Weddingbee Blog

“Is it bad?”, I asked, looking fearfully into his deep brown eyes.He grabbed my hands and nodded regretfully. “I’m afraid so.” I took a deep breath and wondered aloud if there was any cure, any way to rid myself of ORS, which I’d been plagued with all my life.

Mr. Jasmine smiled warmly and put his hands around my face. “Luckily, there is a cure……calm the eff down!” I burst out laughing and realized right away that I had to put a stop to my ORS, which I call Over-Researching Syndrome.

Yes bees, I have to confess that I’m an over-researcher. Google and I are soul mates. Yelp, Epinions, Cnet and Consumer Reports are my best friends. Every day, I lovingly put them to the test: Yelp, find me the best red velvet cupcakes in Lincoln Park! Google, find me the best hair salon near the UCLA campus. Cnet, find me the best laser printer under $300 (a thankless task that I’m still undertaking). I research everything, from what I might want to have for lunch that day, what stockings are most likely to run, whether that new movie out is really worth my $8.

So you can only imagine how my ORS is affecting wedding planning. No vendor has been hired and no wedding decision has been made without hours and hours of wedding research. I’ve spent far too much time weeding through Knot bios, vendor reviews, blogs, websites, magazines, and books. And even when I’ve decided something, I continually second guess my choice. Did I choose “correctly”? Did I choose the “best”? Do I need to get up at 3 AM to research what potential venue I should have gone with instead (true story, sadly)?

There are some definite benefits to ORS: I rarely, if ever, make hasty decisions. And I’m proud of how much I know about the pros/cons of so many things.

But there are some definite downsides in that I’m ridiculously indecisive and incapable of making even simple decisions without calculating pros/cons in my head (what do I want for lunch? a caesar salad? hmm, it’s cold outside so do i really want something cold? plus, the dressing is fatty. but the bread that comes with it is delicous. maybe tomato soup? it’s nice and warm, but not filling. will i get hungry later? omg, what do i choose?)

Mr. Jasmine has helped me realize that the vast majority of decisions we make on a daily basis, including wedding decisions, have few negative consequences and ramifications. The only thing we can do is make decisions using the information we have and hope for the best. I saw a card in a bookstore the other day that said, “everything will be okay in the end. if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” So true about life, but about wedding decisions in general. It’s so hard not to get caught up in making the “right” wedding decisions, when there’s really no such thing. Let’s all promise to be nicer to ourselves and stand by our decisions! And if those decisions turn out to be “wrong”, well that will work itself out too.

Are there any other over-researchers out there? How have you made peace?