Weddingbee boards

I sorta felt this way with a couple of friends, but after a while, I stopped. I stopped because I realized that there was really no point to have to feel competitive. Each wedding is SO different, and everyone has such different tastes and budgets. I wasn't being honest to myself for trying to compare. So, I stopped! And I'm so happy that we are just honest about what we can or cannot afford. =)

this is where being the first of our circle to get married comes in handy...people will be comparing their weddings to ours, not vice versa. i'm happy to set the bar high for the rest of them ;) haha, i kid! although i did briefly think back to the previous weddings i'd been to in the recent years and was happy knowing our wedding will be much more personal and unique!

I don't feel competitive about our wedding.  I have a friend getting married this June and I know her wedding is going to be amazing - but she also is spending 7x more than us and plans on having a 350 person guest list!  And, my fiance's brother is getting married 4 months before us (don't get me started on this) and they seem to be doing things for all the wrong reasons - so I don't feel any competition against them, either. 

I have to admit, I'm not pumped about our reception location - but it is what we could afford - and I've heard they have great food and they're letting us bring our own wine for everyone - so I hope people will get tipsy and have a great time! :-)  Plus, our families are very down to earth, so I think they'll love it. 

If I am honest with myself, I do have to admit that I get competitive about weddings of certain friends.  I have a friend who got married last fall.  We are good friends, but there has always been a bit of competitiveness between us.  I was worried going to the wedding that it would be so amazing and I would worry that mine wouldn't live up to it.  After the wedding my FI and I both agreed, in private and in fun, that our wedding "would kick [friend's] wedding's a**."  It was a fun moment between us and helped me realize that we are perfect for each other! 

I think it is hard not to have competitive thoughts like these, especially when you are focused on so many details.  It is human nature.  It is just a feeling.  It is not a wish for someone else to have a bad wedding.  So we shouldn't feel bad about our feelings!

I haven't really done any kind of comparison or competitiveness with my friends' recent weddings, but I have been doing a mental comparison of my upcoming wedding and my cousin's wedding from last summer. Her family has always been much better off than my family, and she's always been one to rub things in my face that she has more than me. However, her parents believe weddings shouldn't cost a bundle and so set a budget for both her and her sister that was quite low. So yes, I admit I've taken some guilty glee in the fact that nearly every aspect of our wedding will be nicer than hers.

I felt somewhat competitive with one wedding in particular -- my friend's 19 year old brother decided to marry his 18 year old girlfriend a week and a day after my wedding. Both weddings were at a considerable distance for our mutual friends (friends in MN, their wedding in CT, mine in MS) but I did feel some pressure to be the one that people "picked" to come to. Also, my brother was chosen to be a groomsman in this wedding! Talk about stress, especially on my parent's budget (brother is not self-sufficient yet, and my dad has just recently come out of a 2-year semi-employed period).

In the end, there were only a few people who "picked" theirs over mine, but the one girl that I really missed couldn't come only because she couldn't get the weekend of mine off, and could for theirs (plus her fiance was a groomsman). The other two, one is the best friend of that groom's little sister and I don't know in particular what her reasons were, and the other is NOTORIOUS for taking advantage of parties.. first to arrive, last to leave, never talks to the host and never brings anything. Also incredibly socially awkward, so him I did NOT miss. :) He was also the dope who tried to get the groomsmen's caravan out there to turn around and go home after a day and a half of driving because there was a chance of a snowstorm in New York. On the other hand, however, the competing groom's little sister DID take time out of her finals to come to my wedding as a surprise, which was very sweet.

Other than the competing guests issue, I think the only thing that bugged me was the fact that my DH and I worked our ways through college and couldn't get married until after graduation so he could be debt-free, and consequently had a max wedding budget (honeymoon and rings included) of $3000. No parental help at all, due to my parents' already mentioned situation. Them, on the other hand, both come from well-to-do families, and her dad is going to continue to pay her way through college until she graduates, married or not. And of course, threw them a rather expensive wedding. My brother could not stop talking to me about how great the appetizers and the dinner and the open bar and everything else were, while I was sitting there thinking how shabby our barely-there appetizers must have looked.

In the end, I know it doesn't matter, but I really didn't want anyone thinking before hand, "I'll go to X's wedding rather than December's because there will be better food" or afterwards saying "Man, X's wedding was so much cooler than December's bargain basement one." So I suppose in a way, I was competing because I didn't want to be compared. :)

It's definitely natural to compare your wedding to others. Leading up to our wedding, I felt as if I couldn't ever relax. I was constantly seeing what people did for every detail of their wedding to figure out what I did or did not want for our wedding. For example, one wedding, it took pretty much all night to go from cocktails to dessert with no dancing in between. I knew I did NOT want that to happen at my wedding. In the end, I just wanted my guests to leave and say, "that wedding was a lot of fun!"

After your wedding is over, the most relaxing wedding you'll go to is the first one after you're married. You'll also notice certain things about a wedding that are just awful. My wedding certainly wasn't perfect, but you appreciate a good DJ once you've been to a wedding with an awful DJ. I definitely think it's very natural to compare how much fun each wedding you've been to is/was, and I always think you have the most fun at your own since you're the center of attention, and rightfully so!

Eh.

That sums up my feelings on other people's weddings. Do I think mine will be better? For me, Yes. Do I think it will be better than theirs- no. Everyone wants something different. My wedding is what my FI and I want. I really don't care if anyone likes it or not- if I did, I'd ask their opinion.

That being said, sometimes I do find myself wondering if "so-and-so" would do this or that. For me, its more curiosity than competition.

Great post :)

Haha. this is hilarious. YES. I am competitive and so I make my wedding competitive as well, although very guilitily. My FI and I have mutual friends that have been together half as long but got engaged two months ahead of us. Before we all got engaged, we were so excited to go through all of this together (part of the reason why I love the forum!)

It hasn't turned into a nasty competition, but we do compare a lot of our wedding stuff to eachothers. They are VERY traditional, we are getting married outside at a dude ranch. They don't live together, we do etc... It's more interesting than anything comparing our very different likes and dislikes, although it does get a little interesting when you think everyone should want to have a wedding like yours ..

Love this, by the way... 

@ GaBGal: I think deep down that is how we all feel. I think we are all in comeptition with ourselves, although people like jennybryde's MOH is comparing everything to hers!!