Weddingbee boards

I am a self-admitted cynic, but these past two days have made me exceedingly worse than ever before. I thought I would write a post about the "behind the scenes" reality of wedding planning. I went into this thinking it was going to be the best time of my life. I'm not sure what I have done wrong but I have literally hated 90% of the time I have been engaged. Here is what I have learned:

1) Your wedding isn't about you. Get that mentality out of your head right now. If you have outspoken family members, it's about them, they will ALWAYS win, and if you are on a budget, your budget will rule you like a ball and chain. Like many brides, I'm on a strict budget which means, no going into any store or talking to a vendor and picking out "whatever my heart desires." Everything I have picked out has been strictly based on cost, whether or not I like the item. I hate to say that I don't even really like my dress but it was something to put on my body my wedding day and I could afford it.

2) When figuring out your guest list with your fiance, realize that whatever you two come up with will be over-ruled by someone, not sure who that someone will be, but it will be someone. And your choices are, either let the outspoken person win or start a family feud. Awesome choices! FH and I spent literally months on the guest list, finally came up with a list we both agreed on, and since the invitations have gone out, his family has told us, not asked us, that they will be bringing extra people who weren't initially invited to the wedding. Since it's his family, it's of course "okay and acceptable" that they do this. Nevermind the fact that we can't afford them, let alone have room to seat them during dinner. Again, your wedding isn't about you.

3) If you are on a budget, whatever price point you have in your head for something, automatically add $1,000 to it. I had budgeted $300 for my dress, $500 for the flowers, $1,500 for the honeymoon, and the list goes on. I quickly learned, wow, you can't get ANYTHING in wedding land for that amount of money! My budget wasn't even close to what these things actually cost.

4) I have had a lot of advice given to me, one of which is, "if someone offers to help you do something, let them" Granted, this is true, however, please know that sometimes their "free" help doesn't come without a price. I have had people flake out on me, not respond to emails, calls, or after their offers to help, have given me a huge pain in the rear when it came time to actually "cashing out" on their offer to help.

5) Know that whatever happens, there is no humanly way to make everyone happy. You will more than likely have to make everyone else happy before yourself.

6) Expect glitches, no matter what. I have tried and tried to schedule things in a timely manner, do things, line up things, so that I won't be stressed, so that everything will go smoothly. It doesn't matter how much effort or planning you do, someone or something will inevitably screw it up. It is all beyond your control.

7) You and your fiance will fight. You will probably fight multiple times throughout your engagement. Many times you will fight over the stupidest things you could ever imagine, but at the time, they are very important things. You may even reach a point where you question your decision to get married!

I hate to sound so negative, but I think if I knew all these things going into my engagement, the "let down" wouldn't have been so bad. Granted, it's an amazing thing to marry your soul mate, but I'm starting to wonder if the stress and hoopla around weddings these days is worth it. If I were to do it all again, I really think I would have just gone up to the courthouse and then had a nice dinner afterwards. I have lost sleep and lost weight, fight weekly with FH over God knows what, and am at the point where I don't even know if I want to show up to my own wedding. Hopefully although cynical, I hope this list will help someone out. I am SURE I will have more things to add being that my wedding is in less than a month!! Stay tuned :-)

Oh no, I wasn't trying to scare anyone, please take my "advice" (ranting?) with a grain of salt. And of course, everyone's situation is unique. I'm sure I have experienced more problems than others but at the same time, I'm sure there are others who have experienced way more problems than I have. A part of me just needed to vent too, haha. Teantoast, great advice :-) I need to have an evening like that soon (clearly). Getting some sleep would probably help too, haha.

I agree with the other posters: I am sorry that you have had these problems, but not everyone will. If you make your budget beginning with a realistic idea of what things cost in your region, you will be less likely to go over budget. If your budgeted prices for wedding things is less than the standard in your area, you will have to work to keep things in budget.

I know I am in the minority here, but I also did not find it necessary to budge on my guest list and to invite anyone that my husband and I did not want to invite. We paid for the wedding ourselves, and thus we did what we wanted. Our families respected that. If someone else is holding the purse strings it is likely that they will want some control, and the only way to get total control over your wedding is to pay for it yourself. It’s hard to have things both ways—getting financial help from someone else, but still not wanting them to have a say. I know that some people's families will still try to meddle even if the families are not paying, but at least it is easier to say NO in that situation!

But I agree 110% that you will never be able to make everyone happy! Especially with a wedding, where so many people have so many strong feelings.

I have to agree to some extent with the OP.  Granted it won't be as bad as OP made it sound but you will fight with your FI during your wedding planning, you WILL have to forgo things that are not in your budget, you WILL have to compromise about stuff that other people want and you will NOT be able to please everyone. 

As my dad told me (roughly translated from Chinese), "wedding planning is a step in life.  It will prepare you with skills to deal with things in the future."  So yes, it will be hard but I heard marriage is hard also.  But there are some good things that could come out too like learning a lot more about how my FI handles stressful situations and we bonded over wedding things.

Definitely, definitely agree that this all won't happen to 100% of all the people who read this. I apologize b/c I'm sure that's how the post came across. There is no way for me to forecast that everyone will have these exact problems, or, any problems! Just wanted to give a simple heads up to the "not so glamorous" things that could happen during wedding planning that I would have NEVER dreamed of 6 months ago. Maybe I need to post a list of good things that have happened, haha. Not saying that everyone will struggle, or have these exact same problems, and not saying people should go into their engagement with their heads hung low. I think it's mainly, in the past coupe of days, that my family is the one paying for the wedding but it's his family who is calling the shots, and of course he is taking their side. It's difficult and emotional and on top of it all, I got 4 hours of sleep last night, haha, therefore, I probably should have waited until I was in my "right mind" to think about posting something like this. @Shoppingdixie, excellent points and I LOVE what your dad told you. It's so true.

i can agree with you to an extent. i decided to have a destination wedding. i thought it would be THE simplest thing in the world. pick a date and location and you get a packaged wedding!  HA! Um, let's see, picking a date that suits your sister who is a teacher and only available on holidays and spring break - the most expensive times of the year! finally, she got pregnant and that's how i was able to pick a date that worked!  ok, next, pick a location - simple, wait, no,  not simple! Sister's husband cannot legally travel to certain countries yet as he just moved from the middle east, FI's mother had a kidney transplant and doctor tells her she shouldn't go to mexico (location we had been set on for 6 months!)....finally, we pick Jamaica....ok, now find a resort, simple? nope.  BM who decides (months after i am engaged and planning my destination wedding) to get married the same week as you is not agreeing with me on any resorts because they are not good enough for HER FI's family (while my FI's family is far from rich and may not come if we go to a fancy 5*).  so, although i  have been engaged for over a year now, we booked our simple packaged wedding about 2 months ago!

the rest is not so bad now. i am just doing everything on my own and trying not to care what other people think. (so why do i need 6 BMs? no clue?!)

I think #5 is the most important advice. No matter what you do someone wont be happy. Even if you LOVE the outdoors someone will complain about the heat and if you choose a gluten-free cake (because your FH's mother is gluten intolerant) someone will be sad - "I HATE cheesecake!" And thats just a fact of life! Concentrating on trying ro please everyone will only end in strife.

To me the point is you can either worry about the hapiness of others (and ultimately fail) or focus on the hapiness of you and your FH :) I've had a hard time with this one, I  admit