Posts Tagged ‘Wedding Zen’

May 2013

Wedding Graduates: Samantha & Mark’s City Hall Wedding And Restaurant Reception

* Samantha, Project Manager & Mark, Technical Art Director *

After we got engaged, I really didn’t know what to do about the wedding. I was all atwitter with happiness and joy and excitement that Mark and I were really going to do this whole “get married” thing. But as for specifics? The actual event? I didn’t know where to start. This feeling was further complicated by not fitting the traditional mold of the “blushing bride.” I’m not exactly a dress size that lets me go to bridal shops and enjoy myself. I’m also realistic and practical enough to know that trying to fit myself into that mold would just end in heartache, so I turned to the internet. Oh, internet, how wonderful you can be! I found APW and I found out that I was not alone. It made me feel better to know that the things I wanted to throw out of my wedding were absolutely okay to throw out. It made me feel better to know that I wasn’t alone in not wanting to do things the “usual” way. There were all these people out there who were having these amazing indie weddings, and I could be one of them. I could be cool about planning our wedding. We would only do things that felt right to us. We would not be held hostage by convention. We would be calm and Zen and we would have a wonderful, easy wedding. It would be perfect!

Of course, this is easier said than done. Me being me, I started to worry about things, so many things. I worried about the location. I worried about the food. I worried about flowers and cake and favors. I worried, actually worried, about Jordan almonds. I worried that no one would come. I worried that too many people would come. I worried no one would talk, that we would all just sit in awkward silence staring at each other and silently begging time to go faster so the horrible pain of my boring wedding would stop. I worried and I worried and I worried.

The trouble with trying to plan an easy wedding? They aren’t easy. Perfection is hard to plan out. All those beautiful pictures you see take work. Or money. Or both. A lot more work and money than the word “easy” would lead you to believe. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Samantha & Mark’s City Hall Wedding And Restaurant Reception

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 41 Comments »

Jan 2013

Lucy & Bryan’s Southern, Semi-Destination Wedding

* Lucy, Graphic Designer & Bryan, Software Developer *

It’s Martin Luther King Day here in the States, which means there’s a good chance most of you are reading this from your cozy spot on the couch (we hope), and APW is taking a half-day in observance of the holiday. But since today is a shortened day, we wanted to make sure to leave you with some wisdom that could do double duty. Well, lucky for us, the always-wise Lucy (who goes by youlovelucy in the comments) just so happened to submit her grad post last week and, no surprise here, it’s a good one. She’s managed to fit four years of APW lessons into one smart, funny, totally spot-on post. In fact, I’d argue that if there’s one grad post you’re going to read this year as you plan your own wedding, this is the one. So go, soak in Lucy’s smarts, and then enjoy spending the rest of your day watching the Inauguration coverage (I have a feeling that’s what most of the staff will be doing themselves).

—Maddie

Because I love lists to the point of saving some from those halcyon days of wedding planning, it seems only fitting to make a list of lessons learned from said wedding. So without further ado (and because I’m terrible at introductory paragraphs) I present a meandering list of lessons, in no particular order.

Let People Think You’re Crazy: Hiawassee is two hours from where Bryan and I lived while we were planning, and originally had little sentimental attraction. We picked it to be far enough away to serve as a destination, but close enough that folks had the option of not staying for the whole weekend. This first decision introduced me to the Are You Sure Side-Eye (TM). The Are You Sure Side-Eye (TM) is usually accompanied by a slightly wary If That’s What You Really Want Tone, and sometimes followed by the Nervously Begrudging Agreement. Now you know.

We did more than a few things that were given the Side-Eye at one point or another: having my maid of honor’s father (who is also a licensed Santa with the best beard ever) be our officiant, doing all the decorating ourselves, having a low country boil instead of a traditional rehearsal dinner. Confident that Bryan and I knew the kind of atmosphere we wanted, we held our ground. At the end, everyone understood every single choice we made, and that still thrills me to pieces.

Now, the Side-Eye isn’t always negative. Your family loves you after all, and they just want you to be happy. Sometimes when you’re waist deep in paper flags and programs and arguing that of course you can make all the bouquets yourself, it’s not that hard…you look up and find your future husband giving you the Side-Eye. Then you stop drinking the I Can Do Everything Kool-Aid and listen to the man. He has a point.

Can Doesn’t Mean Should: I could have made all the bouquets, set up a photo booth, made a wedding playlist. I had a list a mile long of things I knew I could handle, so why pay people? Answer: so your head won’t explode. Also so you have an easier time achieving wedding zen, but mainly to avoid head explosions. Take my word for it. Part of this means picking your battles. Yes I could do all these things, but my skill in some areas was just passable. Instead, I chose to design anything and everything paper oriented for the wedding because I knew I could do it better (and sometimes cheaper) than anything within my price range. I booked a florist my mother-in-law worked for and a DJ a friend recommended. At the last minute, while I lamented that I hadn’t had time (or energy or sanity) to plan the photo booth, my wedding planner offered to bring her camera and work the backdrop area during the reception. Awesome. It all turned out wonderful. Continue reading Lucy & Bryan’s Southern, Semi-Destination Wedding

Posted in: Advice, Wedding Graduates | 31 Comments »

Nov 2012

Wedding Graduates: Anna & Bean

*Anna & Bean*

I don’t know about you, but this time of year is always both really joyful and kind of hard for me. I relish getting to spend quality time with Michael and our families, and I cherish the traditions that we partake in each year (and the ones we’re building ourselves). But it’s also the time of year when I start to feel the pressure mounting: projects that aren’t completing themselves, the end of the year looming, and a push to be the best version of myself around the people I love. So for this short week (it’s Thanksgiving here in the States) we thought maybe we’d take the opportunity to talk a little about valuing ourselves for who we are in this moment, and perhaps more importantly, finding joy therein.

First up is Anna, who you may remember as Anna and the Ring, the lady with style for days who married a man fondly known as Bean and who now shares her wedding wisdom over here. But today Anna is taking a break from all of that to share an honest perspective of what it means to plan a wedding while battling serious depression. I don’t have any personal experience to draw on for this post, but suffice to say, thank you Anna for allowing us to have this conversation here. Because as Robin of HitchDied once said in her own post about planning a wedding while battling depression, “We’re all worse off if we suffer silently and alone.” So now, accordingly, I’ll leave you to Anna.

—Maddie for Maternity Leave

I want to say I got married and now things are good. However, I guess that would be a lie.

Maybe I should just tell it like it was. How I got married despite being overwhelmingly clinically depressed but was still actually happy.

Bean and I met eleven years ago in our university halls, and despite “meeting” him over a game of spin the bottle, I think I knew I wanted to marry him within a month. One could say it was youthful exuberance and a desire to be loved, but Bean and I just clicked. Fast-forward seven years later, I was a doctor and I was diagnosed with depression. Not that I accepted it, of course; depression is something the soldiers suffer from, not the generals. I thought (and to some extent still think) I should be tougher. I’m a relatively clever woman; I shouldn’t let myself succumb. (Though I think I am finally realising that it is no different from a broken limb or Alzheimer’s dementia—it’s not my fault.)

Two years into my diagnosed depression, Bean proposed. Honestly, I was so just relieved. Happy (whatever that means), but relieved. My friends, who were in far shorter relationships than me, were getting engaged like flies. (Who doesn’t love a mixed metaphor?) It was obvious to everyone including us that we would get married. I just wanted it to happen already. And get married we did. Being the centre of attention was hideous but deliciously fleeting. It snowed, and in the UK we are just not prepared for snow. It meant we almost didn’t get married and it did mean that some of my closest friends and family couldn’t make it. But almost two years on we are still married and dare I say it, happy with each other. Not happy with life, oh no, life is a b*tch right now, but we have each other and that is good.

Here comes the less than rosy bit: Depression. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Anna & Bean

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Graduates | 78 Comments »

Sep 2012

Elisabeth: Crossing Over

Elisabeth is getting married, you guys! It’s finally here! Each month Elisabeth has been updating us on her pending intercultural transcontinental wedding, from her conversion to Islam to her frustrations with super, super long distance wedding planning. Just a few months ago she and Amin were choosing a date and venue and figuring out the perfect cross-cultural wedding outfit, and now they’re getting married! This weekend! And of course, in her last post before the wedding, Elisabeth has perfectly summarized what wedding planning is all about (with a heaping side of letting your community lift you up). So let’s all give a gigantic APW-style hurrah to Elisabeth and Amin as they head into their wedding weekend. Hugs and fist bumps all around.

A few weeks ago, I had my first wedding nightmare. It wasn’t so bad, actually. I was hanging out at the wedding, with my old college roommate, and about six hours in she turns to me and goes, “Hey, aren’t you going to, like, get ready or something?” And I look down, and I realize I’m in a lovely sundress that bears little to no resemblance to my wedding dress. And I realize that I haven’t arranged for anybody to do my hair or makeup. And I realize my dress came from Houston with my sister-in-law, only I can’t figure out how to work my phone to call her and find out if she has it or anything. So by the end of the dream, I find myself in a car, rolling down the highway, with a bunch of strangers, who I am asking to please help me figure out how to work my phone.

We’re definitely in the homestretch, now. Counting the days and whatnot. In fact… I no longer have to use all of my fingers to count the days. Sunday, here we come!

I’m beginning to feel a bit of the zen: the time is precariously short, and this thing will be what it will be. However, Amin and I are both juggling eighteen or twenty different things per day, and our phone conversations have become machine-like in their efficiency. At 5am he called with my tasks for the day. “Look at the agenda and send it back,” he says. “Alright,” I answer. “I’ll schedule it in between my haircut and the visit from my fourth grade teacher. Have it to me by 11:15.” We both hang up and go back to work. And no, I am no longer sleeping, thank you for asking.

Though I have no idea what to expect from the wedding itself, I already know what my favorite part of wedding planning has been, and it has little or nothing to do with Amin. Instead, it’s all about everyone else who has bent over backwards to make the day a success. Although Meg talks about the wonderful sense of community a wedding brings, and APW Wedding Graduates have written about similar feelings, I was skeptical. I knew going in that I didn’t have any supremely artistic relatives who could letterpress my invitations, my mom does not want to cater a 150-person party, and I am not besties with a great band who offered to step in and do the music. Nevertheless, and in totally unexpected ways, I seem to have accidentally tapped into an invisible network of awesome people ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. Continue reading Elisabeth: Crossing Over

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning: Journeys | 41 Comments »

Jun 2012

Wedding Graduates: Jacqueline & Travis

*Jacqueline, Fashion Historian & Travis, Photojournalist*

When I was planning our wedding (and just starting blogging) the wedding world was full of the terrors of imperfection. Everywhere I looked, there was another story of a bride whose dress ripped, and that rip ruined the whole wedding. Or the flowers were the wrong color, and that’s all the poor bride could think about. (Spending more money always seemed to be the solution to whatever the problem was, of course.) The fear mongering was terrifying, and I needed to replace it with stories that would keep me sane, so I slowly collected them on APW. Stories like Dana’s, where her dress ripped and she kept on dancing, or Cara’s, where half the details were left behind but somehow didn’t matter at all. And what I slowly learned, as we coined phrases like “Wedding Zen” (that state of total I-no-longer-give-a-f*ck-release that can hit right before the wedding starts), is that embracing imperfection is a CHOICE. Wedding magic is something you allow to happen by rolling with what comes. And that choice is what made my totally imperfect wedding day… sort of oddly perfect. That’s why we’re starting this week of tales about imperfection with Jacqueline‘s amazing wedding graduate post. Because she nails it.

You hear about wedding magic and Wedding Zen a lot around these parts. It causes some of us anxiety because we worry whether we will have that experience. We celebrate it when it does show up. We talk realistically not to expect to feel a certain way.

On my wedding day it seemed the planets aligned. The Wedding Zen and magic poured in. At first, I thought I was incredibly lucky. But the more I thought about it, I realized I willed those things into being. Wedding magic and Zen don’t just show up. We have to create them. We have to open ourselves up to them.

I think the tale of my Wedding Zen started the day before our wedding. It was a mess of a day. Everything that could go bad was: alcohol-poisoned fiancé, scorching heat and humidity, forgotten errands, and feeling family obligations. At one point I lost our rental car keys and started snapping at everyone. By the end of the day, I got to our hotel room exhausted and worried. What could I do to make sure tomorrow went better than today, I thought. So I started to clean.

Yes, I cleaned a perfectly clean hotel room. I organized all our things, repacked suitcases, laid out anything I would need in the morning to get ready, hid tacky hotel signage in drawers. Then I washed my partner’s puke-covered clothing in the bathroom tub. When you find yourself washing off eighteen-hour-old vomit the night before your wedding, a wave of love washes over you. I’m not even kidding. I knew in that moment everything would be OK because if I was willing to do this, I was willing to do anything to get married and be with my partner. And I willed Zen to take over and carry me.

Then the magic hit. Well actually, it had been accruing for some time; I just hadn’t realized it yet. My friend Ellie, who I met through APW but have never met face-to-face, sent a horseshoe to me for good luck. She had worn it under the layers of her ball gown wedding dress, and she wanted me to have it. Shortly after I finished rinsing out my fiancé’s clothing, I hung it up over the hotel door’s hinge. Let no bad luck enter this room. I got a call that my partner was keeping down food for the first time that day. Good sign. Continue reading Wedding Graduates: Jacqueline & Travis

Posted in: Wedding Graduates | 34 Comments »

May 2012

Wedding Undergraduate: Something Like Zen

Well. You didn’t really think we were going to get through this week without a wedding planning post about Staying, did you? Of course not. This post by Sarah is about that classic APW topic of somehow finding Wedding Zen, of finally being able to stay in the moment through, well, struggle. It made me go reread Alyssa’s classic Wedding Graduate post (now in the APW book), and my post on my own cake hunt and planning realizations. Because other than the part about not planning her wedding since she was six (um, I started planning mine at four), this post could have been written from inside my head. In fact, reading it, I felt the ghost of past-planning-Meg sitting on my shoulder. All of it sounded so familiar: stressing about not stressing, not wanting to include people who you feel won’t hold true to your vision, and then caving and letting people lift you up.

This, wedding undergraduates, is my confession: it is so insidiously easy to overplan your wedding.

I haven’t been planning my wedding since I was six. Until I got engaged last August, I never spent a lot of time looking at bouquets and favors in craft stores. I made concentrated efforts in school—which I am impressed with, in retrospect, because it was insight I had no clue I would ever need—to enjoy my time with friends and not worry about dating, and especially not worry about marriages or babies or any of the Big Changes I was nowhere close to ready to experience. I am definitely the last person you’d expect to be anxiously going through page after page of monogrammed anything six months before the wedding.

Several friends and my brother have gotten married in the past couple years, and the more I gleaned from their processes, the more I sort of mocked the whole wedding industrial complex. My bright, crafty pals shared with me the triumphs of venues and the bummers of sticker price, so I thought by the time my wedding process began, I was prepped. I thought that armed with the reflected glow of their nuptials, I could do the whole thing. By myself. On the super-cheap. With zero stress. And it would still look chic as hell.

Well, as you can guess, this combination of options is awesome but didn’t happen. One of my friends told me I would stress, stress, stress about the details and so I became determined to not stress about anything. This started a chain reaction of becoming very defensive about all of my decisions. I blocked out my friends, my mom—everyone but my fiancé, and he has been so genuinely calm about the whole thing that he wants whatever I like the best.

My very-soon-to-become-my-husband Joe is a very laid-back character when it comes to most things. He gets intense about his work and he listens to me fiercely when I have something on my mind, but generally speaking he takes things as they come. He doesn’t have to-do lists or concerns about how to spend an afternoon, and there is definitely zero fuss about what he is going to wear to any specific occasion. He even has a large Latin tattoo on his leg that means, “It is what it is.” I’m much more, “It is what I think it should be maybe today but you know we’ll check back on it and hopefully it will get better.” That phrase doesn’t fit quite as elegantly on the ankle. Continue reading Wedding Undergraduate: Something Like Zen

Posted in: Planning, Planning, The Day Itself, Wedding Undergraduates | 34 Comments »