cheap wedding inspiration

{Confession} I Royally Loved It!

Y’all should know that I had another post drafted until, literally, two seconds ago. It was glorious and pithy and edited and had photos and was everything Dear Dana wishes I could deliver in a timely manner each week. (Secondary Confession: For someone who’s a Project Manager by trade, I am pathologically incapable of getting my weekly posts done on time. And Dana is just as pathologically forgiving. And that’s the inside scoop!)

But. BUT. You see. Ahem. Here’s the issue. That post was all about how ridiculous I thought the Royal Wedding hype was. And I was reading through all the post-reporting on it, and I came across the image that brought a laugh to the global bridal community! I saw this:

Flower girl images stealthily repurposed from this site.

And even if you feel the way I do about weddings right now, you just have to love how priceless a wedding moment this is. Even the future queen of England could not keep the flower girl from photobombing her in front of the whole world.

No, but seriously. How great is this? It’s E.P.I.C. It will be on display at this youngster’s wedding for sure.

So I chuckled a bit, and realized that I hadn’t done that over a wedding in a long time. It got me thinking.

Truth be told, I have not fully recovered from MY OWN wedding. No matter how perfect your wedding day goes– and mine was, literally, flawless, save for my one *small* snafoo– if you’re anything like me, you will find yourself avoiding talking about anything that has anything to do with weddings (and if you’re crafting, you will really want to curl up into a ball and cry and violently flash back to the last 72 hours before your big day when you produced more paper flowers and favor packets and decor than FACTORIES that SPECIALIZE in those products anytime someone mentions how lovely your day was. But no worries. You will somehow fight that urge and smile and politely pretend you don’t know what they’re talking about. Pffft, all WHAT hard work? You’re so cool under pressure.).

Right. My point. My point is that I muscled through and told you lovelies all the tips for success like we had. But above and beyond that? I don’t talk about my wedding. We have photobooth images that aren’t on Facebook. We still haven’t seen our slideshow and, truth be told, I’m in no hurry.

On my good days, it was good to sort of recollect my life and shuffle inconspicuously away from my wedding’s reach. Which is easier now that it’s over, but don’t let anyone kid you– your wedding still has you by the hair until those thank you’s are in the mail. Which left us with “most other days” where avoiding anything wedding was my default mode. (You should see my Google Reader feed. I’m THOUSANDS of posts behind. Which is SHAMEFUL.)

Lest you think I’m exaggerating. Sadly, terrifyingly, I am not.

And then The Royal Wedding happened. And I wasn’t averse, really. (I’ve always been more Team Harry, so my dreams weren’t dashed that day. See Also: I’m married, so I broke his heart first.) But I also was not, admittedly, *dying* to know who did her dress or how her hair was going to be styled or where her tiara is from. (Cartier, for the record. It was a gift given to The Queen on her 18th birthday and she was kind enough to let the Former Miss Middleton borrow it.)

And had I not been invited to help cook an English breakfast with my brilliant friend Amy, I wouldn’t have planned to watch at all. But then my sinuses flared up so I had to cancel breakfast with Amy. And then a random, weird cat was howling outside out window at precisely 5am. Which woke me up. I rolled over to Twitter and my goodness, you brides were up early and chatting up a STORM. So I flipped on the TV, reasoning that even The Royal Wedding was better than staring at the ceiling and seething at The Hubs with blind rage for his ability to sleep through loud stray animals in the yard.

I’m not sure what I expected. $30Million Budget? I guess I expected gold-plated unicorns flying through the cathedral rafters and a red-carpet made of hand-sewn rainbow fragments, collected and imported directly from Ireland. And life-size marble statues of William and Kate. I expected straight faces and stuff upper lips and all that jolly good British-Royalty stuff.

You know what I saw? I saw William and Harry milling through the church, greeting their guests and leaning over to share affections with their family. I saw brothers, supporting one another. I saw smiles and laughter and love– all the things that I glimpsed when I stole peeks into the church before my march down the aisle. I saw the groom’s brother *shamelessly* ogle the bride (and her little sister!), and a flower girl photobomb to end all photobombs.

I saw two people who are clearly the very best of friends swear to honor and protect their love above all else. I heard a woman stand up before the world and promise to love and cherish and honor and support her husband. (And, in leaving out the word “obey,” I heard a woman tell the world that she can demonstrate all those things to her husband as an equal, without being subservient.)

But that was just it. We tuned in to watch a girl become a princess and what I saw, above all else, was two best friends become man and wife. They became prince and princess only incidentally. And I wasn’t expecting that.

It shook me.

I’m not saying that I immediately caught up on my Google Reader feed (I didn’t.) or that I’m cured of my paper-flower twitch (I’m not!) but it warmed my heart in a way that, let’s be honest, only a wedding that is clearly a manifestation of love and mutual respect and admiration can. (And it was refreshing to be reminded that all the money and power and prestige, literally, in the world can’t guarantee that your siblings will behave and the little ones won’t go rogue.)

Am I cured of being a wedding pariah? Well, not entirely. But it was an unexpected and appreciated reconnection with what I love about these dog-and-pony shows. (And if my mother asks, I am ALL OVER getting those proofs from the photographer, ok? Excellent.)

You girls totally have my back, right? I mean, let’s not forget… We’re all in this together.

-MM.