Hi Everyone! I think it’s time to give you all a little information on me and why I’m the non-engaged (not-even-in-a-serious-relationship) girl who is still willing to updated a wedding advice blog every day. Is it because I’m like every other silly girl who spends far too much time dreaming about her perfect wedding? Well… I definitely do spend too much time thinking about my dream wedding, but that’s not really the reason I’m writing a wedding advice blog (OK… maybe it is a little). No, the real reason for a wedding advice blog is because I somehow end up at 1-2 weddings per months, and close to 24 weddings per year. When you consider that people generally get married on weekends, and there are only 52 weekends per year, 24 weddings a year means I spend almost half my free weekend time at weddings. That’s a lot of experience, and just like anything in life, the more experience you have with something, the better you are at it.
You’re probably wondering why or how I end up at so many weddings. Honestly, I wish I knew myself. It’s not like I’m in the wedding industry (I work for a large NPO — non profit organization), and it’s not like I have a ton of friends. But I guess I do have a pretty big family, I’m right around the age when everyone gets married (including a lot of my friends), and I guess, well, I do know a lot of people and, for what it’s worth, they seem to like me. So that’s good, I guess.
So no… this 20-ish weddings a year thing probably won’t last much longer. But right now, it’s what I’ve got going on, so I’m definitely able to manage a wedding advice blog. And having been to so many weddings, I can honestly tell you I’ve never seen a “perfect” wedding. Don’t get me wrong… I’ve seen a lot of great weddings. But since most girls dream of getting the perfect wedding, and I’ve never seen one that was “perfect” (even if you asked the bride afterwords she’d agree), it seems like there’s a lot of room for. So let’s get started with what I consider to be the most important wedding advice I can give every bride: always marry someone you’re in love with.
I can almost hear the responses to that statement over the Internet. “What!?!?! Always marry someone you’re in love with? What kind of lame wedding advice is that?”
The truth is to ask anyone who has ever settled (still married or divorced), and they’ll tell you it’s the best wedding advice there is. Take my parents for example. My mom and dad didn’t really love each other. Don’t get me wrong… they liked each other a lot. And they cared about each other even more. But were they in love? No… they weren’t. And now, thirty years after their divorce, they’ll happily tell as much and marriage was a big mistake. (Granted… that marriage produced me, so I don’t think it was bad. But they weren’t happy.)
There’s a lot of things I could say about why marrying someone you love is important (and maybe in some future post I’ll talk all about it). But for now, i want to approach it from a strictly “wedding” point of view. What most people don’t consider is that the key to an incredible wedding is marrying someone you love. Marrying someone you love changes the focus from “having a great wedding” to “relishing the opportunity to commit yourself to the man you love.” See how that’s different? When you’re looking forward to marrying the man you love, suddenly the flowers that are one shade of yellow too bright don’t matter as much. The fact that your mom has tried to make your wedding into her personal “status symbol” party for her to show off to all her friends isn’t really a big deal. And when the chicken is overcooked, or the DJ plays YMCA twice, or the wine runs out, none of that will matter nearly as much as the fact that you just said “I do” to the one person in this world you’ll always want to be with.
I promise… this post is almost over. And to be honest, I won’t harp on the “love” thing anymore. But it needed saying. This isn’t feudal Europe anymore. People don’t get married to increase land holdings. They get married because they want to. And if you’re serious about having an incredible wedding, you need to be serious about the person you’re marrying.
Oh… and if you want to relate this post to wedding savings, let put it this way: the best way to save money on a wedding is to not have to throw a second wedding. Now that’s some practical wedding savings advice!
