When I first started reading wedding blogs, I was unengaged, and thought I was just looking because my friend was getting married. It was harmless fun, and I learned so much! One of the first blogs I started reading was Offbeat Bride, and I immediately loved it. It showed brides and grooms, brides and brides, and grooms and grooms getting married in the way THEY wanted. They let their likes and passions show through, and made the day completely about them. This was a revalation. Brides not wearing white? Getting married with only a few close friends around? Wedding cakes decorated with sci-fi themes? Completely throwing traditions out the window? I had no idea this could be done, and I LOVED IT!
Over the next year or so of being unengaged, I kept reading, and found other blogs as well. Weddingbee was a fabulous find, because you could read the whole story from brides, start to finish, and it was more like a story than just a recap or pretty pictures. I found A Practical Wedding, which was very nice to see. There people were talking about real things, real life, not focusing on just the wedding day. They even spoke directly to the unengaged, like me! It was great. I read several others, deleting some from my reader because they featured such standard or over-the-top weddings. More and more, I fell into the wedding blog hole, seeing all kinds of trends pop up, new ideas, and ways to personalize your wedding day.
By the time I got engaged, I'm pretty sure I had forgotten what exactly a "Traditional Wedding" used to look like to me. You know, the weddings that don't have DIY centerpieces, or unique invitations. Weddings that have a white 3 tier cake, and a bouquet thrown at the end of the night. Instead, my mind was swirling with new ideas, making centerpieces out of collected items and mason jars; designing my invites myself; having a complicated, colorful cake; and throwing gift cards tied to flowers! Everything needs to be different! Everything needs to scream "US!!!!".
Except it doesn't really, does it? A wedding is, essentially, 2 people committing their lives together, and their communities witnessing and celebrating that. A wedding is not favors and photobooths and moustaches on sticks.
My fiance does not have the influence of the wedding blogs, so when we discuss little aspects of the wedding, he leans to the more formal, traditional way of doing things, whereas I always come up with these quirky, more casual ideas. He probably hasn't seen that brides are wearing short dresses sometimes, and bouquets can be made with buttons or brooches. He thinks I am crazy when I suggest we write our own vows and include elements in the ceremony from mainstream media.
I forgot what his idea of a wedding is, and it is really hard for me to come to terms with the idea of a formal wedding when there are so many options out there. Besides, at the end, we really just want to be married and have a nice evening with our people. But it is hard for me to explain to him that we do have other options too.
So I think what I want to focus on is making the wedding day a good one for our guests, one where they won't be confused by what is going on, and they'll feel like it is, indeed, a wedding. That means probably combining our two views of weddings so that we can have a little fun with it, but still keep it simple. I want them to have fun, and I want to be married. If at the end of the day those two items are checked off my list, I think I'll be happy.
