Today is one month exactly until I get married. I have discovered this to be both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand September 7thcan not get here fast enough. I can’t wait to marry my best friend and make everything all nice and legal and then leave for 2 weeks in Europe 3 days later. I’m so grateful to have found someone that I love so much and I’m eager to become his wife.
But here’s the bad thing, I haven’t actually planned any of the wedding, honeymoon is booked, wedding, eh I figured we’d hit the courthouse on the 7th, have dinner with family and closest friends and jet off to London. This had been the original plan, we have a very limited budget and we decided we’d rather have the trip of lifetime than a large wedding that we wouldn’t get to enjoy much. Everyone I’ve met who is already married has told me we are doing the smart thing. But it got complicated.
My mom, desperate to be mother of the bride offered to at least throw us a reception the evening we got married. That seemed easy enough and very thoughtful so we took her up on it and planned a small reception at the house I grew up at with family and close friends.
Then someone threw out the idea that if we were having a reception there, why not just get married there. My step dad knows a judge, he’d do it for free, and my mom will get the wedding ceremony she wants and Carolina will get to throw out the rose petals she so desperately wishes to spread.
Well the judge was booked already so in my head that just meant going back to plan A, but plan B was out there and it couldn’t be put back. My mom is so close to getting me a ceremony and she’s not going back.
That opens up new challenges like finding someone to officiate the ceremony and then more disappointments. We don’t want a religious ceremony which doesn’t sit well with my very southern Baptist family.
Then apparently you need flowers, even though they’ll be dead by the time I’m back from my honeymoon. Then there was the issue of the invitations; 5 weeks out, I’m all for an Evite. This is 2012 all our friends are tech savvy, we’re going low key, I’ll send an Evite. My mother had a heart attack. I’ve since forced her around on that one, but the devout follower of Miss Manners came around kicking and screaming.
But that’s when the feet dragging procrastination began to set in on my end and today as I got my email from the Knot reminding me I had a month left and gave me a checklist of things to do (what, do they work for my mom) I started to panic and when I calmed down I started to think about my procrastination and why I procrastinate.
I realized my procrastination comes from fear. When I don’t know what to do or am afraid of what I have to do, my natural default is to do nothing. I do this on many occasions. Isaac is picky about how the dishwasher gets loaded so if I get nervous I'm doing it wrong, I just won't do it. If I have to ask someone a favor I'll put it off hoping they will offer. If I have to send an email to high ranking people at work, I sit on it as long as I can convinced I'll say something wrong. Let it be known that I do not condone this sort of behavior, but it seems to be what I do so I am trying to understand it.
I am a people pleaser, I have been my whole life, and the worst thing you can say to me is I have made you disappointed in me or worse mad at me. I sometimes feel like I spend my life desperately hoping to not disappoint anyone. Putting me in this situation where I may disappoint anyone fills me with dread. The kind of dread that feels your head during everything you do and keep you up at night.
So many times in the last couple months I’ve asked Isaac if we can go to Vegas. Just go and do it already. He always laughs and gives me a hug and reminds me we have a trip planned and no extra money and that it will be okay. Will it be okay though, my sane half says of course, everything always turns out the way it should in the end, as long as at the end of it I’m married to Isaac it will have worked out. But the worrier in my taunts me with visions of my mother crying, of Carolina crying, of Isaac yelling at me, or worse calling it off and of myself in a mental institution (well that one is pretty far out there…)
My mom has been pressuring me to send out invites, and I keep putting her off, but when I finally sat down to at least put together a save the date Evite, I realized I couldn’t send anything out, we don’t even know where we’re getting married. I have to make the decision but if I made that decision I’d be letting someone down. If I choose to go to the courthouse as planned, I’d disappoint my mom and Carolina who wants very much to be a flower girl and has told me repeatedly a courthouse is not a good enough place to get married. (Easy to say when you’re not paying for it) and a little part of me agrees, but the part of me that remembers my hotel reservations with a “view” of the Eiffel Tower tells her it’s just fine. If I agree to have the ceremony at my mom’s am I disappointing Isaac by going against what we’d decided and giving in to my parents? If I have a judge or even a friend do the ceremony my family will be aghast, if I have a minister Isaac will be uncomfortable and it’s his wedding too, he gets a say. It’s been all I can think about the last couple days and I’ve spent them in knots.Throw in a stressful period at work and I’m pretty much a basket case.
But I think we’ve decided that if we can find someone to do the wedding we’ll do it at my moms. There’s been a lot of back and forth today as we hunt for someone, but after lunch with a good friend who reminded me that it’s my wedding several times. I have a good lead and a clearer head.
I’m trying to pull my head out of the sand and face the fact that I’m going to have to make some decisions and not everyone will like all of them, but it’s my wedding and it really only matters what two of us think about the ceremony and as long as we’re legally married by the end of the day September 7th then the day will be considered a success.
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| The reason we're doing all this! |
