The funny thing about wedding planning is, even when you’ve sliced and diced your way out of expectations and decisions, you’ll still find yourself dealing with expectations and decisions.
The truth is, weddings are expensive. And you probably won’t fully grasp the actual cost of getting married to The One, your soulmate, whichever nomenclature you so choose – until you’re driving around town, searching for a venue, and wondering how the two of you will pull this off.
My fiance and I are very similar in that we knew we just wanted to focus on us and where we are at this stage in life while planning our wedding day. We’re in our twenties and childless, but also deep in the abyss that is student loan repayment (I often joke about Sallie Mae being a child in her own right), so we decided to cash-flow our wedding and set parameters for a modest and reasonable (to us) budget. While we didn’t entertain elopement as a viable option for our nuptials, we decided on the next best thing: a small and intimate destination wedding with our family and good friends – people who would add a dash of light-hearted fun and happiness to our special day. Not only would we save considerably when it came to catering, but we were also content in this choice as it seemed exceptionally romantic and stress-free to think of a resort planning your day for you, while you’re able to direct your attention to what is essentially a romantic vacation.
-insert sarcastic chuckles here-
What we didn’t expect was that we’d have to explain our choice to our respective family members, and in a way, play travel agent. The day we published our wedding website, I received texts asking, “So how much will this cost again?” To be fair, I should’ve expected this, right? My friend joked (half-seriously) that I’d still need to answer questions posted in the Q&A section of our wedding website even after all of those who had been invited had received the link. And she was right. I’ve even heard flat-out from some family members that we shouldn’t do a destination wedding. After all, what’s so wrong with getting married in your hometown?
To answer that question succinctly, depending on the couple, a lot of things are wrong with that picture. A hometown wedding, even in a slightly metropolitan area with a fairly decent downtown section – we’re not talking major city here – would still be more expensive than what your older family members might recall paying for their wedding. So a lot of this, frankly, is perspective and accounting for inflation, on top of acknowledging that the wedding industry remains extremely profitable, even in an economic downturn.
We have exactly eleven months before we depart the states for our wedding and honeymoon, and so far, my strategy for managing decision-making is simply this: we’ll learn as we go. Wedding planning magazines and websites (trust me, I’ve read them all) don’t truly prepare you for the difficult questions. The really tough decisions. And the pangs of guilt you’ll feel when an elderly family member (or three) can’t make it to your wedding.
The chances of you two fighting over wedding decisions aren’t mitigated by taking the less-traveled path. The stress you’ll feel isn’t lessened by just picking a wedding theme and letting your wedding coordinator at a resort 2,096 miles away make the arrangements. You have to confront, front and center, what goes on in the interim. But as long as the both of you remain committed to the fact that this is just one day, that the rest of your lives together will consist of more meaningful moments than the right colors and that perfectly arranged bouquet, you’ll get through it, together, just as you’ve done with every other difficult decision life has thrown at you during the length of your partnership. Love is always there, waiting patiently on the other side.
June 19, 2014
Aww I love this! Great perspective on not only destination weddings, but also how it’s concluded. It should be about a celebration of love and not just about one day that could single handily put the average couple in major debt for a while. So your plan works. Oh and congratulations!