Give us MORE!

As if all the wedding magazines out there aren’t enough to make me feel like I need to do MORE with my day. MORE flowers! MORE favors! MORE themes! MORE hair, make-up, dress, ribbon, photos, chair covers, lighting! MORE EVERYTHING!!! I’ve found that there are blogs devoted to making this one day even more amazing (said with a hint of sarcasm).

Yes, if I am lucky, and I plan to be, I will only get married once. I will also only have my first child once, my second child once, graduate from college once, fall in love with my future husband once and loads of other things that I will only do once. How this day got so completely blown out of proportion, I have no idea.

One theory that I recently read (but can’t remember where – sorry), thinks that since women (it’s mainly women creating these days) aren’t worrying about moving in or losing their virginity anymore, they need something to MARK this major change. A blow-out, knock-down gorgeous day is the only way to truly mark it. Or so this one person thought.

I think the whole greening of the country is also making us more aware of how much is wasted on weddings and how this waste effects the earth. By chance, and some thought, my wedding is semi-green. I am wearing a recycled (sounds so much better) dress, thus not creating more waste by creating more fabric. We are using locally grown flowers. No airplane flight for them (I won’t mention that we plus many of our guests are flying there). We are using rental plates instead of disposable. Okay, this is because I hate disposable plates at weddings, but my mother pointed out they are much better for the earth.

We are hardly perfect, and yes, we are spending money that doesn’t need to be spent. We could have gone to the court house or Big Sur for an elopement, but I really want to mark the day with family and friends. I don’t need fireworks or skywriters to make it special. My friends and family will be enough. But hell if it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to feed the crew.

Anyway, I’m trying to keep it all in perspective as we get closer to the day. I’m still reading wedding blogs, which have beautiful pictures and some good, cheap ideas. I haven’t looked at a wedding magazine since I flew to Portland in April (what else was I supposed to read at the airport? I already read People). All in all, right now I’m pretty mellow about the wedding. Maybe Xanax does do something….