After being married for a little over a month now, I think back to our wedding day and I have come to realize that weddings are overrated.Now don't get me wrong. Weddings are certainly important. And fun. Although honestly, it's a lot more fun attending someone else's wedding than worry about all the details of your own. And yeah, it was definitely wonderful to see all of our friends and family there, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about how easy it is to anxiously await the wedding day and not prepare for the actual marriage. The wedding is just one day, but the marriage is a lifetime.
How screwed up have we gotten that we invest so much time, energy, and money into one single day and not even think about all the days after? It's so easy for us to be excited about one day, one moment, one second... but then it disappears so quickly.
For all you science nerds out there, it's like the Doppler Effect: You just got engaged. You can see the wedding day in the distance. The day is approaching. You begin to plan, organize, and prepare. The pressure builds. The day is coming closer. 11 months. Pressure builds. It's getting louder. 6 months away. All of the plans are falling into place, but you get busier with preparations. 1 month away. It gets louder and louder. Pressure builds. 2 weeks away. Then it's right there in front of you! It's tomorrow! The bachelor party! The rehearsal dinner! Then, the wedding! Then... WHOOSH!!!!!! ...the wedding is behind you. It's quiet. It has passed. Whew.Now it's normal life again. Now we have the whole rest of our lives to live. The wedding went by so quick.
It would have been so easy to just focus on the wedding during our engagement, but Jen and I made sure to focus on our relationship first and foremost. We used our engagement as a time to learn and grow about each other. A kind of "trial and error" with our communication and interaction. Because of that, we have been well-prepared for not just the wedding day, but for our marriage.
Sure, the wedding day is a celebration of the uniting of two people committed to each other. But my wedding already seems like a dream to me. It doesn't even seem like it happened because it went by so fast. I'm just glad that we didn't just prepare for that one day, but that we prepared for every day after as well.
Related post: First Thoughts From Married Life
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I read most everything....especially the bold, though. : ) Good blog. Yeah...weddings can be overrated, for sure. Mine is going to be not overrated...its going to be an awesome, organized PAR-TAY....mostly because I've already started planning in my head. Hehe.....Wahhhhhhhh. : (
ReplyDeleteGood blog. I have to agree wedding are so overrated!! The focus on wedding receptions these days is especially great. The wedding receptions which are featured on TV, sent messages to future brides; “Your wedding should be extravagant and super expensive, like a celebrity weddings". I recently got engaged and of course I started to prepare for the so called "dream wedding reception”... I found the perfect place, florist which was super pricey! As the budget started to increase with all the supposedly necessary steps for a great wedding, I realized that instead of having a huge party which we (my finance and I) would not even get a chance to fully enjoy, which will pass us by so fast and will cost so much money, stress... We asked ourselves?? Is this worth it???!!!! We don’t have to show everyone our love by throwing this big party. We changed our minds!! We both decided to celebrate our wedding in a different way. We decided to take our family and few closest friends to a fancy dinner. Use the money which was meant for the reception party to enjoy great honeymoon.
ReplyDeleteI don't think weddings are overrated. I had a fairly large wedding 2 years ago and don't regret it. It was stressful to plan but so worth it. We set our budget and stuck to it. It was simple but lovely and still topic of converstation. It would have been nice to have wedding pictures from my parents. I would tell anyone that asks it's worth the effort as long as you don't break the bank.
ReplyDeleteWeddings are mostly a pissing contest for women. Its like their wedding has to be the biggest, most beautiful, best photography, best of everything OVER all of their married friends. Of course, ALL AT THE EXPENSE OF SOMEONE ELSE, BTW. Then most young bride and grooms have major debt and college loans, yet they think it's logical to plop down 15k-50k on a one day event. This is just more proof that the Amerikan culture creates different levels of mental illness...
ReplyDeleteso true... its an ego contest, at least thats how it seems to me... let me be the prettiest, most glamorous for just that one day:) lol
DeleteGood blog
ReplyDeleteIm engaged, and don't want the expense, the stress, the unnecessary overload of attention, the outdated and (to me) meaningless traditional ceremony, and I really want to avoid of the b.s of passive aggressive women comparing weddings (the "pissing contest for women" as one poster calls it). Elope & focus on my marriage- that plan makes me truly happy. My future hubby is happy I wasn't brought up with a 'princess complex' that turns seemingly normal women into totally greedy self absorbed morons when they get engaged.
Weddings can be nice but, the best romantic moments, the ones that will always be stuck in my head and heart, were born out of a naturally occurring series of events. There's no forcing that type of thing to happen on a certain day to be witnessed by a group of invited people.