How Wedding Planning is Like a Lobotomy

Things I’ve learned in Wedding Planning

1.       Everyone gets excited for you!

2.       You will get swept up in crafty DIY ideas that will change at least once per month per item or idea, which is proportional to the amount of time spent on Pinterest and Style Me Pretty

3.       You will become an amateur calligrapher, photographer, baker and/or florist until someone (fiancé) reins you back and reminds you that you can’t do it all and sometimes it’s better to pay someone qualified to just get it done. Outsourcing is a hard, hard lesson to learn.

4.       You will care about things that don’t matter at all to your fiancé or even to yourself prior to this whole wedding thingamajig.

5.       You will start to feel yourself slipping away a little bit as hours of your time are spent in a hunched posture, with stomach growling because you’re on a diet and your credit card groaning from the impulse purchases online.

I WILL find a way to use 50 mismatched gold frames after the wedding!

6.       You will start to critically evaluate yourself, your friends, your wardrobe and your DIY Pinterest-y craft choices as SMP-worthy. If it’s not, back to the drawing board, or in this special case, Pinterest.

7.       You will be convinced that you need a theme. This year, it’s the 1920s/Great Gatsby. Next year: Hunger Games: Catching Fire?

8.       Money will flow out of your wallet uncontrollably.

9.       There will be mysterious family members who neither you nor anyone else have ever met, and in fact may be dusty old skeletons in their house on the hill, but are obligated invitees. No questions asked, no arguments given.

10.   Some wedding trends will just pop up over and over again, and the only thing you can wonder is “WHYYYYYY???” Ahem, gray and yellow palette, AHEM BURLAP AND LACE. MASON JARS. MUSTACHE PROPS. REGISTRIES!!

11.   Okay, that last part isn’t fair. Registries are useful to guests, yes, who have been socialized that weddings = gifts. But that’s not the point of a wedding! It’s to observe the joyful couple’s commitment to and love for each other, and to celebrate with days-old bakery cake and a conga line if you’re feeling rowdy.

12. You will hear this phrase: “People will expect [xyz].” Expect what, you ask? Cake. A registry. An invitation to the rehearsal dinner (which, prior to all this research, I literally only expected to invite those involved in the actual rehearsal!!!). Flowers. Favors. An open bar with top shelf liquor that no one drinks except at weddings with someone else’s dime. A dinner. A place to sit. Some form of entertainment including a belly dancer, a firebreathing sword swallower, a clown, an acrobat and/or a poet.

I personally want a birds of prey exhibit at my wedding, but I can’t imagine the logistics or liability. Would a pygmy owl perched on my shoulder, nuzzling my cheek be worthy of a Pinterest post?

13.       You will want to elope. Many times. Probably every day. But I have heard that it will be all worth it on your wedding day, mostly because your opportunity to elope is pretty much gone.