Planning Lulls

When I first started thinking about proposing to my fiancee, I thought about all the things that would come with the whole process. I thought about the ring, the proposal, the wedding, the honeymoon, the first house, the kids, and of course, the inevitable downward spiral into senility and the comfort that comes with knowing I'll be sharing those wonderful moments with someone who's beared witness to my ridiculousness for all those years.

Let me start by describing my fiancee a little. As you may have read in some of my previous posts, she's very "particular." And by that I mean that she builds an image of what she wants in her mind, and then expects that image to be immediately and exactly provided to her as soon as she demands it to be so. It's extremely difficult to do things for her (like doing dishes, cleaning, buying groceries) because she will always end up doing them over herself because they weren't done quite to her impossibly high and sometimes completely irrational standards. This is a serious pain in the ass in a lot of situations, but it inspires confidence in other situations. She's a ball buster, and that's one of the things I love the most about her. She wants what she wants, and she knows what she wants; that's just plain hot in a woman if you ask me. There's nothing worse than a waffler.

This being the case, I figured that the wedding planning could become a bit of a nightmare, but I also assumed that I would probably play a very minimal role. To my surprise, neither has been true so far. Since we are planning a destination wedding and we're not quite settled in our personal or professional lives, we wanted to have a long engagement (a year and a half). We knew that this would allow me to finish my MBA (I did) and allow us to give our guests enough time to budget and save money (so we thought). We also knew that planning a wedding in a location we couldn't easily visit often would be a challenge, so we wanted to allow some extra time. In retrospect this decision has been a godsend. It's allowed us to space out the financial obligations we have needed to take care of (deposits, deposits, and more deposits) and it's also allowed our guests some extra time to save and budget. However, there is one negative to having such a long engagement; the downtime.

Once the ball begins to roll on planning a wedding, it seems like it should snowball pretty fast. With a long engagement sometimes that's just not the case. I may be different from some guys, but I am really happy to be a part of the planning process with my fiancee. There are so many guys out there who simply write the checks and let the ladies do all the planning. While this may eliminate a lot of bickering and uncomfortable conversations, this totally defeats the purpose of the day in my eyes. Your wedding day is supposed to represent the first day of the rest of your life with another person. If all of the planning for that beginning is done by one person, what does that really say about the rest of the union? I'm not saying that couples that do it that way are bound to fail, I'm just saying that it's not for me. In my mind the marriage begins much earlier in the relationship. To me it starts with the first time your partner needs you. I remember the first time I was really hurting and really needed someone to step up. My fiancee was that person; and from that moment I knew that she _could_ be the person I was looking for. I'd like to think there was a moment or two early on that I was there for her too. To me that's one of the most powerful moments in a relationship because it's the first time that you realize the other person can be more than a drinking buddy, a good dinner date, a fun weekend, a casual dating partner or a fun distraction. It all really starts when you realize that person could actually be a PARTNER; and the marriage starts when you and your partner decide that you want it to be forever, not when you say the vows. So many guys take the easy way out in the wedding planning process, but I just don't think I could ever be comfortable having my fiancee do all the work while I sat back and waited for the day. It should represent both of you, not just the one with the sensible decorating style and knack for selecting the best finger foods. The wedding should be representative of both of you, individually and as a couple. That can't happen if only one person has any input. I know that our wedding will be a special event because we're both invested into making it special, as are our families and friends, who are helping us put personal touches on everything from gift baskets to invitations. The importance of family in the whole process is something I'll address in a later post, but since I'm already sooooo ridiculously off topic already, I'll try to get back (there's the rambling again).

Where was I? Oh yeah, having such a long engagment means that there will inevitably be lulls in the wedding planning action. I naturally assumed that it would be a flurry of activity from the day of the proposal up until the big day, but I was wrong. Instead of being a huge tornado, with everything flying at you all at once, it's been more like a hurricane, with a huge flurry of activity at the beginning (finding a location, negotiating rates, developing a website) and the end (final preparations, choosing flowers, table settings, the actual wedding). And right now, we're in the eye. We've got everything set up, and since our wedding is in Mexico, we can't move forward on the final preparations for another couple months. That leaves us in a kind of limbo. We're so excited to get to the big final push, but we have nothing else to do for right now (although I know my fiancee will kill me because she probably has a huge list of crap; I know, I know, we have to order invitations this week). You get so excited about the final event that it's hard to maintain focus on executing all of the other little things that go into the event.

So while I'm sure there are other things (many, many other things) that need to be and could be done now, I'll take these few weeks to soak in all that we have accomplished so far with this wedding planning process. It may be the last weeks of peace I have until May of next year.

And besides, I still need to pick out some of the food. Maybe we'll have ribs.