NER... I Just Don't Get It

bullfrogmama

Wedding planning is the most stressful, awful thing I've ever endured. For real. Why on EARTH would those with simple, lovely courthouse or JOP weddings EVER want to go through with this... on purpose... even though you're already done?!?!?

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to be marrying my best friend (freaking finally) but man... I'm super hardcore jealous of those with simple weddings.

PPD's blow my mind. Just my PSA for the evening.

JoanE2012

bullfrogmama said:

Wedding planning is the most stressful, awful thing I've ever endured. For real. Why on EARTH would those with simple, lovely courthouse or JOP weddings EVER want to go through with this... on purpose... even though you're already done?!?!?

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to be marrying my best friend (freaking finally) but man... I'm super hardcore jealous of those with simple weddings.

PPD's blow my mind. Just my PSA for the evening.

I honestly did not find it too stressful.  I found the key was to stay organized, don't put off things that you can do early, skip the DIY and don't get bogged down in details that no one else cares about or will remember except you.

bullfrogmama

Hahaha... I wish I would have JOP'd this shit!!

And I tried to not get bogged down... but I let people run right the F over me. And then my relatively inexpensive venue closed 5 weeks before my wedding. Lamesauce right there.

Also, I have 2 children who are 4.5 yrs and 11 months. Kids and wedding planning do NOT mix. No wonder my mom told me to wait til I was married to procreate!

Bubbles2014

I like organizing and had the wedding planned in 3 weeks. No kidding, I'm done. The most stressful things have been having a dud photographer (now we have to find a new one, but the company has a few) and the venue calling and asking if we wanted to make a booking... Ummm, we did. 2 weeks earlier. Then they couldn't find our booking for a few minutes. Oh and they also expected me to go to the venue an hour before my ceremony, in my dress, to do the table set up. Luckily an arty friend has offered to do it. So apart from rolling my eyes at the venue, it's been stress free.

clg1213

If you are jealous of the JOP crowd, why not go that route yourself?

Bubbles2014

clg1213 said:

If you are jealous of the JOP crowd, why not go that route yourself?

There are lots of reasons people have a bigger wedding when they would prefer a JOP wedding. Parental pressure (not everyone is comfortable with telling their parents that they won't get to see their daughter walk down the aisle, etc), the preference of their FI, other consideration that I can't think of.

The way I see it, the wedding isn't my day. It is mine and my FI's and, to a certain extent, our families. Compromises have to be made. It wouldn't be fair for me to put my foot down and say I want to elope when FI wants to have his family and friends there when we get married. My grandparents may never see another grandchild get married, so a wedding is important for those family members. You discuss and you compromise and you sometimes end up with a wedding that you didn't want to plan in the first place. But at the end of the day you will be married, so you do it anyway.

tinambride

If wedding planning is the most stressful, awful thing you've ever endured then you've had a pretty awesome life. I say chill out and don't spend so much time worrying about what other people are doing. They may have experienced something much more "awful" in their life that you just can't relate to.

[Deleted User]

Really? I have not been stressed even a little bit.  In fact, I tell my newly engaged friends that if they're overly stressed out, they're probably doing it wrong.  I got all my big stuff booked quickly and easily and have just been sitting around doing nothing since.

Peaseblossom55

I don't find it too stressful quite honestly.  I feel overwhelmed at times but it mostly about the small details as well.  Just relax take it one step at a time and try not to get bogged down on the smaller details

AllieBear725

I have hated every second of planning my wedding. If I could re-do it, I would just hire someone to do it for me. I'm terrible with lists and organization. 

harper0813

I'm so with you. My family has been a bunch of assholes with the guest list and I've been re-thinking the need to have a relationship with them at all. Weddings sure tend to bring out the worst in people.

[Deleted User]

coopergirl15 said:

If you are jealous of the JOP crowd, why not go that route yourself?

My family alone is too large for all the people that would want to witness the ceremony to fit in the court room. And then there's the little caveat that you should properly host anyone that attends your wedding. At that point it made more sense for us to just have a (retired) JOP marry us at a wedding venue and throw a party there. There are myriad reasons why people want/need to do something other than a strict JOP ceremony. Your comment honestly just comes off as ignorant.

Respectfully, it wasn't an ignorant question.  The person was venting about how they don't understand why anyone would want to do this and how jealous they were of JOP people.  It was a reasonable question to wonder why they wouldn't go that route.  Granted, there are a lot of reasons people WOULDN'T, but it wasn't odd to ask this particular OP why they didn't want to do that.

KDM323

See, the wedding planning isn't what makes me nuts...it is the little things like:

* my future in laws wanting to add additional guests that they "will pay for". 
* questioning why we chose X entree over Y entree
* people asking me "Why January".  "What if it snows?"

That's the annoying stuff that makes me want to curl up on the couch with a bottle of wine and ignore my cell phone, emails, etc. 

Lucky for me...I have a lot of wine and have gotten quite skilled at smiling politely and then doing whatever the hell I please.

MayDay513

Congrats!

bullfrogmama

I did want the courthouse wedding w/ a BBQ reception. Way more my pace and style. But like I said, I let people convince me otherwise (and FI kind of wanted a traditional wedding). Definitely my bad. 

Most of the normal stress I think I would be handling alright if it weren't for the venue closing suddenly (I found a new one, thankfully, but still ended up spending another $100 in postage to send letters letting everyone know about the change of venue) and also about $2k more than we had budgeted for. Then finding out a quarter of my guest list never got their invitation in the first place! So... super fun times.

And, yes, I realize that there are way more awful things in life (I lost my mom to breast cancer 3 years ago)... but sarcasm is my friend. So there ya have it.

[Deleted User]

@bullfrogmama Well your venue closing immediately makes it a stressful situation.  So sorry you had to go through that.

bullfrogmama

Oh and I wasn't venting about why people would want to throw a wedding... I was wondering (with good reason) why people would do a PPD and put themselves through this mess even though they are already at the end of the tunnel and married. Just to clarify.

[Deleted User]

bullfrogmama said:

Oh and I wasn't venting about why people would want to throw a wedding... I was wondering (with good reason) why people would do a PPD and put themselves through this mess even though they are already at the end of the tunnel and married. Just to clarify.

Oh those people make no sense to me, either! But in my mind, it's more of a money thing.  Seems so silly to spend so much when you've already accomplished the goal-- being married.  If you want to celebrate your wedding, just throw a really fun party! I don't know why someone would want a do-over ceremony and reception.

Majide

AllieBear725 said:

I have hated every second of planning my wedding. If I could re-do it, I would just hire someone to do it for me. I'm terrible with lists and organization. 

I love lists, I love to organize things. But I'm NOT good at it   I will get things together, plan things, but it doesn't stay that way.  I wish I could have hired someone, but just can't afford that.

I have never wanted to plan a wedding.  From the beginning, I just wanted to grab our closest friends, go down to a park, and get married one day while it's sunny outside.  Unfortunately, with people living in different cities, random work schedules and such, we had to actually *plan* something.
So yeah, I agree, if I was married already, I would never do it again just for the fun of it.

HeatherSP13

I didn't think it would have been as stressful as it was.  I did want a church wedding.  That was not the hard part.  I wanted a simple reception.  It kept getting stressful when family members would want to change something or get mad that I didn't care about something.

shannyb41

I haven't found any of it to be stressful at all.  I have had a few things come up that were annoying but not stressful.  

CheleLyn

Bubbles2014 said:

I like organizing and had the wedding planned in 3 weeks. No kidding, I'm done. The most stressful things have been having a dud photographer (now we have to find a new one, but the company has a few) and the venue calling and asking if we wanted to make a booking... Ummm, we did. 2 weeks earlier. Then they couldn't find our booking for a few minutes. Oh and they also expected me to go to the venue an hour before my ceremony, in my dress, to do the table set up. Luckily an arty friend has offered to do it. So apart from rolling my eyes at the venue, it's been stress free.

Same here. All I have to do now is just wait to appropriate times to pay for things. However, I almost feel like I 'm too on top of it all and now I have too much sit around and wait time LOL I've had fun planning and my fmil has been so incredibly helpful. 

thisismynickname2

I actually hated the planning at first. Fiance and I got the major things done in about a month and now I'm sitting around until next spring to do the smaller details for the September 2014 event.

What made it stressful was not being on the same page as Fiance. I wanted a very small wedding (I have a few close friends, and no family in the country at all besides parents and sister.) He has a great big fat Italian family on his mom's side.  But, it's his second wedding so his mom agreed to keeping the family guest list very limited.  I think now Fiance is stressing out more than me because he has to control his mom's idea of the guest list.  I'm in the clear.

But anyway, because of his mom's idea of what a wedding "should" be, we couldn't agree on budget for awhile. (He wanted to spend-spend-spend, I didn't.)  We had the same vision for the type of event (city, high quality) but since "I'm the bride" he figured I should do all the work!  What it came down to was me screaming at him (yup, screaming) that I'm basically planning a party to entertain HIS family using HIS family's money so HE better get off his butt and help me figure out a venue we can all be happy with.  That got him going- he started voicing real opinions, he started researching, and actually I think now he's excited with how the planning's going, save for fending off his mom's ideal guest list.  

That made all the difference- having Fiance be involved. So, OP, I hope it gets better for you. Stick to your guns. 

SomethingBeautiful08

I hear you OP- We tried to keep ours as stress free as possible but with the wedding, moving AND doing the most stressful job I have ever done,  I had many "holy crap why am I doing this"... never really questioning the marriage but all the little things that went into it.  I'm glad there are people that find wedding planning stress free, I completely understand those that don't.  Personally I don't ever want to do it again.