Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Inside the Wedding, Part 0: The Prologue

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was a reluctant wedding planner, but I wouldn’t go and say I dove in headfirst, either.

It was a means to an end. I was engaged and I needed to be married, and for that, there would need to be a wedding. So we picked a venue and set a date to look forward to, and one by one we knocked out all the little details that came marching along in the interim.

I wasn’t one of those girls who grew up dreaming of her wedding day, so I entered the planning game with no expectations and vowed (ha) to keep it no-frills. I set out with a long list of “don’t”s, most of which I pulled from the traditional lists of “do” s: no church, no religion, no anti-feminist rituals or language, and no regarding the day as the most important day of my life.

Along the way, I broke my own rules once or twice and started sweating the small stuff – a common trap for me when faced with creative decisions that can contain infinite levels of nuance if you allow them to. And a few times, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t competing to have the best wedding any of my guests (and frankly anyone ever) had ever attended.

But I more or less managed to keep my head about me while doing most of the work myself, and if I may say so, managed to pull off a pretty sweet event. And I even had just a little bit of fun in the process.