I’ve had the privilege of welcoming quite a few close friends and family members to the engaged world recently- and I have a sneaking suspicion there will be several more to follow. 😉 I am so incredibly happy for them all- there is no feeling comparable to being with the person you’re meant to be with.
As we’re all aware, with getting engaged comes planning a wedding.
I’m not going to lie to you. Wedding planning is hard work. It’s stressful. Which is why I’m sharing this piece of advice with you, to keep you sane and keep your union priority numero uno: plan your marriage more than you plan your wedding.
A little background: My fiancé and I got engaged on December 21st, 2014, after a little over two years of dating. I fall more and more in love with him every single day. He is truly, truly amazing. I could go on about him for days. But anyway… we’ve been actively planning our wedding since about March of this year, and we’ll be married in April 2016. For those of you doing the math, we’re about seven months out from our Big Day (holy shit).
I’ll be honest with you- I might be an anomaly. I don’t care about the details of my wedding, I only care that at the end of the day I wind up married. I’m still having a wedding because a) our families would have cows if we didn’t, and b) we want to throw a party to celebrate our love with our family and friends in one place, and a wedding is a really good event for that.
That being said, I don’t believe that changes my advice.
Spend more time talking about your marriage than your wedding, because that is the true process of a wedding. A wedding is an event. It’s a day; a beautiful day, absolutely, no doubt about it. But that’s not because of whether or not you go with monogrammed napkins. It’s a beautiful day because you’re committing your life to the person you love.
They say your wedding ends in a blink of an eye, which I’m sure we will discover to be true. You spend so much time planning it, and then it’s over in an instant. Being engaged only lasts a short while, but being married is for life. And I think that’s the chapter of life that deserves the most attention.
Plus, I think it’s way more fun than crunching numbers and trying to see the difference in napkin colors.
What’s your best piece of wedding planning advice?
Stephanie Jean 