After taking a break from reading wedding media, one of the most distinct things I noticed when I started reading wedding blogs and magazines again was a spike in my anxiety levels. Big time. I wasn't quite able to put my finger on what was going on, but I read a few posts, and browsed through few articles, and then start calling David and emailing my mom, freaking out.
I emailed my mom, pretty much in all caps, about how, "MAKING THE WEDDING DRESS WAS PROBABLY A MISTAKE. And people have EMERGENCIES when they make dresses. WHAT WERE WE THINKING. And it's never going to be DONE IN TIME. And then I was going to have to find something CUTE and CHIC at the last minute, and it's going to be a DISASTER!"
Meltdown.
Then I called David, "I've been reading some stuff."
"What stuff?" he said with understandable suspicion about my vagueness.
"Wedding stuff. Anyway. I think we are REALLY BEHIND. I think there are lots of things we need to get done that we haven't even thought about!"
"Ohdearjesus." Said poor David, "What kind of stuff?"
"Ummmm.... I can't even remember. Um, rings! We need wedding rings! It's apparently very complicated! And we need.... ummm.... to taste cake! And layout the wedding reception. And bond with our wedding party or whatever, in a complicated way. And, I'm not sure but we need to make a lot of decisions. And we're only FOUR MONTHS AWAY."
My friend Emily calls this the wedding blackout stage.
I'm not really sure how we get here, but I am sure that somehow, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly, the wedding industry sells us on anxiety. I think part of where this comes from is the un-stated assumption that we all need to be doing certain things. The same things. The things on those dreaded wedding "lists." If you are not doing these things, or worse, it's never occurred to you to do these things, you might start freaking out wondering what you are doing wrong. Or perhaps you are made of stronger stuff then me.
It is assumed, for example, that we all need to taste cake. In fact, it's assumed you need to have cake tastings. Plural. False. First of all, we don't need to have cake. It seems obvious, when you say it out loud, but somehow amidst the unspoken assumptions, it gets lost. Second, even if you are having cake (we are) you don't need to taste it (we didn't). And you certainly don't need to go to more than one tasting (what?)
After my blackout-anxiety moment, David and I trotted down to the local bakery this weekend, to nail down the details of the cake. It was literally a 10 minute conversation: we picked a size that seemed not too big yet formidable enough to cut with my grandfathers marine corps saber, we told her we wanted it to be chocolate and chocolate but nothing too fancy. Then, the darling baker offered to decorate it with flowers for free, so we decided on blackberries and dahlias for the decoration. Then we ordered four blackberry cobblers, on the theory that wedding cake is actually kind of boring. She added up the bill, we didn't pass out but actually smiled because it wasn't that bad, and then the baker thanked us for supporting a small local business, twice. We walked out in to the parking lot, and I did a crazy happy dance, and squealed "Blackberries and dahlias blackberries and dahlias blackberries and dahlias!"
And then we crossed a task off our "list," anxiety free. And it only took ten minutes. Thanks, WIC, for making that seem like it was going to be hard.
Now, I'm throwing this to you, as you are a smart-smart-smart group of readers. What is it about the wedding industry/ our cultural assumptions that feeds our bridal anxiety? What makes you go into the blackout stage?
(Tomorrow, we'll talk about those crazy making lists.)
Picture: I'm a study in contradictions. Martha Stewart provided our not-to-fussy cake inspiration. And I kind of love it.
So often lately, I read your blog and want to shout, “YEAH!” Thank you for writing a little about what many brides to be are thinking. I’ve definitely had my moments. I am naturally a crazy list maker so I’ve got about 5 wedding lists I think. But overall, as it gets closer, we keep thinking more about the ceremony. The most important part and how we want that to look. Knowing the family and friends that will be in attendance, I have no worries about the party to follow! :-)
April 2, 2009 4:24 am
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The thing that freaks me out occasionally is when I’m all calm and talking to my best friend and she’s all “yeah, we can totally feed 130 people in your parents back yard after a couple of runs to CostCo” and I’m all “cool, we can totally handle this”… and then I talk to my mom and she’s all “[you're my oldest child and the first one of your many, many cousins to get married so this is going to be a huge party] Now don’t forget about the rehearsal dinner and the day-after brunch! Plus, we should have a day of activities (like water volleyball in the lake) the day before for all the out-of-towners.” … and then I get all “*bad word*, I can’t afford to feed 130 people three or four times!”
However, on a positive note, I emailed a picture of the J. Crew “Sophia” dress (which is all over eBay for $100) to my mom, sister and best friend and they all went, “ooh… aaah”, so that was easy. :)
April 2, 2009 4:32 am
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Two years + 1 day later, I’d like to update this comment, just in case people are just finding this post & it helps:
We did have a rather large party, mostly due to the fact that I’m the oldest in my family of origin and one of the first of many cousins to get married, and I was ok with that; we didn’t have activities other than hanging out on the lake together with all of the family that was in town already, and everyone was ok with that; we did have a rehearsal dinner, but a friend/neighbor kindly offered to throw it for us and let us invite all of the out-of-town family (dinner for 50? No big deal!); and for the wedding we ended up finding a small caterer who used mostly local, all in-season ingredients (who was not that much more expensive than buying it all at CostCo) and we were very glad to pass off the prep work to her, freeing up time to bake lots of cookies for favors (which we had WAY too many of).
So in summary: no, you do not need to entertain and/or feed people more than once (everyone who was staying at my parents’ house those days each pitched in and shopped for then prepared at least one meal for everyone), and yes, you can totally feed 140 people in your backyard… but if you have a caterer, it’s a lot easier!
Also, I ended up finding that dress new with tags on eBay for $65 (including shipping) and, magically, it fit perfectly without alterations! And it came with a veil which I liked and which convinced me that I did actually want a veil. Yay!
April 3, 2011 10:04 am
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Also, the “day-after brunch” consisted of about 10 people showing back up to my parents’ and eating left-overs from the night before with my partner while I ate some of the desserts I had missed & we read all of the lovely cards people had given us. Blissful.
April 3, 2011 10:08 am
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The dress. I loved my dress. Until I started reading the silly internets with all their fancy designers and expensive fabrics. I got all paranoid because my dress is made of polyester taffeta not REAL taffeta and then I saw the prices of the real ones and they were ridiculously expensive. I am calming down now. What I tell people about the dress is that is essentially a costume you wear once, so who really cares how/what it is made of?
April 3, 2009 5:37 am
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For me, my wedding blackout moment was the invitations. I know, it’s weird. I’m having my dress made by one of my law professor’s wife and it has ended up being a really nice bonding experience for me and my bmaids. A little more expensive but totally worth the weekly/bi-weekly hang out time with my uber-busy friends!
Anyway, back to the invitations. I decided to go with a graphic designer friend to save some money. It’s been really really stressful, and I had to do a lot more work that I thought I would. It’s the first thing that people (read: groom’s family) will judge me on in terms of the wedding and they had to be PERFECT. The anxiety/panic attack ended last week when I was able to check a bunch of things off the list. In fact, the invitations went to the printer this morning!
Thanks for blogging about your anxiety—it makes me feel less nuts! It also makes me want to show this post to my fiance so he can see I’m not alone in my craziness.
April 3, 2009 8:53 am
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I think a lot of the anxiety comes from what people *think* others expect of them compared to what others *really* expect of them.
In regards to the dress, Sweets made a comment about my wedding day attire that I plan to honor. I was joking around about finding a hairdo that didn’t involve flat-ironing my “enthusiastic” wavy hair (something that for may reasons I don’t want to do-but everyone else wants it FLAT), and he said that he didn’t want me to “not look like yourself”. He doesn’t want ‘Bridal Barbie’, he wants ME-poufy hair and all. ;-)
That doesn’t require “the perfect dress”, it requires a dress I’m comfortable in and feel good wearing. I’m lucky that my Mom is putting her fantastic seamstress skills and motherly love into making my dress. Even if there are fancier or flashier things out there, nothing I’ll find from a store could ever be ‘more perfect’ than that.
April 3, 2009 12:24 pm
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I agree. Why taste multiple cakes? Our family is making our deserts. I know I love those. I don’t need to taste my Aunt Sandy’s delicious red velvet cake.. it’s already one of my favorites. And taste Jonathon’s homemade apple pie.. yum! And my gran’s strawberry shortcake, and my soon to be mother in law’s pumpkin roll. I know I love these things. That’s why we picked them.
PS. Blackberries and dahlias?! I can’t wait to see this.
April 3, 2009 12:52 pm
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Actually, multiple cake tastings sounds fantastic. I do enjoy eating cake, and if we decide to have a cake (we’re currently leaning toward individual pastries from my hometown), then I want to enjoy eating it, too. There are some bakeries that normally bake delicious cakes that make butt-awful wedding cakes (I am looking at YOU, Beaverton Bakery).
Pretty much everything else on the list terrifies me, however.
April 6, 2009 6:34 pm
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Ugh, I’m experiencing Black Out at 3 weeks to the wedding.
It set in just as I finished all the bigger DIY projects that you get to do with your hands…invitations, programs, test menu (I’m making most of the food, including the cake, because I am both quite poor and quite foolish) etc.
I hadn’t realized how much I was alchemizing my anxiety into 200 pieces of carefully folded vellum and the like.
Now I guess I have to go ahead and face the nerves in the fact that this is a huge change in my life, in my self identity…even my name! I love my soon-to-be husband more than anything, and can’t wait for the rebirth into being a wife…but inside this rebirth, there is a tiny death of an old self that I loved deeply too.
Yikes! Feelings! Aren’t there more bows to tie instead?
April 7, 2009 2:38 pm
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It’s nice to know I’m not the only one. My fiance and I decided on a simple, casual, outdoor thing in summer. Easy right? Two days after getting engaged, at my sister’s suggestion, I tried on a dress at the mall that was a couple stores down from the tea shop she works at. It was a simple cotton sundress with eyelet lace and little buttons all the way down. It fit me perfectly, I really liked it, and it was only $150! I bought it right away, then started reading bridal magazines. Bad idea. I started worrying that my little sundress wasn’t “wedding” enough and now my mom keeps emailing me links to poofier princess dresses. Now I’m conflicted because I worry that I will be too casual, but I’ve started to think of the little sundress as MY WEDDING DRESS and don’t know if I want anything else. Damn the WIC and their pages of glossy dress ads that make feel bad about my dress.
May 13, 2009 3:29 pm
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Oh god, thank you so much for writing this.
This is essentially what exploded out of my mouth at my fiance three or four days ago: "ZOMG there are THINGS and we are supposed to DO them and I keep looking at wedding blogs and they are full of WHIMSICAL CHARMING DETAILS and we don't have ANY of them and our wedding is going to SUCK and we are DOING IT WRONG and NO ONE WILL HAVE ANY FUN."
*hyperventilate*
My fiance looked at me, and said (veryvery gently): "If you let other people tell you what your wedding is supposed to be, it will never end. There will never be enough. There will always be something else to do. I don't want my wedding to be a competition."
And I regained my sanity.
The problem with the wedding machine, as I call it, is that it purports to ease your anxiety – but in order to do that, it has to first create anxiety. Suddenly, you aren't enough. Your love isn't enough, your simple ceremony with friends and family isn't enough – BUT THAT'S OKAY, WECAN FIX THIS! DON'T WORRY! WE HAVE A LIST OF EVERYTHING YOU NEED! IN COORDINATING COLORS! And it spirals from there.
The craziest thing about all of it? We had already kyboshed whole reams of the "expected": we made our own invitations (I do calligraphy), I got my dress for $199 down from $1,240 (floor model), we had no wedding party, no DJ (yay iPOD!), no registry, no florist (wedding is in a garden and I'll get roses from a florist the day before), no garter toss, no flower children, no first dance. Just our best riends and closest family to laugh and drink great wine and eat great food. So, what was the panic?
It was something that came from the wedding machine. Not us. So, I shut off the power.
June 12, 2009 1:16 pm
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I’ve been reading an AWESOME book called “The Conscious Bride’s Wedding Planner” (find it on Amazon!) that treats a wedding as a rite of passage and acknowledges all the emotional things brides go through during their engagements.
One of the things she mentions is that sometimes we obsessively focus on details in order to avoid thinking about the larger issues of getting married – saying goodbye to our single selves and past lovers, dealing with family issues, having doubts about our partner, etc. So now whenever I start obsessing I check in with myself about what I might *actually* be freaking out about.
What if our crazy high expectations about our cakes, dresses, etc. are based on our crazy high expectations of our future husbands? What if we want our dresses to make us feel like princesses, because we want our husband to make us feel like one, too? What if our “blackouts,” instead of being freak-outs about the wedding details are actually about the fears of being married?
March 15, 2011 12:45 pm
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Of the last few weddings I went to, I didn’t eat cake and I don’t have a clue what the cakes looked like. I remember some of the couples cutting cake though, because that was more memorable than cake.
When my friend got married she actually FORGOT to order a cake and didn’t realize it until the day before the wedding when someone asked her when the cake will be delivered. She wanted to buy a few boxes of Twinkies and arrange them on a platter. Her sis intervened and bought a few plain cakes at her favorite bakery and put leftover fresh flowers on them…
Six years and one baby later, it doesn’t matter…. :D
February 13, 2012 1:32 pm
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[...] On Wedding Anxiety, Or How The Cake Was Actually Easy « A …I’m not really sure how we get here, but I am sure that somehow, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly, the wedding industry sells us on anxiety. I think part of … [...]
April 14, 2012 7:17 pm
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