The Funny Thing About a Wedding

I realized as I was reading the Huffington Post wedding section (I think I am developing an addiction... There is just so many interesting opinion pieces!) that for a blog with "Married" in the title, I haven't been writing a whole lot of wedding/marriage posts lately.  I happened upon this post by Marta Segal Block and was inspired.

I hadn't really realized the effect that the media (in all forms, Pinterest included) has had on weddings - especially on the brides.  There is a lot of pressure on engaged couples these days - with news and magazine articles about celebrity weddings, Pins about "having a unique wedding", "how to lose weight before the big day" and "how to plan the perfect ceremony".  First, there is no such thing as perfect, especially when you are trying to wrangle a wedding party and a couple hundred guests at a single event (really, it just ends up being a whole lot of cat herding).  Second, what happened to the day of putting on the best dress you have in your closet, walking down to the church with a few friends and relatives, getting married with the same vows everyone else says and calling it a day?  The end result is the same, you are still married at the end of it all.

I don't know that I quite understand all the pressure to have the coolest most unique wedding.  Brett and I have always been the type of couple who did our own thing - it is just how we are.  I couldn't really care less what other people did at their weddings - least of all celebrities (except, of course, for Will and Kate. I talk more about my royal obsession here).  When we first started wedding planning my dad left me with the warning "weddings always turn into being about everyone else, so be ready for that.  They never seem to actually be about the bride and groom."  I definitely think that there is some truth to that.  I think one of the biggest reasons brides feel pressure to have the most perfect and unique wedding has a whole lot to do with the fact that we are so worried about how everyone else is going to see us.

I'm here to remind you that your wedding should never be about anything more than inviting your friends and family to join you as you pledge your life to another person.  And the fastest way to end up having issues between you and your groom, is to lose sight of that fact.

That isn't to say that you can't do something different with your wedding.  But I would ask yourself whether that actually reflects you and your partner as a couple.  Are you getting married underwater because you both love deep sea diving and it means a lot to you as a couple?  Or are you doing it to put on a show for your guests and have it be something cool that they haven't seen before?  You don't need to do something different just for the sake of being unique.  In a weird way, having a "unique" wedding now days is almost the least unique option - because everyone is trying to be unique, therefore by being unique you are really just following another trend (well that was confusing.... still with me?).

The funny thing about a wedding is, no matter where you say your vows, whether you wrote them yourself or not, no matter where you have your reception or how you decorate your venue; at the end of the day you still end up married to your best friend.  Isn't that what weddings should be about?