Weddingbee Blog

My first world problem? Making wedding decisions. I know. Poor me.

There are a lot of decisions that go into wedding planning, and I am generally an inconsistent decision maker. I either make my decisions impulsively and split-secondy, or…well, I don’t make them at all. This is actually why I don’t eat cereal, because the damn cereal aisle in the grocery store is so freaking overwhelming and anxiety producing and has too many choices. Plus, I don’t like cereal.

Image form Farm Aid

I have had a lot of unsolicited well-meaning advice given to me about making wedding decisions and frankly, I have found none of it helpful.

One person told me the rule is to spend no more than five minutes on any wedding decision. What the hell, yo! FIVE MINUTES??? How about five days/weeks/months??? It takes me fifteen minutes just to pick out what shade of polish to have the manicurist paint on my nails!

Someone else suggested I choose the aspects of the wedding that are most important to me. That makes sense for someone who has priorities, I guess, but everything is important to me.

Oprah Magazine recently suggested, in Seven Steps to Making Better Decisions by Catherine Price, that I stop trying to find The Best of whatever it is I am looking for. But what the hell does Oprah know, anyway? (Just kidding, Oprah, I love you!) I mean, it is ingrained in my heart and soul to hunt for the best, the greatest deal, the most original, the highest quality. And, of course, the entire wedding industry perpetuates this idea to have The Best. I mean, you only get married once, right? [Ok, well, that’s true for maybe 50% of us anyway!] And isn’t that one day, deemed The Big Day, supposed to also be The Best Day of Our Lives? So wouldn’t it follow that to make that day TBDOOL, we will need to have it look like a styled non-real wedding wedding shoot from Style Me Pretty, be ridiculously in love with OOAO (Our One and Only), and look ABAWWEB (As Beautiful As We Will Ever Be)?

There’s a lot of decisions that go into making all those acronyms come true, y’all.

Recently I was seriously paralyzed with indecision about napkins. Yes, napkins…you know, the cloth or paper squares that one uses to wipe food bits from one’s hands and mouth. I didn’t like any of the colors the napkins came in at our rental place, and then I thought about sewing them myself (despite the advice of many, many bees before me—told you, I don’t listen), but then I wasn’t sure what fabric to use. A print, a solid, one fabric or multiple fabrics? I internally went back and forth and back and forth for days. And while I was going back and forth, and mentally rearranging napkins and centerpieces in my mind, I realized that I was being sorta ridiculous.

Who cares about napkins, really? I mean, especially when there are real problems in the world. Like, earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes…hunger, disease, and poverty. And not just in far away places. Just last week, at least 28 tornadoes hit North Carolina, leaving a wake of destruction and killing 24 people.

Image from Property Casualty 360˚

Should I be worrying about making the prefect decisions to have the most perfect napkins while in the county over, peoples’ homes have been destroyed?

The problem is, on the one hand, I really do care about napkins and other seemingly small details—I enjoy creating such things, and really want our wedding to feel individualized and fun. On the other hand, I [sometimes] think it is ridiculous that I bother with such small details and [often] feel guilty for spending mental time and actual time worrying about these trivial notions and decisions, when I could be focusing on actual problems.

Image from Josh Dilworth

Miss Prairie Dog talked about bridal guilt as well, but I’m just wondering…do you experience bridal guilt because of your first world problems, and if so, how do you cope with it?