‘There’s Beauty in the Breakdown’ ~ A Reassessment of the ‘Perfect’ Wedding: A Discussion Post by Franky…

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'Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow?

Such boundless pleasure…. So, let go, so let go. Jump in.

Oh well, what you waiting for? It's alright.

'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown…'

Let Go ~ Frou Frou

 

A fascinating discussion raged on the facebook page of luxury stationer Cutture recently that began with the following statement…

Cutture

The responses provoked by this question were all very interesting, but perhaps none more so than that left by Laura Caudery of Parallel Venues

'I just worry that everyone is preoccupied with the 'perfect wedding'. Yes, we all spend a lot of time, money and effort on the big day, but please don't lose sight of what it's really about. It is not an opportunity just to represent the best version of yourself and your relationship, it is about sharing your commitment to one another with those that are nearest and dearest to you… I don't think people should be encouraged to believe everything has to be 'picture perfect' or 'blogged' to mean it was special'.

As the conversation continued on twitter, Laura went on to say 'Weddings aren't a perfectly styled shoot where all is perfect'.  

These words have been whirling around in my head ever since. My immediate reaction was complete agreement, but it soon occurred to me that my relationship to such assertions was, in fact, a lot more complex than it first appeared. 

You see, it may have escaped your attention, but my wedding was blogged. On these very pages. It also appeared in a top wedding magazine; a two page spread filled with stunning images provided by our photographer Eliza Claire. You can see me kissing my husband in the beautiful grounds of Pinewood Studios and countless other details from the day, such as flower filled jam jars and the placecards I hand-stamped with the names of all our guests. 

Annabel even came to our wedding. We didn't know each other then, at least not like we do now. Instead, she was there in her capacity as a wedding blogger, shadowing our photographer and experiencing the day from a supplier's perspective. Annabel tweeted pictures while she was in attendance and our wedding even had its own {very tongue in cheek} hashtag on twitter! 

These weren't things I aspired to while planning our wedding though.

I had been a loyal reader of Love My Dress for almost two years by the time we were married. I can still remember clicking that first link to a real wedding that had been thrown up in a random google search. It was, as they say, love at first sight. I immediately immersed myself in the world of Love My Dress, leaving regular comments, bookmarking my favourite features and sourcing many of our suppliers through the adverts that fill the sidebars.

Much of our wedding was underpinned by material or ideas first encountered on wedding blogs, but I certainly wasn't concerned with creating a 'blog worthy' wedding.

Instead, I was preoccupied with making our guests feel well looked after. I wanted them to enjoy themselves, to feel cared for and appreciated. That's what many of the details were about for me.

Our handmade placecards, painstakingly decorated jam jars and homemade cake buffet may be what a wedding bloggers dreams are made of, but they were also an expression of our love for our family and friends. They were a way to show we had thought about, and taken time over, their experience of the day. 

Of course, some of the decisions we made were purely selfish ones. When it came to decorating the room our reception was to be held in, the brief I discussed with my Mum was simple. 'I just want to walk in and think it's beautiful', I said.

I wanted to feel a little magic on my wedding day, like I was lost in a daydream with my new husband. Hence the abundance of candlelight, the old silent movie playing in the background, and the tables that overflowed with blousy pink blooms. Turns out, all this makes for a pretty good picture. A 'blog worthy' one even.

And then there was all the love. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you can't pin that to a Pinterest board.

When it was time for me to say my vows, I concentrated on my husband's face just as purposefully as I did the words. It felt so powerful, all that emotion, contained only by the look we were giving each other, the gaze we were sharing. It was as if you could reach out and touch it.

All of a sudden we were kissing, and, for a brief moment, it felt like it was just the two of us in the room. It was perfect.

As I mentally composed this blog post in my head over the last few days, I decided to return to facebook and examine the photos I'd been tagged in by friends and family in the wake of our wedding day. Flicking through the various albums I found blurry photos of us, pictures that captured the back of our heads, and images of our guests looking slightly worse for wear.

** The images in this post are not taken by a professional wedding photographer

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With my hair in rollers, and without a scrap of makeup on, I open a card from my almost husband; a candid photo of my Mum as she looks on proudly during our ceremony; two of my beautiful maids on the way to the venue {my sister's eyes are already filled with tears!}. 

 I realised there is still beauty to be found in the unpolished, less than perfect side of a wedding, the side that won't end up on a wedding blog. Because, if you're guided by the right things, by love and your desire to declare it to one another in front of the most precious people in your life, then perfection will pour from every image of your day, professional or otherwise.  

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There was so much laughter and smiles as we tried to get Jesse to join in the formal photos; someone's camera phone captured our joy as we left the ceremony; dancing with my daughter is one of my happiest memories from the whole day. 

According to the dictionary definition of the word 'perfect', a wedding that meets this standard will have 'all the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics'. It will be 'as good as it is possible to be'.

So, yes, my wedding was perfect. For me, for us. And it would have been whether it had ended up on a blog or not.  

As the song says, perhaps we all just need to let go, jump in, and find the beauty in the breakdown.

What does having a 'perfect' wedding mean to you? And what are your thoughts on having images of your wedding taken by friends and family, shared on social media, before you have seen the professional photographs?

Franky

Heart

 

You can read and participate in more discussion posts here on Love My Dress.

31 thoughts on “‘There’s Beauty in the Breakdown’ ~ A Reassessment of the ‘Perfect’ Wedding: A Discussion Post by Franky…

  1. In a bid to save money, we have taken the brave move of not getting a professional wedding photographer. I have several friends that have fancy camera and a couple of those have undertaken photography courses, so I am positive that a few lovely shots will appear. Along with the prettiness that Instagram brings I want my pics on Facebook as they are happening. I want the friends in Australia, South Africa and Poland that aren’t able to come to see the wedding as it unfolds on the day. I have no issues with the terrible shots that end up on social media, it’s not as if our friends haven’t seen us looking at our worst, and still love us despite it. And those that gain some happiness from seeing a bride from her “bad side” are obviously deeply unhappy individuals who are not worthy of even discussing. J, Bride to be.

  2. I don’t mind the facebook photos, in fact I think it will be quite exciting to see them speak while we wait for the professional ones. It’s also a good way to see the wedding from others prospective including the bit’s I missed.

  3. A candid view from me, with some photographers and blogs probably putting us on their black list! There is too much emphasis on images of a ‘styled’ wedding shoot. Every blog is screaming “styled shoot” “styled engagement shoot”, and yes they look absolutely amazing, but it also creates an amazing amount of stress for the couple getting married to try and emulate that dream of a shoot which has been styled by many experts with experienced models to create ‘the dream’.
    Whilst guests posting pictures on FB and other social media may jump the gun while you are waiting for the edited and photoshopped ones they do capture the real flavour of the day! Yes, I love my edited photo album loads and will cherish it forever. But I equally love those images provided by family and friends who captured candid shots of my guests (some of whom are no longer here). These shots will make me smile and giggle over the years. The wedding album has been stuffed away in the attic!!
    It’s also not a good idea to ditch the professional photographer and rely on guests to create your album! Wedding photographers are experts in their field, and the really good ones will get to know the couple beforehand, and get the best images. Most couples can’t wait to see photos of the wedding and are impatient when it comes to waiting for the finished article from the wedding photographer. Facebook is shared to people who are family and friends and they already know you well, but may not be at your wedding. If you don’t want your wedding photos on FB, you can always change the privacy settings.
    Pamela – Weddings in Surrey

  4. I think that all brides will have their own opinion about what their perfect wedding consists of. When I think about what this means to me a few points immediately come to my mind. Firstly I want our wedding day to be a fairly relaxed and enjoyable day for everyone involved. I want our wedding day to be individual to my partner and I- a reflection of our likes and personalities. This is where blogs such as this come in so handy as there are such a variety of weddings shown on here to get ideas from. The final point that comes to my mind is that I want our wedding to be beautiful- who doesn’t!
    I won’t have any problems with photos from our wedding being put on Facebook, in fact I will look forward to seeing these!

  5. This post is striking a chord with me, lovely Franky. I am just over 4 weeks away from my own wedding and although I am so excited, I am also very nervous. Lots of our guests are travelling long-ish distances for our wedding and I want them to have a lovely day. I want them to enjoy the food we’ve chosen, the wine we so painstakingly tasted and purchased, I hope they love the ceilidh band, I hope they like the music we’ve chosen for the disco after the ceilidh, I hope they all get along. And more than anything I hope they like the cake that I will be making as cake means the world to me.
    I love playing host and this is the biggest dinner party I will ever throw. I’m also a bit of a control freak and I know I will have to let go on the day. So far, it’s been pretty stress free, but with it coming closer I’m starting to feel the pressure. People just keep asking me if everything is sorted, am I getting nervous yet. I probably am getting nervous, but if I allow myself to be nervous I am going to be a wreck on the day.
    Am I looking forward to seeing photos on Facebook, hopefully the day after. Our photographer is a cousin of my fiancé, who is a semi-pro photographer, but this is his first wedding. I’m looking forward seeing his photos, but I find photos taken by friends very charming indeed. I might even sneak our little compact in my bag to take pics on the night.
    My fiancé, who is wise, said to me the other day that our wedding is perfect if he’s there, I show up and the registrar is there to marry us. Everything else is secondary. And he’s right.

  6. We were really happy for our friends and family to snap away and post whatever they wanted. They were there to have fun and support us and we didn’t see that coming with any special rules …sure I look all shiny on the facebook photos and have some strange eye things going on in some of them, but we still look darn happy and it was fun to see these before our official (non-shiny) photos arrived!
    At the beginning of our engagement I did feel some pressure of having a “bloggable” wedding, not because we wanted the fame and the glory, just because they all looked so happy and glorious! If our wedding was blogged it must have been a good day, right? Anyhoo, when we started to plan our day together I found that we didn’t talk about the “perfect this and that, we just got stuck into what we thought would make us and our guests happy. And as it turns out, our wedding did end up gracing these lovely pages, so go figure!

  7. If I wake up the day after the wedding and I’m not tagged in hundreds of drunk ridiculous photos then I will be disappointed!
    Don’t get me wrong, I do want the beautiful keepsake pictures of a professional that I will admire forever but, I’m only 21 and once they have been taken I want to enjoy the big party and that involves the hilarious photos that surface the next day like any night out 😉 xx

  8. As a little aside, some of my favourite photos from our wedding day are those taken by the children – we put out disposable cameras for them. Who *ever* said they were naff? They are FAB!!! So much fun looking through shots taken by the little ones – seeing the magic unfold through their eyes, capturing the secret moments we’d have never known about otherwise!
    I have to say I agree with Laura Caudery on this one – weddings are NOT styled photoshoots – they are weddings! Celebrations of love.
    Of course as a blog owner I want my pages to look lovely, but I’m constantly trying to strike a balance between ‘visually inspirational’ and keeping it real.
    I think I’d feel quite curmudgeonly if I were to ask guests not to take photos/put them on Facebook – especially if I were to put it in print!
    You can always ‘untag’ yourself on Facebook I guess?
    This is a really well written feature Franky – thank you xxx

  9. Franky, it’s like you were a fly on the wall in our house yesterday. My fiance and I have been disagreeing about this very issue.
    Since we got engaged, I have been glued to a variety of wedding blogs, loving the real wedding posts and being inspired by beautiful ideas to help make our wedding day special. But for me, the details aren’t the most important thing. What I want to acheive is a day where our guests are entertained, happy and well looked after. I want the day to be full of fun and emotions, so everyone can look back and remember a beautiful day.
    For me, I want to put my best effort into fashioning the details and the decorations, not because I want to have the perfect photo albumn, but so that on the day I can be proud of what we have achieved and so our friends and family will know how much their attendence is appreciated.
    A “blog worthy” wedding is not my intention, but “our perfect” wedding is…
    However, in my excitement, I try to get my fiance involved, showing him blog posts, videos and other items which I think are inspirational. He thinks that I’m setting us up for a fall, and that I’ll end up disappointed if our wedding doesn’t look just like the ones I’ve seen posted online. With our limited budget it would be near impossible to achieve the scale and finish of some of the weddings we’ve seen.
    But that’s not my intention – I just want it to be our special day. That comes from the people and love. So, it’s not just this bride feeling the pressure to create a perfect wedding – I’m somehow passing that pressure onto my poor groom. Your post has basically explained exactly what I’ve been feeling. Now I just need to vocalise it properly to my poor, long suffering fiance.

  10. To be fair, the job for blogs is to sell the sizzle – ‘this is what you can do with this centrepiece, this is an idea how to wear your hair with this dress…’
    I have been to weddings as a guest where they have had a professional photographer, but the only ones they put up in Facebook were from a friend they had given their camera to.
    And for those friends that didn’t have a professional photographer they just put up one or two – just the bride and groom/everyone standing in a line one.
    So people – at least the ones I know – don’t seem to want to share much on Facebook – just enough to said ‘look I got married!’

  11. Franky, excellent post! It’s fascinating how the effects of social media have become such an serious consideration for brides + grooms in our crazy world of instant publishing and citizen journalism.
    Far too many people worry about the public perception of their relationship and choices and forget about why they are really tying the knot in the first place. Barring the photographs and statuses of their friends and family is like telling them not to enjoy or celebrate the wedding, don’t you think?! After all many of us now intrinsically share photos, feelings and memories via Facebook and Twitter as social, connected human beings. Halting this process seems a little stuffy and sad – the family snaps above are all beautiful in their own right and truly capture moments of love and happiness.
    We are all utterly spoilt by the beautiful imagery of blogged shoots and delicious wedding photography, what with all these amazing advances in both digital photography technology and professional skills! Couples might want to remember that back when our parents took their vows a few precious, often blurry or overexposed (!) snaps were all they had to share the memory of their day – and they were completely happy with that.
    PS. If anyone really wants to protect themselves from ‘tagbarrassment’, Facebook Timeline Review can be switched on very easily, or, for a super lockdown you can deactivate your profile altogether (which will prevent anyone from being able to tag you!)

  12. Thank you for your comment Jodie.
    I must admit I wouldn’t want to be without our pro photos, but I can also appreciate that photography is very expensive. I have a friend who married 7yrs ago without a pro there and she is so proud of the handful of photos she has that friends took. In many ways they are more precious to her as there are only a few.
    I totally agree with your final statement, very sad individuals indeed.
    xxx

  13. Hehe! I knew what you meant Ashleigh! I totally agree, guests do capture bits you don’t see. Some of my favourite pictures were taken by out 12 year old nephew. they are awful quality, very blurry etc, but it’s lovely to see the day through his eyes. He took a million photos of the wedding car he was so impressed by it!
    xxx

  14. A very intersting comment, thank you Pamela.
    I have some thoughts on your first point, but I’m going to save them for a whole other blog post! Thank you for making me think about this issue.
    I agree the images on FB etc capture the real essence of the wedding. Whenever I’m having a bad day I love to dip into our friends snaps online. It really does bring the day flooding back to me.
    xxx

  15. I agree Nicola, ‘perfection’ is a flexible concept and can be interpreted in anumber of ways. I guess the important thing is to stay true to your personal idea of what a ‘perfect’ wedding is.
    xxx

  16. Oh your future husband is wise, very wise. You should listen to him 😉
    And nerves are normal. I felt terrible until I woke up on the day, and then I was suddenly overcome by this amazing feeling of calm. I’d done everything I could by that point and I knew I just had to let go and allow the day to happen. Was very freeing.
    Best of luck with these last few weeks, and thank you for always leaving such thoughtful comments on our posts 🙂
    xxx

  17. We were sat at breakfast the morning after our wedding and our friend Ben had already downloaded all of his photos on to his iPad. He showed me one shot of us walking away from the rest of the wedding party, hand-in-hand, laughing in relieved excitement after our blessing. I promptly burst into tears (again). It is still one of my favourite images now and is the screensaver on my phone.
    I then proceeded to spend the 36 hours before honeymoon checking to see if any of my other friends had put photos online. And when they did, and my pitiful 3G or slow hotel wifi took an age to see them, I commented on each and every one of them. I loved the ones of me caught mid-story looking like a maniac, the ones of my new husband looking decidedly tipsy, the ones with flash in the wrong places as we walked down the aisle and everything else in between.
    Because the thing is, when you’re actually getting married, you don’t know what it looks like. You’re completely submerged in your own experience, in the moment. This meant that afterwards I craved images like some sort of wedding photo junkie, because I wanted to see it through other people’s eyes.
    If you’re one of these people that doesn’t want to have your photos taken by your own friends and family and shared in case they don’t capture your best angle or pay homage to your painstaking details then, quite frankly, you need to have a word with yourself. I love that our professional photos are beautiful and make me look better than I ever have before, but I equally love those fuzzy, blurry, funny photos that our guests took too and would be lost without them.

  18. I don’t know why perfectly normal girls go crazy over this stuff. It’s a wedding not a stage show. Frankly I didn’t care what anyone did or didn’t do at my wedding. I was determined that I would have a great time. I deserved it after all those months of stressful planning.
    Femke’s fiance is totally correct. That’s the stuff that really matters obvs. you want to look amazing etc. but as a make-up artist I have seen girls breakdown on the morning of the wedding because the flowers turn up with the wrong colour fuchsia ribbon.
    As for friends not taking photos I think it’s really precious, you’re friends/family only want to share in your day and record it for you and them. I loved seeing those photos during the agonising wait for the professional shots. They really helped me a) relive the day and b)see all the things that happened from other peoples perspective as you cant be everywhere.
    My advice is chill out on the day, plan like crazy before hand if you need to (I did) but come the day relax and just enjoy every second because in the blink of an eye it’s all over.

  19. Great post! I personally have no problem with people putting photos on facebook, even ‘as it happens’. As other comments have said, it allows people who couldn’t make it to feel included, and all your mates have seen you looking a lot worse!
    For me, the niggling thing is actually people taking photos during our ceremony at all. This has been blogged about before (was it here? I can’t remember!) but I’m more worried about everyone watching us say our vows through the viewfinder of their cameras or their phone screens then where the pictures end up. I want our friends and family to actually ‘be there’ with us, not watching us absently through a machine.
    I think the issue about the pressure to have a bloggable wedding is a really interesting one, and something that maybe Franky should write a separate post about? Its clearly something playing on people’s minds.

  20. This post has hit upon something that my fiancé and I are trying to figure out at the moment. I have been considering putting out a ‘please don’t publish on Facebook’ request to guests, but have no idea how to do it without sounding like a diva!
    For us, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with wanting to look ‘perfect’. There are many MANY dodgy photos of me on Facebook from my uni days, and they capture and remind me of so many fun memories. But it’s the privacy issue we’re debating over. I’m not sure how I feel about friends of friends, who have absolutely no idea who we are and how we came to be together, poring over our intimate, private, special day.
    To combat this, I’ll admit it, slightly unreasonable request, I’m thinking about setting up a Flickr account that all the guests can access and upload photos to, so that everyone can see the day in all its glory.

  21. In an effort to dispell this unattainable “perfect” wedding myth I, for one, would love to see more non-professional photos on blogs etc, maybe a special gallery should be set up 🙂

  22. I think the key for me in this is not the shiny wobbly photos posted on facebook, but the guests that think it’s acceptable to be tweeting as I’m walking up the aisle. I have some sympathy with the social media ban at weddings, not due to self-conscious photo screening, but because it’s nice to encourage everyone to be in the moment rather than blogging and posting during the day itself – a practice which has, unfortunately, become acceptable and which I think increasingly is being seen for what it is, which is darn rude.

  23. I went to a friend’s wedding last year; they’re not very well-off at all, and everything was on a shoestring. Yet it was one of the nicest weddings I’ve been to because it was so much more relaxed. They couldn’t afford a wedding photographer, or a fancy reception, instead marrying in a registry office and hiring a room out in the top floor of the local pub. I borrowed my Dad’s DSLR to take some lovely photos, and other people had nice cameras with them. It was such a wonderful atmosphere compared to a wedding we’d been to earlier in the year where we stood out in the wind waiting for the professional photographer to do her business (I don’t like it when my heels are sinking into the muddy grass!).
    From a guest’s perspective, I felt so much more at ease. It didn’t feel like a wedding was being had because a couple wanted to have a huge expensive party (and I do feel that some people get married partly for that reason), instead it felt like these two people were so in love, they had to get married.
    Everyone came together to get them things they couldn’t afford. The groom was given a proper shave and hair cut by a friend as a gift, the bride’s sister-in-law made lovely jewellery for her and the bridesmaids, and one of their friends did a super speedy photo album for them, with lots of beautiful sepia shots. They weren’t as polished a professional set of shots might have been, but we all wrote special messages to them in the album and it was presented to them at the end of the night. They were really touched. The next day, loads of photos were appearing on facebook, and it was lovely to see the range of perspectives collected on the day.
    I suppose my point is that weddings don’t have to be big and bold to be beautiful. You don’t *need* a professional photographer, an expensive venue, or even a proper reception, for it to be a memorable occasion for you and your friends. It’s all about the love.

  24. Maybe it’s because I’m quite comfortable with social media that I really don’t mind pictures of me ending up ‘out there’. I have added photos from weddings I have been to onto FB and as a friend and a wedding guest, I would NEVER intentionally upload a ‘dodgy’ picture.
    I have also uploaded pictures and made the album private so only certain people could see it – I did that for the night of my best friend’s mendhi party – we were in PJs, the bride had her hands and feet wrapped in sheets / plastic but the pictures of her and her sisters were so cute. I have also done this for hen parties.
    I have never rec’d an invite saying ‘do not upload pics’ and if I did I would of course respect the ban, but I would find it odd to be totally honest.
    If you invite someone to your wedding you need to trust that they will be appropriate and respect you.
    There have been a few comments about having a bloggable wedding. Hhhhmm. I think I may have felt a teeny bit of pressure when I started planning, but with two months to go, I couldn’t really give a toss if it’s bloggable or not. I just want it to all pull off with minimal hitches and have a lovely day.
    It’s MY wedding and my memories. I don’t care what is published about it. I just want people to have a blast – if they think they want to tweet about it then so be it.

  25. Hi Katrina – If you check your privacy settings in Facebook you can lock down your photos completely, or just to include friends. A Flickr or Dropbox account will work just as well, but you will need to contact everyone to give them the access.

  26. I LOVE our guests photos, they captured so many different aspects that our professional photographer didn’t have any opportunity to! We set up a Facebook group and actually encouraged them all to load their photos to it. It also gave an opportunity for all guests that may not have known each other to see different ones from the day, if you go on our Facebook group know it literally documents every single bit of the day and night. We loved that over our honeymoon we could check in to see it being regularly updated!! xx

  27. We had the perfect wedding, the most relaxed day possible and this is what we wanted, two families coming together to share in our love, I loved that at our wedding both sides of the family were chatting all evening and the video footage we have of the evening dances is some of the highlights of my day I just love watching how our two families were up on the dance floor all night singing and dancing together, With regards to images on facebook, I actually keep logging in while on honeymoon in the hope of seeing images from our wedding, in fact I was becoming in patience that family had not put the images up I wanted to relive the day over and over and seeing everyones images made this happen for me, I had no issue with my images going on facebook, and I really would not of changed a single thing about our wedding best day ever.

  28. I don’t care about photos going up on facebook. The only reason I wouldn’t want people taking their own photos would be because I want them to be present and enjoying the day rather than spending the whole time taking photos. I think that’s one of the best things about having a photographer there. You want to have memories of being at the wedding, not memories of taking photos at the wedding. I LOVE reading this blog but I have to admit, I feel less connection to the weddings that feel like it was just an extravagant excuse to have a photoshoot. I agree though, with what you say about the decorations being an expression of love and wanting to have magic on your wedding day. You want to be surrounded in beauty when you’re doing something that is beautiful and that you want to remember. Great post!

  29. What a beautiful post…it had me in tears! I’ve only been engaged for a couple of weeks (although I’ve silently followed Love My Dress for a lot longer than that…) but I know what you mean about the “picture-perfect” wedding. Thankfully what’s important for me is my family, my friends and that wonderful man who will be waiting for me at the end of the aisle! But it is true that it can get overwhelming. I have my first appointment in a bridal shop tomorrow and I’m so scared I’m going to be a white ball of fluff. I guess that’s just where the expectations, the magazines and the blogs are hitting me: I am crafty, I think we’ll have a beautiful day, but I still feel insecure about myself – anybody else feeling the same pressure??
    Maria

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