Last year four of my closest friends got married, and I joked that I spent the year as a Professional Wedding Therapistâ„¢ (Why is that not an actual thing? Who wants to trademark that with me?). You’d think given the half century or so since weddings became full-scale productions (rather than casual affairs thrown at home or in the church hall), we’d have figured out a way to streamline the process without needing gobs of money to do so. Alas though, we have not.
In fact, whenever we get pitched a new app that is supposed to make wedding planning easier, the team and I just sort of collectively shrug while hoping for the best. Because aside from maybe Pinterest (which has made wedding planning both easier and a goddamn nightmare if you ask me), there is no technical solution that has yet to accomplish that feat. And I think that’s because the truly head-desking parts of wedding planning are hard to distill into an app. There’s no simple solution to questions like:
- Why is it so hard to find a venue in our town a year and a half out from our wedding date?
- Why is my dad continually giving me suggestions for our father-daughter dance song, when I explicitly told him we wouldn’t be having a father-daughter dance?
- How do I politely tell my mother-in-law that she can’t invite fifty of her closest bridge friends? And you know, get her to listen.
I remember when I was first starting to plan our wedding, my top priority was napkin rings. I was going to DIY two-hundred-and-fifty starfish-adorned napkin rings and they were going to be amazing. By the end of wedding planning, not only had I not made a single napkin ring, but I was half convinced my parents hated me, worried that I had picked the wrong wedding dress, pissed that I might have to break-up with a close friend, and wondering if I was ever going to finish vacuuming our vacation rental because we forgot to book cleaners.
All of which is to say, the hard parts of wedding planning creep up on you. And they are often very different than what you expect going into the process. (Ask my friend about the sister who started a huge fight with her over her choice of venue, when her sister is never the drama starter. Spoiler alert: It was never about the venue. Because it never is.) And sometimes the hard parts are terribly mundane. (Like, seriously, why is it so hard to find a venue?!)
But it’s been a minute since I planned a wedding (and half a minute since I did my Wedding Therapistâ„¢ thing for anyone else’s). So I want to know what’s plaguing you right now. Given that it’s our job to help make wedding planning easier, if you tell us, we might just be able to help you with a fix. You know, maybe. Unless the problem is your dad continually suggesting dance songs, in which case, we’re just… sorry.
What’s the hardest part of wedding planning been so far?
