Note: Below is an email exchange from December 2009 that followed a phone conversation. During the prior phone conversation the friend told me that she hadn’t bought a dress yet (her wedding was 6 months away) and my response was: “Oh that’s fine. You have plenty of time.” Remember, at the end of it all, you’ll be married and that’s what matters!!

My Email

Hey [friend],

I still follow this blog because I love it: http://www.apracticalwedding.com/

And my favorite posts are what she calls wedding graduate posts: http://www.apracticalwedding.com/search/label/Wedding%20Graduate just women writing about their weddings whether big, small, expensive, cheap, traditional, destination, whatever, they make me smile b/c every single one is unique and AWESOME. The common themes: make the wedding about what you guys want, take a honeymoon (2 weeks!! Haha), make sure you take a few minutes alone, together at some point that day (seriously important and seriously tough to do!!), and enjoy it – if the bride and groom are having fun everyone else will too, I promise!!!!! Don’t let other people’s expectations stress you out. Common forms of this: “What, you haven’t done x,y,z yet?!” “What, you aren’t throwing the bouquet and garter?!” (ours), “Why are you seeing each other before?!?” (ours again), “You have to pick out a pretty park to take outdoor photos” (ours yet again, my response was “Have you met my to-be-husband? He hates being hot and in the sun, why would I put him in a bad mood that day?!”), etc. etc. etc. You get the idea :)

The fun part about being married (and 2nd to spending-the-rest-of-my-life-with-my-best-friend): getting super excited for others getting married :) So if you ever need a dose of sane, reality I’m more than happy to provide that at any time. Knowing how down to earth and sane you are, you’ll probably be just fine!!

Sorry, I got all wedding nostalgic this morning when I took a quick break to read a post on that blog!!

Friend’s Response

Aww, thanks so much for sending this on.  It is really nice to hear from someone who isn’t stressing me out by going “what do you mean you haven’t gotten your dress yet?”.  I’m like, people, I work a lot and I’m in grad school—I’ll get a dress, but it’s not the only thing I have to do right now!  :)  And they are stressing me out, because I feel like I’m not getting things done as fast as I should be!

You made me laugh about the park, because I also hate being hot and in the sun.  We’re going to be outdoors-ish (there will be shelter), but that’s why I picked May, not August!  If it’s 50 degrees, I’ll love it, the guys in tuxes will be fine, and everyone else can wear a jacket and dance a lot!

It’s OK not to throw the bouquet and garter. We are considering it too, since it’s a small wedding and the only unmarried people will be two of my friends and my widowed grandma.  Uncomfortable!!  We are completely changing things up in a lot of ways, because I have three bridesmen (yes, you read that right), and he has two groomsmen and a groomsmaid.  :)

I am trying to keep it sane, and relatively stressless.  Trying is the operative word… so hearing from someone who says “it will be OK” makes me feel better.  Thanks!

The toughest part of planning a wedding, a one day event, is not getting to think and discuss and plan a marriage. There have been some highlights the past few months with more focus on the marriage than the 1-day wedding, but I would have liked many, many more of them! The Pre-Cana day was pretty awesome, in that we got to spend an entire day focused on each other and us talking about everything from communication to kids to the families we came from. Moving in together has been pretty fantastic too as it has helped to iron out little stuff like finances (ha, little!), living styles, chores, etc. before the wedding. I was asked by two different people in the last week how it felt to live with Nick and my answer was and still is, the best.  

Tonight, I read a post from A Practical Wedding. The blogger is getting married shortly after I am, and I think she says it very well on what I want to be focused on for the next 27 days. It’s hard not to fall into this trap, and worry that our wedding isn’t enough, doesn’t have enough, isn’t “us” enough and especially after yesterday’s visit to St. Charles!! But in the end, we’ll be married (yay!!!!) while surrounded by our families and friends and that’s perfect to me.

– Mary