I am getting married and it’s finally becoming real. The whole show dog aspect of it, anyway. (Erm, that was snarky. I mean the “public ritual” aspect of it is becoming real. Sorry, snarky bride police.)

Yes, it’s old news, generally, for people who know me, but it’s also shockingly real all of a sudden. Between today and yesterday two boxes from Papyrus Custom Printing arrived containing — hoho, you guessed it — custom-printed wedding announcements and thank you cards. So it’s all slowly becoming more real. That and the fact that the year is currently 2009 and is thus the same year (two thousand nine) that is printed on everything it’s no longer a vague “future” thing. It’s rapidly becoming a now thing.

The funny thing about all of this is that the actual exchanging of vows — or, well, not that; the actual signing of the documentation legally declaring us husband and wife – is the easiest part of the thing. It’s absolutely everything else that’s going to have the possibility of driving me crazy.

stress vs. willingness to spend

I’ve decided it comes down to something that can be explained graphically, and so I made a quick graph in MS Paint, old-school style. Basically I believe that the more or less you’re willing to spend, the less stress you have because if you’re not willing to spend much at all, you can’t have much, and if you’re willing to spend endlessly, you can hire someone to stress out for you. But if you fall any where in the middle, you eventually succumb to a certain amount of stress. The middle is where I estimate you’re willing to spend enough money to get everything exactly the way you want it to be but you’re not willing to go the extra step and hire a wedding planner to do it for you. I bet there’s a lot of room for argument with this graph but for the point’s sake, let’s go with it.

I’m somewhere on the rapidly increasing slope of the first part of the curve, where we’re not willing to spend much but by that token that means we have to do everything ourselves and we have to make certain sacrifices in order to ensure we don’t spend more than we actually want to spend. This complicates matters rapidly. Like choosing a photographer. Do you all have any idea what photographers charge now a days, especially when you have Keyword: Wedding as part of the transaction? Or a florist? If it’s just for some event, that’s one thing, but you throw in the word WEDDING and the prices skyrocket. It’s annoying. Really. This is part of what I hate about the wedding industry. (Other things include special cake servers encrusted with pearls and your monogrammed initials, EW; the list goes on.)

I hate that you can’t have an inexpensive wedding yet classy wedding. (Another graph: cost vs. “class.” You can imagine how sharply the slope inclines in that one.) It’s impossible. We chose up front to do the one thing guaranteed to keep one kind of cost down: we’re inviting only a select group of people, not all one hundred plus potential people we listed early on in the process. I just mailed twenty — twenty – invitations today. That basically amounts to forty people, maxiumum. That few meant stamps, invitations, and up-front costs are down. Favor costs are down. Food and drink costs are down — there just aren’t that many mouths to feed, so we can get elegant in food and beverage choices instead of going hick to be cheap. Reception site: we were able to get one that fits 100 people reaonably comfortably which will be just roomy for the forty of us.

However, regardless of how many people are going to the wedding, the photographer still charges for X amount of time and X amount of photos. There is a limited window of negotiation. We’re going to negotiate the heck out of it. Florist — there’s going to be a cost to that because of the Keyword: Wedding issue, but we’re only ordering a handful of tasteful little — tiny, really — arrangements for little tables, plus the usual lapel & bouquets. But as there’s only one Best Man and one Maid of Honor, no additional wedding party folks, that means we don’t have to go crazy expensive by any stretch. (I also have flower tastes that run basically only to peach/cream/white roses, nothing like orchids or calla lillies or gerber daisies, nothing crazy unusual or expensive.) So that’s one thing.

All of it, regardless of our cost-cutting methonds, makes Bryan and I wince a little. We knew from the start we’d be doing this wedding ourselves — our invitations are written from us, as etiquette states the people who pay for the party are the ones who are “hosting” thus from whom the invitations technically come. We also knew we wouldn’t want to wait very long to be able to really afford more (we were more inclined to go to City Hall and get it done, really, rather than waiting another two years to save up to have a big wedding). Honestly, even if we could afford a BIG wedding, neither of us wanted one. Neither of us is into complicated things. We like simple. Easy. Stress-free. But unfortunately even this path that we’re taking, while it looks on the outside to be stress-light, is actually more stressful than we really anticipated.

Or maybe it’s just me. Bryan is more or less mellow but I find I am starting — starting — to agonize a little about the details. I really know I shouldn’t. I should really stop thinking about any of it. All of it. I went ahead and did all that I’ve been able to do this early in the game and I think that’s a lot. I’ve been trying to keep on top of everything. All of the details. It’s agonizing, really, when it comes down to it, because I am a detail person. I can’t even write if it’s not in the right font. When anything remotely associated with the wedding comes across my vision and it’s not the way I want it I have to struggle to tell myself not to get involved or worried about the details where I can help it.

This morning at the post office, I discovered that the “wedding” stamp, a white heart on an ivory background, was 59 cents but because our envelopes had something “three-dimensional” (i.e. a ribbon) in it, I needed to pay a surcharge per envelope, making the stamp cost 62 cents. The 62 cent stamp was a green dragonfly. The envelopes were ivory; the wedding stamp was ivory. I had a moment — a fraction of a second moment — where my inner monologue was made up entirely of shrieking, agonized profanity. The perfectionist in me was clawing at my insides, desperate to make myself say, “Let’s go with two 59 cent stamps per envelope because they are the wedding stamp and they match so perfectly. The unnecessary cost is worth the effect of the cute little stamps on the envelopes.” Instead, I decided to go with the green dragonfly stamp. It’s classy. Yes it is. I tell myself this. I have been telling myself this. It’s also better than the 59 cent stamp and a 3 cents stamp (or 3 1-cent stamps) per envelope. I had to strike down the urge. It’s only the envelope of the invitation! You’ve written out every single address in the proper etiquette with your nice script handwriting and it looks lovely and classy but it’s only the envelope! The clerk at the post office looked at me strangely. She looked so regretfully at me, too. It was as if she anticipated the breakdown or the hissy fit. She looked at me, rumpled layers of clothing, damp ski jacket, pink extremities, and I swear her look told me, “You can break down, now, I’ll understand and sympathize.” It was surreal. I calmly and detachedly stamped all twenty envelopes, dropped them in the box, and walked out. Do you see what I mean about willingness to spend versus stress? I might have paid $15 more for double the unnecessary stamps to make ‘em all “pretty” but I’m not willing to, so I sacrificed that for a brief moment of stress indulgence. Sigh.

Thinking about it more, I realize I’ve gotten the look a few times now. The “Oh, she’s the bride, if it doesn’t go her way she’ll throw a fit, so let’s be prepared for it” look. Sometimes it’s tinged with sympathy, as if it’s really fine — accepted and expected! — for me to indulge in a fit because it’s practically my duty as a bride to throw a fit or ten; sometimes it’s tinged with resignation. The David’s Bridal clerk was looking a little resigned to me throwing a fit when the gown I wanted wasn’t in stock pretty much anywhere so I’d have to order it blindly if I really wanted it. But I didn’t throw a fit, I approached it all with an almost clinical practicality. If anything I was actually a bit snarky, more or less because I hate dressing rooms. Hate. Hate. Hate. (If she would have tried to come into the room with me I would have thrown a fit. Yep, and it’d be my ordained right to throw a fit, too.) I tried on 6 dresses and each one was not perfect and I was shrugging about it, dancing around in the gigantic flourescently white things, saying exactly whatever popped into my head. “Meh, this one’s too crusty with sequins. I’m not getting married in Vegas.” Or, “This one’s visible boning makes it look a little cheap. I’d much prefer the hidden boning.” “This one’s bodice is a little low and slices into my boobs uncomfortably. I don’t want to be a slutty bride, thanks.” And what was really funny was that the bridal consultant still didn’t get a sense of my personality after all of that, even after I really blatantly said I can’t wear strappy heels because my feet will hurt so stop pushing them on me or that the ridiculous foam thing they pretended was a bra was actually horrifically uncomfortable so I don’t want to buy it for $75, thanks. Hm, I suppose I was sort of rude. I said it very politely with a smile, maybe that helped. My mother was also there being judiciously practical with a hint of emotion leaking through now and again. (I think she too is realizing the ritualistic aspect of this is just about real now.) Also, the more I think about it, I think I was deliberately pushing on the snark because I was refusing to get all gushy about it. (High gush factor in a bridal store dressing area. HIGH GUSH FACTOR. I hate being gushy. Hate hate hate. Just like dressing rooms!) I refuse to be a girly girl about a lot of things, and being all “Aw! I’m in wedding dress! Prance, prance, prance!” probably would have made me vomit a little. Thus the snark. Make everything into one big joke or criticism fest and the sentimentality gets shoved aside. I couldn’t even bring myself to smile in the pictures my mother took of me in the trial gowns. 

(Naturally I ended up ordering my dress blind — the size will work, no worries — and I figure that’s the best thing all around. Dressing room was for almost naught, though, tear, tear a little for that.)

I think as things move along, I’m going to either get snippier, snarkier, cooler, or gushier. (I’m going for snarky cool — detached from stress, staying far away from gush.) Though the bridal shower might be hardest. That’s pretty much the ultimate estrogen gush fest. Please, someone get me a provocative gift or toy so I can open it in front of a bunch of middle aged women and have a good belly laugh. I really think that will be essential in keeping away the gush factor. Oh, and beer. I think I will need beer at my shower. Or a nice margarita. 

So many things to come in the next month or two. The bridal shower. The bachelorette party. (I am staying out of planning that one — I am not Scrubs‘ Elliot, thank goodness. So long as I am not forced to do anything inappropriate with a man who is not my husband to be, I think I will tolerate pretty much any curveball the ladies decide to throw at me.) The only (unfortunate? fortunate?) thing is that the wedding festivities don’t end after the wedding. In May there will be receptions held for us by Bryan’s family, which means we get to have more opportunity for by-proxy stress and gush. Oh, joy. The funny thing is that throughout all of this, Bryan has agreed with me. He hates all of this as much as I do but unlike me he dismisses things. No worries. He puts it out of his head. He knows if a matter needs fussing over I’ll be fussing, so he doesn’t have to worry about fussing. It’s funny, really; we just want it to be over. Or, rather, we want the day to be here already so we can just stop worrying about the planning. Or maybe I want that more than he does. The marriage thing is exciting but the wedding thing is more stressful than anything. I think I’ll get legitimately excited when it’s here. It’s the agony — borderline, borderline agony — now I can really do without.

Repeat the new mantra: Low stress, low gush, happy times will come. Breathe.