I'm new to this site so I'm not sure if those of post belongs here but I need to vent it somewhere and would appreciate some advice from an outside source. I've got to know, is it normal to hate nearly everything about your wedding?
My fiance is overseas and I will be joining him in about a month. We'll be getting married (in one of those quickie civil services over there) in August, then having our wedding celebration back in the U.S. with our family and friends in October. Initially we planned for a very big party with over 200 guests as sort of like a "last hoorah" since it might be the last time we're all together under the same roof for a while. But the more we planned it, the more it just didn't feel like us. We're both generally low key people who like to have a good time and neither of us are really into being the center of attention. The more that was planned, the more it just felt like we were putting together someone else's wedding and not our own.
I feel like the biggest person who's been pushing for this big wedding has been my maid of honor. I love her so much, but she's been really determined to make this wedding a certain way. She was in love with the idea of a huge blow out of a wedding but I can't figure out why she's causing so much stress with everything.
I took her, my mom and my two bridesmaids to go looking at dresses and she sort of took over the whole appointment, telling the stylist to have me try on certain dresses because they matched "my style" more than the ones I had selected and tried on myself. I didn't like them, but I didn't want to ruffle any feathers so I tried them on anyway (I've since bought a completely different dress and I love it.) Then when it was time for us to look for the bridesmaid dresses, she was vocal about everything she tried on, stating that she didn't like each dress for one reason or another.
It didn't help because the same day, one of my bridesmaids was also throwing a bad attitude because she didn't go dress shopping for her wedding and admitted to being jealous (she apologized later) so it felt like two against one the entire day. During dinner that evening, I told them I wanted to treat all of them to a spa day, manicures and get a makeup artist for the wedding so they could feel pampered and the two of them completely shot it down, basically saying why they hated those ideas... I didn't let them know how much that entire day bothered me, I laughed it off and thanked them for coming but that night I cried myself to sleep.
So, after about a month of exploring "big wedding" options with little to no support from my bridesmaids, we decided to downsize the wedding and hold it at the small family church I attended as a child. We decided that instead of trying to get everyone to come to the wedding, my fiance and I would rather take a road trip to some of our favorite places, visiting our various loved ones along the way, with the smaller ceremony taking place as our final destination. The more we talked about it, the more we fell in love with the idea! We couldn't be more excited about the roadtrip idea and seeing our loved ones have a genuinely good time. We're inviting any of our close friends who'd like to join us during the travel dates and doing a "friends only" afterparty following the wedding. I couldn't be happier about that aspect of everything... but now more drama seems to have started.
My maid of honor has barely taken the time to listen to me about what our new plans are. Every time I've tried to sit down with her, she listens to me for maybe about five minutes before she shoots down an idea to suggest something different. Or, she'll literally begin a different conversation about something that has to do with her life or an event she's planning. I managed to run the roadtrip and smaller wedding idea by her and her husband and he seriously loved the idea, but she's been kind of rude about the whole thing. I think part of it is her feeling left out and this weekend she was badmouthing me to one of my bridesmaids (and who knows who else), saying she's so stressed out about the whole thing.
I sat down with her yesterday to walk through everything that's been planned and all that still needs to be done and to let her voice her obvious concerns, but I still don't feel like we got anywhere. So far, I've had to do everything by myself and she hasn't been cooperative about even the smallest tasks I've asked of her.
Now I'm getting stressed out again. I feel completely alone in the wedding planning since my fiance's so far away and she's now being so unsupportive. I just want to have fun and include all the people I love but I seriously don't even want to plan the wedding details anymore. I don't know what to do, should I say something to her or would that even do anything? Should I just keep going it alone?