In the recent months, I’m seeing a lot of engagement announcements. It warms my heart. I just love love. But I’m also seeing a lot of blog posts, tweets, etc about how stressed they are. How impossible everything seems. How much everything is costing. How pinterest is messing with their minds.
I am no expert. And I am certainly anything but perfect. But the time of my engagement (1 year and 20 days) was anything but blissful. I was having a very very hard time appeasing everyone. I had opinions coming at me left and right. I waited 6.5 (very hard) years for a proposal, and I was expecting rainbows and butterflies. But it didn’t matter how I did things. It didn’t matter which approach I took, it was wrong. And it left me very discouraged and completely apathetic to the entire wedding process. While J and I were certainly coming from a place of love–and our ultimate goal was to have a beautiful marriage not wedding, there were a few things that we ran into in that one year and twenty days that opened my eyes.
So here are my little snippets of advice.
- Your wedding isn’t about anyone but you and your partner. Yes, you are joining together two families, which is unbelievably important, but it is not the most important element. Your marriage is.
- Spend an equal amount of time preparing for your marriage as you are for your wedding. I get that dress shopping and menu tasting might be more fun than pre-marital counseling, but it is not nearly as important.
- You are not going to make everyone happy. And if you spend your entire engagement trying to make anyone but you and your partner happy–I assure you your wedding day will not be as blissful as you are hoping.
- Invite only the people who will spend the remainder of your life supporting and encouraging your marriage. Life throws enough at you to try and separate you–you do not need to invite people into your marriage who will try to do that as well.
- I understand the pressure to have an expensive, fancy wedding. And that’s fine if it’s what you can afford. But I promise you–if you’re inviting only the people who want to love and support you–they won’t care if it’s finger sandwiches and apple juice. You’ll be glad when you’re knee deep in the first year of marriage that you didn’t go into insane debt for a party.
- If your hair isn’t perfect. If the flowers didn’t get delivered. If the cake falls over. If your MOH passes out in the middle of the ceremony. Guess what? At the end of the day, you’re still married. And isn’t that the entire point? And now you just have a story to tell. Enjoy it.
I have a lot of friends here who have recently gotten married and (being the old lady that I am) I just think, "Wow, 4 years and I barely remember the wedding." You make good points! I love your dress. It looks heavy!
Yup. I think making sure you're marrying the right person is so important, too. I think a lot of people say yes because he asked or because who knows if someone better will come along, but they need to share your values and have the same future in mind you do. Silly pinterest, ruining people's expectations!
Amen, sister! I get how important the wedding is, but it makes me so sad when girls seem more excited to HAVE A WEDDING than they are to GET MARRIED. Because you and I both know… the marriage part is kind of ridiculously awesome. 🙂
True dat! Not that I didn't fret about how a few things went. Ohhh well. You just invest so much time that it can be hard! But you are so right- in the end it's about the marriage.
Now, more importantly, is that you in the picture?! Because I LOVE the lace underneath the dress!
All of these are so true! We had a destination wedding and only invited those we really truly knew would still care about us 5 years and long down the road. And I am soooo happy Pinterest didn't exist yet!. Great advice. 🙂
Such good advice! Obviously, I'm not engaged but I do feel like people get caught up in the planning. I'm gonna have to reference back to this post when my time comes 😉