A Happy Medium

A Happy Medium

September 8th, 2010 @ 8:41 am by Ms. Sloth
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Until I got engaged, I never put much thought into what kind of wedding I wanted to have, and I sure as hell didn’t realize that the sky is the limit—you can do anything with your wedding! After the proposal, I started devouring wedding blogs like candy and came across some of the most unique weddings I’d ever seen.

For instance, this wedding that looks like it came straight out of a Tim Burton movie:

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And this wedding that was inspired by the Mexican dia de los muertos:

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This hippie-raver love-fest:

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Or this roller rink wedding:

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And since I now have several hundred (I wish I was kidding) bridal blogs in my RSS reader, I’ve been inundated with photos like these:

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100 Layer Cake

These intricate details are stunning. They’re creative and adorable and imaginative and a million other things.

They’re also time-consuming and expensive. Yes, you can DIY, but then you make up for in time what you’re saving in money. Or you can hire a designer, and vice versa.

I’d love to have such beautiful details at our wedding but I need to make peace with the fact that it’s not going to happen. I have a full-time job during the day and at nights and weekends, I work on my fashion website. I will never have the time to do personalized calligraphy on escort cards, or to make a thousand origami swans.

And I need to remember that that’s okay. This wedding isn’t for the indie wedding blogosphere. It’s for me and Mr S, and for our friends and family. I need to find a happy medium between cookie cutter/boring and incredibly offbeat and indie wedding porn. It just needs to be fun, romantic, and to reflect who Mr S and I are as people: laid back, a little weird, in love. And it’s okay that I’ll never be able to design and sew my own wedding dress or self-cater the wedding. I just have to be comfortable with what I can do with the skills that I do have: namely, intermediate knowledge of Photoshop and InDesign and some mean hot glue gun skills. And if I know the people we love (and I do), nobody will think that our wedding sucked because we didn’t have intricate details. They’ll be pleased as punch with good music and enough booze.

Will you be investing a lot of time and/or money on wedding details? Did you worry that you weren’t creative enough to pull off the wedding of your dreams?

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25 Responses to “A Happy Medium”

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Bee

Miss Glasses (message) 2,741 posts, Sugar bee

I subscribe to a million wedding blogs too and everything I see makes me think, “Oh! I need to do that too!” It really is great that you can do anything with your wedding but I think, for me, that’s the problem I can’t wait to see how your ideas pull together!

9/8/10 @ 8:48 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Thimble (message) 797 posts, Busy bee

Hey now Sloth- You’ve got a super cool venue and your design skillz kick butt! I think your inspiration blogs are sort of marinating and infusing your wedding in a non-time consuming way, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

9/8/10 @ 8:55 am (reply)

Member

cloverdaIe (message) 61 posts, Worker bee

im more of a semi-DIY bride since I have no creativity, but I’m really good at imitating other’s ideas..thats where weddingbee comes in!
either way, im sure your wedding will be beautiful as long as you take care of whats most important to you and your fiancee

9/8/10 @ 8:57 am (reply)

Guest

Elisabeth

So funny! I went to university with the people in your first picture!

9/8/10 @ 8:59 am (reply)

Member

TheFutureMcBride (message) 4,461 posts, Honey bee

You say this, but, when you post pictures, we’re all going to be amazed. At my wedding, people remembered the wine, beer, food, and cake because all tasted fantastic. No one talked about my awesome origami balls which took 5 people 3 days to fold.

9/8/10 @ 9:01 am (reply)

Bee

Miss Brooch (message) 1,715 posts, Bumble bee

You have the right attitude and I love it! We all need to remind ourselves who this is all for, so thank you for reminding me this morning (since I too have been inundated with wedding gorgeousness in my reader)!

LOL @roller rink wedding.

9/8/10 @ 9:36 am (reply)

Member

Violet Violet (message) 985 posts, Busy bee

I know exactly how you feel. I’m trying to keep myself in check with the DIY, and accepting that everything I do doesn’t have to be entirely unique and different, it just has to work for us.

9/8/10 @ 9:45 am (reply)

Member

ginandtonic (message) 193 posts, Blushing bee

I definitely had anxiety that our wedding was not going to be cool and creative enough, and was going nuts trying to do something to appease the indie wedding blogosphere as you so aptly put it and our traditional families at the same time, and then after a while my guy pointed out that we feel a wedding has been good if we a) cry at the ceremony or are at least super happy for the couple b) drink and chat with people and c) dance like fools, so as long as that happened, and we had *some* personal aspects to make it our wedding, it was really all going to be OK. And it was! It is hard to resist trying to do a zillion thoughtful details though!

9/8/10 @ 10:00 am (reply)

Member

jordynrose (message) 6,351 posts, Bee Keeper

I always read the wedding blogs and wish I could pull off some of these super elaborate weddings. However, I am know these are not in my budget and have resigned myself to taking my favorite ideas and tailoring them to our wedding.

9/8/10 @ 10:05 am (reply)

10.

Bee

Miss Locket (message) 2,837 posts, Sugar bee

Those damn wedding blogs have gotten the best of me!! I have such a can do attitude I think I can do everything…finally realizing I can’t and am having to scrap many plans! People won’t know that things are missing so I am ok with it all.

9/8/10 @ 10:08 am (reply)

11.

Bee

Miss Sloth (message) 3,184 posts, Sugar bee

One thing that’s been really helpful in scaling back is remembering that the ONLY people who expect amazing details like that are people who read wedding blogs. About 80% of my guest list have never read a wedding blog in their life.

You’re right, Miss Locket - people won’t know that they’re missing!

9/8/10 @ 10:12 am (reply)

12.

Member

kindge_03 (message) 18 posts, Newbee

Wow, sounds like you’re going to have a very beautiful, unique wedding! You should check out http://offbeatbride.com/ I think you’d find ALOT of great inspiration for the flavor you’re describing!

9/8/10 @ 10:17 am (reply)

13.

Member

Encore (message) 680 posts, Busy bee

I think those wedding blogs can sometimes give us a complex. And they make us forget that our wedding will in fact be a relfection of love and will be personal because of us and the people with whom we choose to share it.

That being said, I totally admit that I’ve gotten a little sucked into DIY details. But for me, it’s a way to keep up my planning and excitement and be involved throughout the process without driving everyone else in my life insane!

9/8/10 @ 10:20 am (reply)

14.

Member

Swiss Miss to Bee (message) 1,004 posts, Bumble bee

Amen sista

9/8/10 @ 11:47 am (reply)

15.

Member

kaitybird (message) 66 posts, Worker bee

PREACH!

9/8/10 @ 12:04 pm (reply)

16.

Member

missbiscuit (message) 1,050 posts, Bumble bee

“This wedding isn’t for the indie wedding blogosphere. It’s for me and Mr S, and for our friends and family. I need to find a happy medium between cookie cutter/boring and incredibly offbeat and indie wedding porn. It just needs to be fun, romantic, and to reflect who Mr S and I are as people: laid back, a little weird, in love.”

YES YES OMG A THOUSAND TIMES YES!! Thank you.

9/8/10 @ 12:40 pm (reply)

17.

Member

LittlestBirds (message) 2,605 posts, Sugar bee

Good for you! I think it needs to be said and said again: the elements of a wedding that you see on blogs, and the kind of wedding that those photos imply existed, might not necessarily be the kind of wedding you actually want to have! That’s okay!

I won’t lie, I do love the current trends in wedding detail photos that you see all over the place, with their sweet vintagey country-ish shabby-like woodsy-ful romantic charm, but… it does all sort of start to look the same after a while. Be you. Have fun. Get married.

9/8/10 @ 12:46 pm (reply)

18.

Member

beekiss2 (message) 2,896 posts, Sugar bee

I love this! It makes me feel better that I’m not the only that feels this way!

9/8/10 @ 1:31 pm (reply)

19.

Bee

Miss Elephant (message) 6,177 posts, Bee Keeper

HAHA, I had to cut back on all the wedding blogs because there was so much I wanted to do! I will admit, that I have done more than a few DIY detail projects as a way to help pass time in our 25 month long engagement. I’m really happy with how they turned out, but if I had a shorter engagement period I probably wouldn’t have bothered with so many of those projects.

9/8/10 @ 1:37 pm (reply)

20.

Member

D.Marie (message) 2,484 posts, Buzzing bee

I think now that wedding blogs and photography blogs are so popular a bride can go crazy with details and ideas. I went through the same thinking when I first found WeddingBee and other blogs….esp seeing all the DIY details. But I knew that I just wasnt a DIY bride and needed to hire a florist for our centerpieces and bouquets! But I so love brides with clay flowers, paper flowers and beautiful pin flowers!!

9/8/10 @ 1:46 pm (reply)

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