Weddingbee Blog

The closer I lurk to the big 3-0, the more comfortable I am with admitting aloud those things I cannot do, I’ve never been able to do, and I likely will never be able to do. I see it like this: if your twenties are all about trying new things, then surely when you reach the Dirty Thirties you can become curmudgeonly complacent at those things at which you suck, and it’s okay. For me, such things include:

• parallel parking
• splitting the bill
• using technology in my classroom (my students rightly think I’m a dinosaur after I told them I didn’t know how to use that new-fangled PowerPoint)
• anything crafty (includes: sewing, cutting in straight lines, things made out of felt, any medium that is not Crayola, Styrofoam balls, words like “decoupage” et. al.)

Don’t look at me like that, Martha!

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Today’s wedding culture is seeped with the crafters, the artists, and the inventors. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to hearing the swan song of the DIY-ers and wanting to join them, wanting to personalize my wedding with clever home-grown touches. This is what weddings do to you! One minute you’re perfectly content with not knowing what the heck a Cricut is and the next you’re talking yourself into making perfectly cut program fans. Along the way I’ve had bouts of DIY-ness, thinking, ‘I can do this! I can make my own invitations. I can construct tissue paper pomanders! I can arrange my own flowers!’ And then the afterglow fades and I realize, ‘No, no I can’t and furthermore I don’t even want to.’ Someone else, do it. Please. I am begging you.

I have a theory. Well, I have a few, but this is one: The wedding has become an outlet for otherwise unfulfilled creative desires.

Right?? Remember when you had art class in the third grade and you sculpted a kangaroo but its ear cracked off in the kiln but your mom put it on the mantle anyway?? Remember that? And you were like, WHAT? He got into a scrap, SO??! Wedding planning is the new third grade art class!

For all my big talk and momentary whimsies I very much remain a Someone-Else-Do-It-Please-er. How to tell if you’re a DIY-er or a SEDIP-er? You might be the latter if:

• You still don’t understand what a Gocco is
• The word “emboss” fills you with an unnamed sense of trepidation
• You do not own a ruler
• You find yourself justifying your non DIY ways by saying things like, “Well, it takes time and my schedule is just too packed right now”
• You say the latter while on the couch watching a Rock of Love II: Tour Bus marathon
• You hold equal respect for astrophysics, brain surgeons, and those who decide to make their own veils
• When a button falls off, you buy a new blouse

Which are you? Do you use your wedding as an excuse to get artsy with it?