Expectations

The smiley day we got engaged

I've called this blog an unexpected wedding because the fact that planning a wedding was not in my plan has really influenced how the process has gone for me (so far). At first the fact that all this wedding malarkey is a mystery to me meant that I felt very insecure about the whole thing. Faced by the overwhelming volume of nasty commercial wedding propaganda I unwittingly found myself absorbing, my first instinct was to call the whole thing off, seriously. It took a few scary late night 'are we really going to do this' conversations with my betrothed and some tears before I realised that it was the wedding I wanted to back out of, not the marriage. My other half has been much more sensible about the whole thing than me, and much better at thinking about getting married in the context of what our marriage will be, not what other people's are.

The other thing that has brought me back on the straight and narrow as far as wedding sanity is concerned is reading other peoples blogs, which is why I'm sharing this, though I'm not sure I'm a voice of reason just yet. Reading words of wisdom from people who care about their marriages more than their weddings and about having fun more than matching their bridesmaids to their napkins or whatever we're all supposed to be doing, has really helped. I've also got inspiration from seeing how other people did their real weddings, and I've ended up feeling that it is possible to celebrate our love without making a spectacle of it.

After the dust has settled on my temporary wedding induced insanity I've come to appreciate my lack of expectations about this wedding. Though having no starting point left me a bit lost at first, now that I've finally remembered what we really want it means that I can choose my own expectations. We're choosing to expect a day surrounded by the people we love where people can have fun, share food and catch up. Of course now that we've got our expectations it's quickly becoming apparent that our families have other ideas, but at least we know what we want. That's step one.