Weddingbee Blog

By the time February rolled around, it was official. I was a failure at wedding planning.

Or, rather, I was a failure at beginning to plan my wedding.

Well, we had a venue and chairs and a color scheme. And we had the female side of the wedding party. (It’s possible that Mr. DD didn’t finish asking the male side of the wedding party to be in the wedding until June.)

But that was it. We still needed to pick out a photographer, a videographer, a caterer, a coordinator, a florist, a cake baker…

I tried to make progress. But I was overwhelmed. Not just by wedding planning but by starting my own business, renovating Mr. DD’s place (um, because that was a wise project to take on right after getting engaged), officially moving into Mr. DD’s place (and therefore officially moving out of my place), taking graduate law classes on tax law and estate planning, making plans to go help out my sister once her twins arrived, trying to actually see my friends once in a while, and being okay transitioning from unmarried person to married person.

The last one was strangely the most difficult thing. Sometimes it still feels like it is.

First of all, there is totally a married people club out there. And they treat you differently once you get engaged. Suddenly your relationship means something. And you’re torn between thinking that your relationship meant something before you got engaged and perhaps that’s actually why you got engaged and thinking that it feels good to be accepted. This is confusing at best.

Secondly, in-laws are difficult. It doesn’t matter how nice they are to begin with. Entering someone else’s family unit is like entering a foreign country. And sometimes it really does seem like enemy territory. Especially when you’re an interracial couple and there are competing cultural expectations at play.

Thirdly, I never realized that I would have so many identity-related issues surrounding getting married. You see, I had this whole past life where I was self-sufficient and successful and I had my own space and no one messed up my things and if I made a major decision, it generally only affected me. But all of a sudden there was this other person everywhere. And, what’s more, I was finding that I needed him everywhere. Sometimes it scares me that I really don’t know what I would do without Mr. DD. On a related note, it was really, really hard to move out of the place I bought by myself into a place I didn’t pick out (and wouldn’t have).

Oh, I knew planning the wedding would be hard. But why didn’t anybody ever tell me about all this other stuff?!

Did you need to come to terms with getting married, too? Or were you already ready by the time you got engaged?