to plan. (sleep? catch up on paperwork from your job?)

Then something magical happened. I got an email from amazon thanking me for my order. I didn't remember that I ordered anything, so I logged on, to see what it was, and sure enough, A Practical Wedding the book, which I had pre-orderd for my Kindle came out, and downloaded to my e-reader.

This book is EXACTLY what I needed. I am not even half way through it, and I feel like I have already reached my wedding zen. None of it matters. With this new found OK-ness about my non wedding minded-ness I can now sit down and look at the wedding things that I have frantically shoved in the corners of my life.  I have booked everything I needed to book, because I had to, but now I can sit down and really think about how it all works together. Now that I know that I wont remember the details so it is -dare I say it- OK that I am not obsessed with them I can look at table cloths and centerpiece vases without that impending sense of doom that I had which said "this will not be perfect and everyone will think you failed as a bride."

So now I am going to go into my back room, and see if I can get all my info in one place, so I can start telling you what I am doing, even though planning a wedding is so not my thing. And now I know that is OK.

Until next time.