Wedding research and thoughts...

I just spent an evening first visiting a used book store in search of 'old' wedding books. I found what I was looking for - an old Emily Post Wedding Etiquette book written in 1982 (really the dawning of the weddings of today as contrasted to our parents weddings (unless this was your parents wedding years which makes me feel old!)

The few things in Emily Posts wedding etiquette book that most fascinated me:

Get married no more than 3-4 months after the engagement. The idea of making it fast to not only get "on with your life" but really because you will want to be spending every waking moment with your fiance(e) and yet you'll have a very busy life planning the wedding, having a job, and setting up "house" through all the things you need as a married woman. She even has examples of the bridal trousseau. (I can't believe I actually spelled that right - just had to google it.) This was similar to what is now called the wedding registry checklist - things you need to make a home, from the quantity of bed linens to just the various things you will want to own to make your home complete.

This era, early 80's was the beginning of not having your wedding at home but somewhere like your parents club or a hotel/restaurant. This of course meant things were much more expensive so great care had to be put into thinking this through - as today one has to really think about the budget and what is important to you.

This etiquette book says that wedding etiquette applies no matter the wedding size, but another wedding etiquette book says that size does impact whether you have to really follow the formal wedding etiquette norms or not. Huh. Emily Post's book also says the bride pays for the flowers but acknowledges in some parts of the country the grooms parents pay for the flowers (answers that question - regional wedding etiquette so I haven't encountered the grooms family paying except in a CRAZY story in the papers recently about a bride suing her florist for $400,000 because the flowers weren't the right tone/color. In her case her mother-in-law actually paid for the flowers, at a whopping $27,000.)

So I then head to a great ice cream place and read the latest Minnesota Bride magazine top award winners issue of local Minnesota wedding vendors. I read every article, every ad, and just get enraptured with it all - the feel, the colors, the tone. I had some similar feelings while wedding planning but if I can admit this - I felt more sadness this time. Any particular ad or story was great but just finishing this ONE wedding magazine made me feel lucky that I'm already married. Here's what goes through my head:

How in the world can any of see all these amazing ads and high cost vendors and then turn around and chose a less costly, less beatiful/amazing wedding option without feeling slighted or frustrated?

Why am I having a bit of a reaction to a VERY, VERY new wedding trend of offering guests late night snacks at the end of the reception? At face value, and as someone who needs to eat small meals every few hours, I'd LOVE to be a guest at one of these weddings. Basically couples are now adding an element of food at the end since many of us eat dinner at 6:30, dance for a few hours then are starving by the time we leave a wedding reception. Witht his new trend you can order a bunch of pizzas for your guests, or fast food, or have a taco bar, or really anything-goes, no matter how formal your own wedding was. My cynical side is saying, "is this just another way for caterers to eek out more money from brides?" My inquisitive side says, "have weddings just gotten so darn long anymore that there is an actual need for a 2nd meal?" And the part of me that gets sad things, "wow, the average bride is already spending $27,000 for a wedding, I really don't, as a guest, need her to spend another $300+ to feed me a SECOND meal!"

Lately I think I'm just sad for all the newly (and not so newly) engaged brides who are so overwhelmed with the logistics, and overwhelmed emotionally with the wedding planning, that they don't know what to do but fantasize about eloping. While eloping is a valid option, I think any family reunion and bringing together everyone you love you is a fabulous thing - and to not do that simply because the wedding world seems too hard to manage... it just frustrates me! There is nobody to blame. We're all in the roller coaster together - brides/grooms, wedding vendors, parents, guests.

Premarital counseling and The Marriage Thing

Hey guys,

I've been busy getting the website up with more information, easier to navigate and with information on the premarital counselors we have available. We're hopefully going to have a big blast to thousands of premarital counselors in a few weeks and will have a lot more listings for you.

There are so many reasons to do premarital counseling. An article is coming soon but two biggies to me:

1 - it's shown to reduce your DIVORCE RATE!
2 - many people who show up in marriage counseling could have actually worked on their problems an adverage of 6-7 years prior and avoided counseling altogether by having the tools they need to listen, communicate and problem solve. Small things fester, build and eventually the negativity towards the spouse outweighs the positive and you're stuck. Add our intense consumer culture that makes us feel like we can get, deserve, and should have "only the best" of everything in life - including a new spouse if we're "tired" of the old one.
3 - if you feel you have great communication (like my husband and I did), it's still a useful thing to talk about things that might not have occured to you and to get some validation for the path you're on in your relationship. It's NEVER a bad idea, in other words.

Have any of you experienced what I did while engaged? The negative talk about marriage, the "entrapment" talk, the "ol' ball and chain" remarks? It is so hard to be at the height of your happiness with someone, excited to spend the rest of your life with them and all you see are the negative remarks in the media and with friends.

The realty, let me assure you, is that marriage can be an amazing thing. Those of us in wonderful marriages don't talk about it because we are either too private, not smarmy people who dribble on about this sort of thing, or nobody asks. I just sit in amazement at the nasty comments friends make about their spouses and think, "wow, I wouldn't want to be married to that person!" "That person" either being my friend who is capable of being so disloyal to her husband, or to the spouse for the way my friend describes him...probably with great inaccuracy and not mentioning her role in the argument.

One of my very favorite questions to ask a newlywed is "how is married life going?" No matter if they were living together for years or began their daily lives together after the wedding, almost everyone is shocked at how different it feels emotionally. Different in a GOOD way.

For those of you in Colorado or Minnesota planning your wedding, I am now a blog moderator for http:www.go2wed.com which is a wedding planning guide filled with tons of useful information including beatiful, free wedding websites, planning guides and even discount cards for great wedding vendor deals.

And I just have to laugh - when we launched our website/program a year ago I told all sorts of journalists how easy my wedding planning was. I guess I had amnesia because there were SO many small and big problems that I just forgot about until delving back into wedding vendor experiences, family things (which I can't really write about for interpersonal boundary reasons) and all the things my husband and I had to navigate without any guidance in the wedding world.

-Elizabeth