Type “Weddings” into Google and it comes up with 68,700,000 hits. If you switch to images, the number is 936,000,000 .
Next month, Future Husband and I are tying the knot. He will no longer be Future Husband, but just Husband.
I have spent the last year involved in the planning of our wedding. I hate wedding planning. I hate the whole bridal industry. It so obviously reeks of insincerity, manipulation and consumerism that I just don’t want any part of it.
Everyone I’ve dealt with in the wedding industry regarding my wedding has either treated me like I don’t have two brain cells to rub together and thus need them to do everything for me (for a price of course), or they try to suffocate me with insipidness, as though spinning me into a cocoon of tulle and glitter will turn me into the perfect butterfly bride.
The hardest part about being a bride (for me) is that no one is honest with you. People mean well, they try to be supportive, but when they don’t know you, there is only the safe road to take when interacting with you, and that safe road means mouthing platitudes and asking about your wedding and honeymoon every time they see you for 11 straight months as if that is the only possible thing that could be going on in your life.
The conversations that put me most at ease about my wedding were the ones from my coworkers who told me the horror stories involving their own weddings. Mother-in-laws they can’t stand, horrible wedding planners, petty arguments about decorations, relatives who didn’t think their spouse was good enough. Those are real things that happen to real people. It’s ironic, because no one thinks that a bride wants to hear those stories. That somehow it will scare them away from the aisle, and lord knows we need those pretty young brides to get married and start making pretty little babies.
Those stories are what we NEED to hear. We are so sick of feeling like something is wrong with us for feeling ambivalent, noncommittal and rejecting our wedding day. We worry that feeling this way means that a rejection of marriage is taking root in our soul, and we don’t want that. We would never have agreed to a wedding if we didn’t want a marriage.
I can be a difficult and prickly person. I have been miserable to plan a wedding for. I don’t like ceremonies, I don’t like Pomp and Circumstance, and I don’t like anything that I think is cliche and conventional (i.e. the white dress, the unity candle, churches, the banquet room at the Holiday Inn) and I have performed in enough weddings that I will shank anyone who plays Pachebel’s Canon within 500 feet of me.
I will say though, my favorite wedding website is “Offbeat Bride.” If you are a Bohemian who loves weddings and hates convention, I have found everything from wedding readings taken from children’s books (We’re having a condensed version of “I Like You” by Sandol Stoddard Walburg read at ours) to creative twists on bridal gowns to YES! Even cute and interesting versions of the Unity Ceremony (I call it the “Yawn and Check your Email” portion of the ceremony)
Here are my favorites from Offbeat Bride:
Bridal Dress by Wai-Ching. If I hadn’t already bought my dress before finding this site, I would have seriously considered this one!
Another amazing Wai-Ching dress
Of course, I am very happy to be getting married. It’s a wonderful feeling to dedicate your life to someone and have them dedicate theirs to you. I’ll be in Michigan this time next week, so hopefully I’ll have more stories from the Mitten State to entertain you with!
June 19, 2012 at 9:20 pm
I agree. They are trying to make a buck off of you … as many as they can. What is important is that you and your spouse to be be happy with the wedding. It is *your* event … naught else matters.
June 20, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Do you need a celebrant? I am a Humanist Minister, and I have performed numerous wedding ceremonies, as fancy or as plain as you like. I do not charge any fee unless I have to drive 25 miles or more one way, then it is a tank of gas. I can also help you with vows and the entire ceremony.
June 20, 2012 at 2:03 pm
It’s in Michigan, but thanks for the offer!
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