Flowers and cakes and invitations, oh my!
When my boyfriend of four years got down on one knee in front of the foundation of the house we were building in Airdrie last May and asked, “Will you be my wife?” my answer was unequivocally “Yes.”
Little did I know, committing to the man was the easy part. Do I want to spend the rest of my life with him – yes. But once that three-letter word is uttered, a seemingly endless string of questions follow - do I want roses, or orchids, or lilies? How many bridesmaids will I have? What will the cake look like? What wine will be served? How many guests will we have? What colour scheme will we go with? What will the linens look like? It’s enough to make your head spin!
Growing up, I was like any other girl, wearing my mother’s heels and a bed sheet hanging off my head, singing Here Comes the Bride and dreaming about my perfect wedding to my Prince Charming. I thought, “I could plan a wedding, how hard can it be? There’s a dress, flowers and a venue, right?” Wrong!
There are people to hire: a photographer, a wedding planner, a videographer, a make up artist, a hairstylist, an entertainer. There are choices to be made: in Calgary or another destination, day or evening, casual or black tie, extravagant or frugal, open or cash bar. Not to mention choosing a wedding party, picking out a dress, writing vows, making invitations, choosing wedding rings, selecting suitable wedding favours, setting up accommodations for out-of-town guests, planning a honeymoon, and making a website among other things.
Not only do you need to be a good businessperson, mathematician, technology expert, food and wine connoisseur and creative genius to plan a wedding, you also need to be an athlete. A marathon four-day, 15-store wedding dress shopping excursion would toughen up any girl. If you think lifting weights in the gym is tough, try walking around in dozens of 50-pound, sequin-laden, lacy, taffeta creations.
After hours of looking through every magazine ever printed and studying pictures of yourself in ill-fitting, sample dresses to choose that gorgeous gown, it’s still not over. What will you wear in your hair? What will your veil look like? What jewelry will you don? What kind of a purse will you carry? What about your shoes? To wear a garter or not to wear a garter – that is the question?
What will your bridesmaids wear? What about their hair and make up and jewelry and shoes? What will your husband-to-be wear? What about his friends? How do you transform them into groomsmen?
And what about the dreaded seating chart? With a group of 200 people in one room, from multiple families, how do you make sure crazy Uncle Joe isn’t sitting beside (and offending) reserved Aunt Geraldine?
And then we get to the bill. Who will pay for what? Are mom and dad helping? (Thankfully, yes). How much does a wedding planner cost? A photographer charges how much?! Am I really spending more than $1,000 on a cake? What is it made of – gold? I hope those wedding cards are filled with a little something extra.
I think wedding services charge extravagant prices to make sure you go through with the vows. After paying all that money, who’s not going to suffer through the ceremony and at least get a nice dinner out of it?
The choices and tasks seem endless and a little overwhelming, but of course I’m exaggerating. I could not be happier to be marrying the man of my dreams in a beautiful wedding made possible by help from my generous family. But this planning stuff sometimes makes me wish we were exchanging vows on a beach somewhere - by ourselves.
My advice to any bride is to leave yourself plenty of time to plan, know what you want and make that clear to the rest of your family, hire a wedding planner and pick the right people for your wedding party. You will need help and you want to make sure you have surrounded yourself with people who are there for you, not those caught up in their own agendas.
The funny thing is, even with all this planning, I know something is going to be forgotten, misspelled, misplaced, broken or spilled on - that’s life.
No matter what, remember that the day is about the union of two people in love so if you spill red wine on your dress that took you three months to choose and your expensive seven-tier cake topples over, at the end of the day, you are still married to the person of your dreams and that’s all that really matters. Of course the presents are pretty awesome too.
