We know that some of us throw a party where you happen to get married, and some of us don't. Some of us love the details, and some of don't. We talk a lot about wedding details… so what about those of us who don't care about them?
I said from the beginning that I wanted a homegrown wedding — my fiancé, not being from the area I grew up in, has been amazing and understanding regarding that fact. The dress was the priority — it always has been. I fell in love with that gown before I’d fallen in love with a human. It’s a part of me. But apart from the location and the dress, the rest of the day has really not been a joy to plan.
You see, I’m running my own business, and I care more about my monthly invoices than which cheese we’ll be serving.
Yes, there are aspects that my fiancé and I have agreed on with excitement: the entertainment (Spotify playlist chosen by our guests); the hog roast, the tea corner (seriously, every wedding should have one). But those details have been easy to decide, they’ve made sense to us, and we probably would do something like that for any party.
I see my friends on social media, whose weddings are over a year away, who have already planned their place settings and flowers. One of them has an app on their phone that counts down the number of days to MY wedding. I’ve not done that… (80-something I think?)
I’ve said “yes” and “no” to suggestions. I’ve talked about my hen do with my bridesmaids. But the ideas haven’t flowed through me.
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The thing is, the part I’m most looking forward to is after the wedding: the marriage.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to wear that dress, and I am looking forward to the party, the food, and the people. But, at the end of the day, those are all things that I will also probably enjoy at, say, my 40th birthday party (including the dress — why not?).
But what seat coverings, what place settings, and what food is served, I really don't care. If it rains, the hog roast is burnt, and there’s a power cut, I won’t care.
I mean, it’s just one day out of a lifetime. I don't want to put too much pressure on myself about the details. When all I really care about is announcing my love and commitment to the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.
Then we’ll carry on as normal, like we did the day before. And I'll keep sending out those bloody invoices.
Anyone else finding themselves not caring about details? What are you focusing on instead? Marriage? Vows? Honeymoon?
Man I am so glad that I am not the only one who doesn’t care about the details! We are not looking forward to much of anything, except everyone going back to their respective states! We are ready to be married! But all the details have been such a drag and there is an awful lot of drama we are finding in planning the dang thing!
Thanks for sharing this! I agree with a lot of what you said – I’m excited about having an excuse to have a big party with all of our friends, but as for invitations and centerpieces… I really don’t care. Maybe it’s because I’ve planned a lot of parties in the past, and worked in an industry where I got to make a lot of creative choices about fonts and decorations, but I don’t feel like my wedding is my ONE AND ONLY chance to do those things. Since we’re trying to spend as little money as possible, those things are easy to cut out. If I want to make a fancy centerpiece, I’ll do it next year, for a small dinner party (and only have to make one, not dozens!).
When my Maid of Honor and my mom see that I have little interest in these details, I’m met with frustration, and treated like I’m an alien. It often seems as though they think I’m indifferent to the whole occasion. But this post sums it up so perfectly! I am excited to celebrate our marriage with my loved ones. But wedding planning is absolutely not on my list of enjoyable moments. Every decision I make, everything I want, don’t want, or simply don’t care about, is scrutinized.
In the end, I’ve realized that the wedding is for my loved ones. I’m willing to deal with it all because I want my family to be as happy about the occasion as I am about marrying my guy. But the marriage is what is important to me, and that is just for us.
I’m in the same boat. The frustrating thing, though, is that it’s considered “normal” for my fiancé to not care about the details, but for me I’m treated like the devil. It’s a bit frustrating. I’ve also had to balance wanting to make a nice fun part for my guests (who are mostly coming from out of state) and not overwhelming myself w/ wedding planning details or saying yes to traditions that I really don’t want to follow.
This is also what I’m running into. Everyone seems to be excited about “planning the details” but me. I feel guilty that I react this way because people get so deflated over my non interest. I’m so glad my fiancé knows me well enough that he understands why. I am excited about *getting married* and starting our lives together. He gave me advice that put it into good perspective: the wedding planning is an event that my loved ones want to take part of. I should be sensitive not to take their joy over it. So, instead of reacting disinterested I look for ways to delegate (if they want to), or ask help (where needed). It’s been uneventful so far (whew).
I love this! even though I would say that I am completely the girl who cares about all the details of my wedding, its over a year away and most of it is planned already and I am super excited. However, I am most definitely MORE excited for after the wedding. As much as I fantasize about the wedding day and the flowers and our fun details that we are adding, I also fantasize about our life together as husband and wife, I look forward to having my best friend with me everyday to make me laugh, having kids together, planning vacations, and buying a house. I even picture us hanging out when we are old and gray, he will probably be playing chess with someone while I sit and read a good book.
I do sometimes feel silly for putting so much time and money into planning one day but then I realize that, as cliche as it sounds, its the first day of the rest of our lives together, so I want it to be wonderful 🙂
I feel the exact same way! I don’t really care about most of it. Thankfully, I have a coworker who feels the same way, so it’s nice to know that I’m not all alone in my feelings.
My preference was to get a cute dress, a photographer, and get married at the magistrate, but my MIL specifically asked me not to elope.
I’ve decided to focus on the big things and now that I’m getting closer to the big day, I’m pretty much letting my maid of honor, and a cousin to make the rest of the decisions. I didn’t even pick out my save the dates or invitations! It’s keeping them happy and occupied, and I only worry about what few things I’ve deemed fun (mainly the ceremony and the music!)
If I could [THIS!] every part of this post I would. El boy and I keep saying how excited everyone else is about our wedding, but we’re not that bothered. I mean, it’s going to be a fun party and I’m totally in love with the place we’re getting married AND the place we’re staying afterwards, but I don’t really care about the details. We’re not having place settings, we’re not doing a seating plan, there’s no wedding order paper thing, there aren’t even bouquets or any other flowers.
We’re having a short ceremony, some drinks, then a meal with our closest friends and family, and then we’re going to dance for a bit and then we’re going on holiday 🙂
If I could [THIS!] every part of this post I would.
You can! Sharing (on social media) is caring. 😛
Just a quick heads-up that ‘the marriage’ link in the article isn’t working. 🙂
fixed!
“Then we’ll carry on as normal, like we did the day before. And I’ll keep sending out those bloody invoices.”
Helloitsjess, you could be writing my life.
I’m completely in the same boat. I run my family’s business, and my day-to-day insanity is more than enough to stress me out without having to worry about every single wedding detail.
We’re having the wedding on my family’s land, which was a decision based on convenience, but happens to have a lot of meaning, too. I found a dress that’s cute and fits, bought it and took it home. I’ll marry the man I love, surrounded by family and friends, and anything extra that happens that day is awesome.
I love feeling carefree about the wedding. What I didn’t expect is other people around me trying to make me feel bad about feeling carefree. “Why isn’t this ‘thing that I’ve decided is important’ not important to you?” “Why didn’t you involve me in ‘thing I should for some reason be a part of?'” “Why aren’t you doing ‘antiquated tradition’? Don’t you know you’re somehow hurting my feelings by not doing that?”
*These people are not mine or my FH’s parents, who are all happy about our carefree approach to the wedding, but other family members who aren’t footing a bill or those that we have close relationships with.
Thank you so much for the support! It was a bit of a risky leap writing this.
Since writing it, I have mellowed a little. I’d like to add that I am SUPER grateful for the people around me who have cared about those details because, upon reflection, I am looking forward to seeing those touches the ones I love have brought to the day.
I felt the same way before my wedding. And now that it’s over, I can firmly say that the “after” IS so much better. 🙂
This post makes me feel so much better! My honey and I have been together for 10 years. We own a house and two cars, have adopted two dogs, finished advanced degrees, and started our careers together. I feel like we’ve been LIVING the marriage; we’re just throwing a wedding. When I look at it that way, I just can’t bring myself to care about the details, which makes me feel like a lazy weirdo. One cake, two cakes, tiered cake, cupcakes, don’t care. All I want is to wear a pretty dress and have brunch with the people I love. Thank goodness that everyone in my family supports me in my total lack of f**ks and is excited anyway.
I felt the same way when I was engaged. I was into a few aspects of planning, but mostly it was both dull and stressful. I gave lots of “Oh, I don’t care, whatever” answers, and am now very grateful to my mother and my best friend for realizing that some of the things I didn’t care about needed to be considered. And they took care of things, and it was a lovely day. But five years on, I can say that the marriage bit is the best part.
Thank you! It’s good to know I’m not alone in not caring about the wedding. I’m more focused on my man and our life. We decided on a courthouse wedding, only at (actually, in:) the creek. My brothers boyfriend is officiating. My ex sister in law is doing the photos. Pretty $10 dress to go with my rock in’ new cowgirl boots, new suit for the kiddo, new suit for my sweetheart, were ready to go. In one week, I’ll be his Mrs 🙂 No regrets! The money we aren’t spending on a weddi is going towards a down payment for our home.
Pray tell, what is a Tea Corner?! I’m dying to know:)
Exactly what it says! It’s an area with tea and coffee making facilities and some comfy seats.
We’ve always found ourselves sneaking away during these long days for a cup or tea and a recharge – so we’re bringing it to our wedding!
Essentially, it’s a breakout area from the party.
We’re British, we need it!
I love it! I may snag that idea for my own wedding someday.
One thing I have always appreciated about this blog is how it is a great platform for expressing all sorts of viewpoints in a non-judgmental environment. This post is the first one in a long time that has made me actually feel a little uncomfortable. Why can’t people be excited about their wedding AND their marriage? It sort of feels like there is a under current of “one low-manship” running through out, whether intentional or not. There are some us who can’t get married for a variety of reasons, and hearing about how people “don’t care about their weddings” is a little bit hurtful. I am sure the author meant well by this piece, and just wanted a convey an “anti-wedding industrial complex” feeling, which I am sure a lot of us can relate to – but it did come off as a little bit insensitive.
Hi Stacey – I’m sorry if you thought this was insensitive.
It was by no means a judgemental piece – more my ramblings about the struggles of balancing a very busy professional lifestyle with the planning of a wedding. I found it easy enough to make the bigger decisions, but harder to find the time to make decisions about the details; my frustration at looking at my invoices and prioritising those over wedding aspects.
I know every bride is different and I too enjoy this blog as an open platform where we can all share our thoughts and frustrations. This is purely my take on one aspect of my wedding.
I can appreciate that, and respect your honesty. I also can see where you are coming from on the career thing, like those invoices are still going to be there long term – but the wedding is more temporal, so I get that. I may have been getting hung up on semantics. Thanks for your kind response.
If I weren’t at work, I’d be sobbing right now. This has hit the nail square on the head and blasted through the board…
I am the least excited and most panicked about my wedding on May 8th (2 weeks away, as my coworkers insist on reminding me even though I keep saying that the subject is not for discussion..).
My boss, when I opened up about a particular bone of contention, “therapy”-twisted what I was saying and made me end up with knots in my stomach all work-day and quite a bit after.
My mother insists on pushing the subject of my father walking me in (NO.) even though I have emphatically stated my decision more than once. He has not said a word, but that’s normal..
Everybody else is so caught up in one overpriced day that is not what I want — it is what FH wants, so as long as I still have autonomy over what does directly affect me I’ll go with it. Nobody seems to give a damn about my own (precarious) mental and physical health, or what happens for the X amount of years after. And when I say as much, as my brother grunted “you’ll regret it..”.
No I won’t.
I will (hopefully) have decades with one of the few people not putting that pressure on me. Not forcing me into a lie. Not making me feel so completely sick that I want to throw the whole thing in the trash and cry under my bed.
🙁 I really hope you will enjoy the day.
Remember, as long as whoever is of authority announces you’re married, you’ve achieved the day’s objectives. The rest of it won’t matter.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself over the past month or so.
Xxx
I have to say that yes this no stress attitude works wonders. In all honesty we had a few things planned for the reception but once we got there the party was in full swing so we decided, “meh. Fuck it why interrupt something that’s already working.” And no we aren’t going to regret not cutting the cake for the rest of our lives, or anything else that didn’t happen. We’re happily married, it hard to believe it’s only been just over a year as it feels as comfortable as a life time. And not a damn thing that did or did not happen on the wedding day has a damn thing to do with what we do today. We shared our commitment to each other with our friends and family on one day. We have and continue to share our commitment to each other daily. No different than before the wedding.
Thank you. So. Much. I’m looking forward to waking up on the day after the wedding so much more than the wedding day. I’m also looking forward to everyone going home and leaving us in peace. Being an indifferent bride (or a selectively opinionated bride) can be lonely.
Couldn’t agree more! That’s why I’m employing people to do all the detailed stuff for me – I can give them a ‘general feel’, but beyond that? Don’t really care…just want to have a great party 🙂 Sounds like you’ll have a wonderful day.
THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL! The more we plan, the more we’d like to just elope. Honestly, not eloping has been the hardest thing of my life. If we weren’t having our wedding in Ireland, you better believe we would already be married!
My husband and I eloped to Las Vegas for this reason exactly. While I wanted my Mom and his Mom to have their moments of pride and joy, and I wanted to get the family together and celebrate, the rest of the planning thing was freaking me out, and I never even really cared about the wedding day! So we eloped, and are planning a spiritual vow renewal we will share with our families on our previously decided-upon wedding day. We’ve decided that we can have it our way, and still give our families their day with us, too, celebrating our wedding.
I was the Mother of the bride that didn’t care about the wedding details, and it fractured the relationship between my daughter and I. The wedding is now over.She lived ,breathed wedding wedding wedding , to the point of having her work life suffer. She raised the bar impossibly high for me as the mother of the bride and of course, I failed, quite miserably in her eyes. I try to live a simple uncomplicated life and the wedding was like a gazillion Pinterest boards .She took my money and ran with it, never thanking me, only criticizing me. We don’t talk anymore. So sad.
Just read this and I’m so sorry.
After this was published I spoke to my mother – who planned it all and realised how much she did. I realised even more as we got closer to the wedding. Two days before, I gave her a gift and said that no matter how pissed off we get at each other in the next 48 hours, we love and appreciate all she’s done.
It’s a crazy time for everyone involved and it’s only afterwards that you realise how much people are there for you.
I really hope you and your daughter can work it out. Xxx
Ouch. I am so, so sorry that happened to you. Sounds like it wasn’t she didn’t care about the details, just didn’t want to deal with them herself. I really hope she realises the pedestal she put you on and that how pinterest perfect her wedding was doesn’t matter in the slightest, I’d hate for you to lose your daughter over this x
Thank you so much, I just had a converstaion with my mum over skype (Im in South Korea) and she questioned whether I even wanted this wedding to happen (Feb 2016). Im sitting here wondering… of course I do, but why am I not excited? I literally typed in “not excited” in the search box and it came up with all this theraputic realistic talk. I wish the tribe was part of my wedding party ^^
Oh god I feel this, everything’s so complicated already and we haven’t even set a date yet. My future hubby wants a huge medieval tournament wedding and I’m Fine with that, I think it’ll be amazing actually, but we’re so pestered for tiny details and, when we do give them, criticised for our choices that it makes me want to just crawl in a hole (I’m very pro eloping. But then I’ve already been told by my mother that I’m disrespecting the idea of a marriage so who even knows)
I’m so excited to be married, however many years in the future we decide to actually tie the knot, but as far as the actual wedding goes I just hate even thinking about it. In some strange way its even worse that we don’t have a deadline cause we keep getting asked for confirmations of things we haven’t even thought about and don’t need to either.
But I know it will all be worth it, of course I do 🙂 just have to not have a nervous breakdown before it happens.
I want to get excited about my wedding. But none of my family will be with me. Because it’s my second marriage, because I divorced someone, because we currently live together…
It’s a heavy heavy weight on my heart: this is the person I love, really through and through. When I was younger I married to please my family. And none of it panned out for me.
Any one has tips to overcome this overwhelming feeling of aloneness that comes from being rejected by your family when you finally are reunited with your ONE?
That’s how I felt too. I delegated a lot of decisions that I just didn’t care about. It was nice to have my brother pick the beer, my mom pick and make the food, and my friend and my sister decorate the arch. I knew they would make good decisions and it was one less thing I had to deal with. People were pretty astounded when I had no opinion on certain things, but it made it that much easier to hand over those items to someone else.
YES! I am super excited to plan certain details of our wedding, but there’s SO much I don’t care about. Decorations, flowers, stationary.. we’re not even sure if we want a dinner, cause we both HATE the typical formal dinners! But of course, our mothers and friends do care, so I see myself letting them deal with that stuff if they want, haha.