A few weeks ago, I was catching up with my sister when we fell down the rabbit hole of wedding planning problems. After getting married last year, she is now currently a bridesmaid in… too many weddings for me to count. On this call, she was lamenting the frustrations of trying to plan a bachelorette party with a dozen of her best friends. And then I realized, oh right, it’s June. It’s go time for wedding season.
Wedding planning seems to be made up of two distinct seasons. There is early planning, when it feels like nobody is willing to share information with you: you’re having to set up a dozen different in-person meetings just to get price quotes on a venue and having big conversations with your family about their long-held expectations around your wedding. Then there’s go time. Go time is when you’ve been planning this thing for seven months and think you’ve got everything under control, when bam, suddenly your best man has to back out at the last minute. Or you realized your venue doesn’t have any means for amplifying sound at your wedding and you’re worried no one is going to hear your ceremony. Or whoops, you forgot to figure out what you’re going to do with your hair. Go time is the wedding equivalent of your boss handing you an assignment at 4PM on a Friday, when your flight leaves for vacation at 7PM.
If that paragraph just gave you a panic attack, don’t worry. You can adopt my life mantra, which is… everything is going to work out, because this thing is happening dammit. And truly, everything will find a way to sort itself out, or you’ll decide you don’t care or some other solution will present itself. But in the meantime, I find it’s really cathartic during go time to be able to speak those problems out loud. Not least of all, because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that wedding planning problems are rarely unique. So chances are that someone in this crowd is having the exact same issue you are. And maybe they’ve figured out a solution for it.
So what’s plaguing you right now? What wedding planning problems have crept up on you as you head toward go time? And if you need permission to complain for a minute, well, we’re here for that too. Because sometimes all you really need during go time is a good hug. And maybe a way to block any incoming message that starts with “Hey Ladies.”
