From the Heart: What if your wedding isn’t really your own?

Someone said to me the other day that our wedding isn’t really our own. With confused side eye I asked for more information. ‘Well…’ she started, ‘once you accept monetary help from anyone towards your wedding it isn’t really your own any more’. Of course she didn’t mean that our wedding day wasn’t for us, just simply that the decisions we were making for the day had to have consideration for the people around us who were helping towards paying for it.

We are contributing financially towards the cost of our own wedding of course, but so far, all those kind family members who have helped us out money wise have, in so doing, been making a series of requests that will influence the style and tone of the day.

 

At first, in my happy planning bubble, I didn’t see this as a problem at all, and agreed to each request as we went along; they included an extra guest here or there, an extra room at the hotel, an additional journey in the wedding car, a cup of coffee for an Aunt who would have a moan otherwise, a reserved row at the ceremony. But then those ‘few requests’ become many, and I realised that not only were they going to cost us more money, they were going to turn our wedding into something that we didn’t really desire.

A ‘childless, traditional, elegant, autumnal mess’ was what we’d envisioned at the start of our planning process.  We both agreed that there wouldn’t be a ‘theme’ – just a collection of things we liked and wanted to have there on the day to reflect each of us individually and as a couple.

Somehow through, through the accumulation of all the ‘added extras’ and requests from those donating to the cost of our wedding, the occasion had turned into a specifically colour themed, larger than anticipated, structured wedding. And whilst I love the colour (emerald green in case you were wondering) and there will still be unstructured elements (the flowers), the wedding had stopped feeling like a true reflection of ‘us’.

Floral inspiration – photography by Bhavna Barratt
Via this post on Love My Dress

My thoughts and worries about this woke me in the middle of the night last week, when I dreamt that I went to bed the night before the wedding and woke up the day after having missed the whole thing. In the same dream – I went down for breakfast in the hotel and all our guests were talking about how lovely the day had been, but I couldn’t remember a thing! The following night was even worse, when I dreamt that my dress was too short and my hairdresser insisted on me having my hair put up because ‘that’s what brides do’.  There were people there that I didn’t even know!

As crazy as it might seem – these dreams are actually a quite accurate reflection of my genuine concerns about our wedding.

In the middle of a recent ‘wedmin weekend’, my fiance and I voiced our worries with one another. We put our serious heads together and made some changes. We restructured the guest list, knocked off people that we didn’t actually want there, added people that we did and made decisions on the wedding just for us. This included not cutting the cake until 11pm when we know we’d both probably be fancying a snack!

Our wedding plans have concluded organically from things we like and the people we are, and after reading this wedding blog for sometime (a habit I have to admit I enjoyed even before I became a bride to be) I have learned so many things, the most important of which is that authenticity is the most important factor for your wedding. The day ought reflect the bride and groom – it is, after all, a celebration of their lives and love for one another. And if that means me wearing a trusty knitted cardigan and converse and him wearing an outlandish tweed suit, well, that’s what we’ll be doing.

Photography by The Curries
Via this post on Love My Dress

After reading the (laughable) Guardian post Annabel wrote about last week, I thought hard about our day and which ‘category’ of weddings (see said Guardian post) we were likely to fall into. I’m happy to admit it doesn’t fall into any of them! We’re getting married at Cardiff Castle in a rustic space with autumnal features and quirky accents. It made me think about how the journalist who wrote that newspaper article didn’t consider those weddings that don’t fall into any pigeon hole, or that simply weren’t what you expected.

Following our recent cut-throat decision making, the conversations have been hard, especially when it has come to explaining the reasons why we’ve chosen to change the DJ, or why the bar won’t be open before the ceremony, and why certain guests have been removed from the list; and there are still more conversations to be had (the baby in me has left the worst until last!).

‘I just don’t agree with that decision’ was uttered the most along with ‘She has to be invited, period!’ and a few other heated words from certain family members, but remember what we’d discussed and agreed, we grabbed the bull by the horns and decided to say ‘no, this day is for us!’. And it will be.

We will be having a plain sponge cake iced in black no matter how many people say having a different flavour for each tier is ‘how it’s done’,  or how many people say you can’t have a black cake at a wedding! It’s what we both want.

 

Black wedding cake – via Pinterest

Money is a hard topic to approach anyway, isn’t it? Most people I know avoid talking about it altogether, and more so I think when it comes to weddings. There seems, often, to be an air of secrecy when it comes to discussing how much you’re spending on your wedding; lots of brides I know who have gone before won’t divulge the information and going through planning our day, and seeing how much even little things cost, I can now see why. Maybe I underestimated the task ahead of us when we started to plan our wedding?

 

Moss table decor, via Pinterest

 

So, is the day our own? Most certainly. And whilst I agree that accepting kindly monetary donations from people does mean you have to bear those people in mind, it doesn’t make you beholden to them.

In our view, we’re getting married and planning a day for our guest’s enjoyment!  So whilst some of those guests may disagree with our ideas now, I’m sure that when the day comes, none of this hassle will even be remembered. Our families will be proudly walking around talking to the guests that we’ve chosen to be there, eating the food that we’ve selected for them to eat and dancing to the band and DJ that we chose ourselves.

Perhaps our plans to decorate the tables with moss, or serve wild flowers and vegetable noodles won’t be for everyone 🙂 But it’s for us. If we can sit back after the day and reflect on our creation with smiles on our faces, then I will be a happy wife.

Are you having difficult fulfilling your wedding day visions? Are well meaning (or maybe less well meaning) family members and friends encroaching on your plans and trying to change your views? I’d love to hear from you and your experiences. You might also want to read this ‘How to have the wedding you want when your parents are paying for it’ feature written by Annabel.

Karys x

 

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Our lovely blog reader Karys has contributed to our ‘From The Heart’ feature – a weekly Sunday spot where we hand Love My Dress back over to our readers to write about all matters of love and life. 

If you would like to contribute a From The Heart piece, we would dearly love to hear from you. It doesn’t matter what it’s about and it doesn’t have to be related to weddings at all – we’re looking for honest, authentic, personal, sad, happy, family, relationship, marriage, health, light-hearted, serious, baby, trying for baby, children, career, simple, complicated – real life issues.  We just need you to write from your heart. Keep it upbeat and witty, or share your thoughts anonymously on a more challenging or emotional subject. Please drop me a line at [email protected]. Love Annabel x

Images taken by the author unless otherwise stated.