Trouble in Paradise
kibskix
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Not your usual wedding blues
I'm just going to jump right into this one, and see if I can get my whining out all in one coherent session 
The Mr and I have owned our house together for over a year, so it was no surprise to anyone (except me!) when he proposed on new years. I'm very excited to get married, but neither of us wanted anything to do with planning one. I'm not a girl to relish the excitement of planning, and I don't put much stock into the sentimentality of every single doily or hand picked vintage (insert item here). I think it's obscene the amount of money that gets spent on weddings, all the stress and time and planning that goes into it, and then when it comes and you realize it was just one day, all of this sadness seems to sink in and women feel cheated somehow of it not being as magical as it was supposed to be, given the huge amount of energy poured into them. We are sentimental fools and want to celebrate our relationship and the level of commitment we choose to make with the people we love best, that's all.
By the time we get married, we will have been engaged 70 days, the wedding is less than a month away now, in fact. Instead of having a drastically long engagement to put off the stress of planning one, after much discussion we said screw it we're having the wedding WE want, and bumped it up to our anniversary in march. 20 people in our backyard, our friend is officiating, I already made decorations (thank god for tissue and craft paper). Our reception is at a nice restaurant 5 minutes from our house where we will give gifts to all the parents (I have 4, he just has the usual 2), then an after-party at a huge entertainment center with laser tag, bowling, putt-putt, pool, etc for anyone else who couldn't come earlier in the day or our work friends, etc. It covers the only two things I asked for. 1. no stress and 2. fun.
That being said, the wedding "blues" i'm getting are ironically not from any of the planning. I expected at least for there to be some grief from family who are not invited (since I have about 1000 relatives), but everyone has been super cool. The blues are from other people vomiting their opinions of my wedding all over me, unasked. Apparently this is normal engagement protocol for women? To give unsolicited advice on someone else's wedding? I literally had no idea, and was not mentally prepared for people to tear down what will be a very special day for me because it won't have enough flowers in the opinion of someone who isn't even coming. Or coworkers complaining to other coworkers behind your back that you're not having a cake, and if you don't care about the details of your big day then being married must not actually matter that much to you.
There have been a few shining spots in all of this, kind people who say "if you need any help i'm more than happy to" or "I know where you can get X if you need it, if not that's cool" and I appreciate that. It has been touching to see the people that care about us pitch in and offer their time. But jeez, what is WITH the other people? One girl I work with pestered me for an hour during my lunch break, arguing with me that I wasn't going to spend time on getting a butt-ton of flowers. Our ceremony will literally be 15 minutes long, and we're LEAVING the house to go to the restaurant after. There's no need for a thousand flowers. If our ceremony and reception were at the same venue, it might be different. She said "well just because its small doesnt mean it cant be PRETTY" which actually actively made me angry. its worth mentioning that she does flower arrangements herself, and in this conversation kept bragging on how awesome her own wedding arrangements were. after 45 minutes I finally snapped and told her she was being rude and intrusive where I had already politely declined more than once. I felt like I was being badgered by a car salesman who doesn't listen.
I felt bad afterword and went home and whined to the Mr about it. I didn't like the whole exchange, and I didn't understand why getting married seemed to give people who are not a part of your personal life leave to yell at you about your decisions as if it were a socially acceptable way to behave. He theorizes that i may unintentionally be inviting that behavior when I say "no we're not having that" and "I don't care about that" and "I dont want that". That maybe people are hearing those words and assuming I mean "will you care about it for me" or "i can't afford that so i'll pretend I dont want it". I can see that, but at the same time I don't feel as though I should have to defend our reasons for having our wedding the way we want it to people who have no stake in my personal life at all. I dont want to have to say "well having a cake doesn't matter to us because we are having a fabulous dessert included in our dinner reception, I actually don't like cake very much, and to have cake at our house at the ceremony to just go have dinner and dessert elsewhere makes no sense. oh and no it doesn't mean we don't care about our marriage in fact the amount of importance you are putting on our theoretical cake is creepy."
I don't want to have to be the jerk who says "I don't want to discuss the wedding plans at work" or immediately get my hackles up when people ask how it's going. But if every exchange keeps going this way, I don't know how else to deal with it without being rude.
The Mr and I have owned our house together for over a year, so it was no surprise to anyone (except me!) when he proposed on new years. I'm very excited to get married, but neither of us wanted anything to do with planning one. I'm not a girl to relish the excitement of planning, and I don't put much stock into the sentimentality of every single doily or hand picked vintage (insert item here). I think it's obscene the amount of money that gets spent on weddings, all the stress and time and planning that goes into it, and then when it comes and you realize it was just one day, all of this sadness seems to sink in and women feel cheated somehow of it not being as magical as it was supposed to be, given the huge amount of energy poured into them. We are sentimental fools and want to celebrate our relationship and the level of commitment we choose to make with the people we love best, that's all.
By the time we get married, we will have been engaged 70 days, the wedding is less than a month away now, in fact. Instead of having a drastically long engagement to put off the stress of planning one, after much discussion we said screw it we're having the wedding WE want, and bumped it up to our anniversary in march. 20 people in our backyard, our friend is officiating, I already made decorations (thank god for tissue and craft paper). Our reception is at a nice restaurant 5 minutes from our house where we will give gifts to all the parents (I have 4, he just has the usual 2), then an after-party at a huge entertainment center with laser tag, bowling, putt-putt, pool, etc for anyone else who couldn't come earlier in the day or our work friends, etc. It covers the only two things I asked for. 1. no stress and 2. fun.
That being said, the wedding "blues" i'm getting are ironically not from any of the planning. I expected at least for there to be some grief from family who are not invited (since I have about 1000 relatives), but everyone has been super cool. The blues are from other people vomiting their opinions of my wedding all over me, unasked. Apparently this is normal engagement protocol for women? To give unsolicited advice on someone else's wedding? I literally had no idea, and was not mentally prepared for people to tear down what will be a very special day for me because it won't have enough flowers in the opinion of someone who isn't even coming. Or coworkers complaining to other coworkers behind your back that you're not having a cake, and if you don't care about the details of your big day then being married must not actually matter that much to you.
There have been a few shining spots in all of this, kind people who say "if you need any help i'm more than happy to" or "I know where you can get X if you need it, if not that's cool" and I appreciate that. It has been touching to see the people that care about us pitch in and offer their time. But jeez, what is WITH the other people? One girl I work with pestered me for an hour during my lunch break, arguing with me that I wasn't going to spend time on getting a butt-ton of flowers. Our ceremony will literally be 15 minutes long, and we're LEAVING the house to go to the restaurant after. There's no need for a thousand flowers. If our ceremony and reception were at the same venue, it might be different. She said "well just because its small doesnt mean it cant be PRETTY" which actually actively made me angry. its worth mentioning that she does flower arrangements herself, and in this conversation kept bragging on how awesome her own wedding arrangements were. after 45 minutes I finally snapped and told her she was being rude and intrusive where I had already politely declined more than once. I felt like I was being badgered by a car salesman who doesn't listen.
I felt bad afterword and went home and whined to the Mr about it. I didn't like the whole exchange, and I didn't understand why getting married seemed to give people who are not a part of your personal life leave to yell at you about your decisions as if it were a socially acceptable way to behave. He theorizes that i may unintentionally be inviting that behavior when I say "no we're not having that" and "I don't care about that" and "I dont want that". That maybe people are hearing those words and assuming I mean "will you care about it for me" or "i can't afford that so i'll pretend I dont want it". I can see that, but at the same time I don't feel as though I should have to defend our reasons for having our wedding the way we want it to people who have no stake in my personal life at all. I dont want to have to say "well having a cake doesn't matter to us because we are having a fabulous dessert included in our dinner reception, I actually don't like cake very much, and to have cake at our house at the ceremony to just go have dinner and dessert elsewhere makes no sense. oh and no it doesn't mean we don't care about our marriage in fact the amount of importance you are putting on our theoretical cake is creepy."
I don't want to have to be the jerk who says "I don't want to discuss the wedding plans at work" or immediately get my hackles up when people ask how it's going. But if every exchange keeps going this way, I don't know how else to deal with it without being rude.
Re: Not your usual wedding blues
People will talk and give their opinion if you ask for it or not. Smile, nod, politely respond, and walk away. It's not worth arguing over, burning bridges, and the stress. It's something most brides go through. Some more then others. Just be happy.
You cannot please everyone.
Don't let these rotten people and naysayers get you down.
You had the wedding you wanted to have.
And if they don't like it, they can pound sand.
A friend of mine got married and he took about 20 people to a fairly good restaurant after the JOP ceremony. I do not believe Jim and Sharon had a cake.:)
THey decided to have a quick ceremony and skip the long engagement.
Wishing you luck. You got to save a lot of money and you did as you and your H wished to do.
By today's standards, we had an unconventional wedding. I still "feel bad" about it sometimes (and it was almost 2 years ago!). I do like vintage things and World War II is of special interest to me. There were many couples that had short engagements during the war. Many girls wore suits to their wedding. My husband's grandma borrowed her friend's dress (and bridesmaid dresses) so she could get married during her fiance's 3 day leave. The dresses were all too big, but no one cared.
The point is, that people had the right idea back then. They realized that love and life (plenty of guys never made it back home) were more important than cake and flowers. I also think that people back then were happy with what they had. They didn't go in to debt just to show off.
BTW, your "flower friend" sounds unprofessional. That is no way to drum up business! Good luck and stick to your guns!!!
I agree with @BulgariHeart that just as you do not want people to make comments about your plans, you shouldn't comment about others. To each their own. Do your thing and ignore others, or, better yet, do not even bring it up.
I do know what you mean though about people butting their noses in everything. We had a relatively simple wedding and after it was all done, I was so sick of hearing the words "you should" that I vowed to never say them to anyone, ever. Every single person who knew I was getting married just had to throw in 100 "you should" statements everytime I saw them. I got used to countering them with "Oh yeah, thats cool but I think we have that handled already." Keep doing things how you want them and do not tell anyone a thing unless you want to be "you should"-ed to death.