Posts Tagged ‘Imperfect Planning’

Each week, as we’ve run our 2012 planning interns’ grad posts (you can read Zen and Madeline’s here and here, respectively), I’ve been eager to see how the weddings themselves turned out. Not so much the visual stuff (though to be clear, I was dying to see Elisabeth’s final choice of wedding outfit), but to see how the big emotional decisions played out. Because in wedding land, we often hear about the complicated decisions made during the wedding planning process (particularly when you’re planning a super long-distance intercultural wedding after having converted to Islam), and rarely hear whether or not those complicated things actually ended up being… important. Which is why I love that Elisabeth’s post explores it all—the unexpected highs and lows, and, perhaps most importantly, the things that were neither high nor low but still contributed to making the day uniquely theirs.

I should tell you now, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month looking at my wedding photos. Not just because I look good (though I do look good), but because, as Zen pointed out in her grad post , they remind me of how good I felt. And man, did I feel good.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my wedding was the culmination of a weeklong marathon of family togetherness and intense partying. It included, among other things, the civil ceremony, which was my only opportunity to say western-style vows; a henna party where some of the ladies got together to gossip and get our hands painted by an insanely patient and talented henna artist; and a rehearsal dinner where my family had a chance to meet Amin’s extended family for the first time. It was a lot of fun—not only was it amazing finally getting to know Amin’s family, but it’s a rare week where my immediate family is together in the same place. To give you a taste, let me just say that the day after the wedding, my youngest sister flew to Iraq, my middle sister flew to DC, and my mom and dad flew to Philadelphia and Saudi Arabia, respectively. Loud family sing-alongs to “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” will long be one of my favorite wedding memories.

Amin and I had vacillated a lot on whether to have a big wedding or a really really small one. There wasn’t really a good in-between option for us, because his aunts/uncles/cousins number in the hundreds already, so either we left everybody out except immediate family, or we had a couple hundred people. We decided to have a big one for a couple of reasons, but surely one of the major reasons was my insistence that this would be one of my few opportunities to get all of our favorite people together in one place.

We had mixed results. We definitely succeeded in getting many (though not most—who knew flying to London during the Olympics would be expensive?) of our favorite people together, and since we did a rehearsal dinner, and a henna party, and a few other things in the week leading up, Amin and I actually got to spend a bit of time with them (though sometimes not together). But on the wedding day, we didn’t get a chance to speak to anyone more than superficially. Heck, we didn’t get a chance to eat. (I am actually gratified by this, because Amin had long been convinced he was going to get to sit down and have a nice long relaxed meal, and I had repeatedly told him that was a ridiculous fantasy and that we would spend the whole night walking around chatting with our guests. I do love to be right!) Our cheeks were sore from smiling by about the third minute in (you can kind of tell from the panicky look in our eyes in some of the pictures), and by the time we got in the car at the end of the night we were both so happy to finally be alone, and not to have to smile any more. Our caterers had packed us little boxes of leftovers to take to the hotel room (I cannot recommend this highly enough. Do this!) so we sat and had our real dinner together long after the party had ended and we had deconstructed my enormous hairdo, while in the background the Thames was lit up by fireworks in honor of the Paralympics Closing Ceremony. For me, this remains one of my most cherished memories of the night.

The reception, then, is something of a blur of smiling and hugging and shaking hands and taking pictures, but I expected that. I always prefer little groups to big ones, and my wedding was no different. When I think back, though, I am still suffused with joy, and I think what made it such an awesome day was less the grand sweep of the party, etc., and more the little snippets of memory and remembered emotion that still stick with me two months later, and I imagine will stick with me forever. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Elisabeth & Amin