cheap wedding inspiration

Budget For Stress Relief

No matter how much you plan and prep, the last few weeks before your wedding are going to be a stressful time.  You have to hound the RSVP stragglers, confront the dizzying logic puzzle of the seating chart, brace yourself for final-balance payments, all while surfing epic waves of emotion. Stress is inevitable. So you need to budget time and money for stress relief.  Here’s my chillaxation game plan:

YOGA

[Photo from lululemon's Flickr photostream]

When a Groupon for two months of Bikram yoga popped up two months before my wedding, I felt like I’d won the stress-relief lottery.  Yoga gets hyped to a preposterous degree as a the ticket to a healthy body, a peaceful mind, and a rockin’ bod.  I’ll be honest: I’m not a True Believer.  I have to suppress chuckles when the instructor tells me that the Cantankerous Goose posture or whatever will balance my endocrine system. That said?  I can’t deny that yoga makes me feel better.  And from a time-management perspective, you can’t beat the efficiency of combining exercise and meditation.

Now, let’s face it, yoga is pretty bougie and class prices reflect that.  The $40 I spent on my two-month pass felt like a lot of money to me, and that was allegedly an 87% discount (I just wasted a few minutes staring at my studio’s complicated price schedule trying to suss out that math, but then I realized I should be reserving all math brain energy to sort out why we have eight more guests accounted for than meals in our wedding spreadsheet). But if you can find a deal or a good donation-based studio, or even if you are able to set aside some money for a few full-price classes, do it.  For one thing: having an instructor correct you and suggest modifications is incredibly valuable.  Secondly, there really is something extra special about hot yoga.  Sweating buckets recharges your body’s batteries for some reason.  And maybe your air-conditioner-free apartment feels like a hot yoga studio, but the conditions aren’t optimized the way they would be at a class.  Finally? Laughter is a great stress relief too, and at any yoga studio you will hear some hilariously pretentious gems about energy and flushing out toxins and such nonsense.

Don’t fret if you can’t afford that, though.  All you really need is a mat (I stubbornly attempted to practice yoga on my carpet for months before discovering that yoga mats stop you from slipping.  Yoga is way more fun when you don’t land on your butt every few minutes) and an internet connection. YouTube “yoga” and you’ll find an embarrassment of educational riches.

MASSAGE

I know it sounds like I’m drinking the yoga-freak Kool Aid (which I’m guessing is coconut water), but stress has a way of collecting in your muscles.  Getting a massage is not just about getting that imaginary metal spike in your neck to take a hike, it’s about getting emotional tension out as well.  So I will be getting a massage the week of my wedding, to loosen up, to let go of some emotions, and to get away from everything for an hour. If you can, set aside the time and money for this.  If you can’t afford it, beg and bribe your partner into giving you a massage.  Of course, some fiances, (COUGH Collin COUGH) are lazy massage-givers who think an entire back rub can be accomplished in three minutes, but maybe you are one of the lucky ones marrying a certified masseuse.

“GOO”

“Goo” is a term my friends use to describe lovey-doveyness.  We usually use it in a teasing but secretly envious way.  What I’ve found in these recent stress-tastic weeks is that goo is the cure for wedding angst. Whenever I feel like my brain might melt or my heart might explode because of the latest planning drama, I shift my thoughts to how much I love Collin.  His smile and the way he mumbles “I love you” to me in his sleep and the way he gets so excited to eat the fancy dinner he’s cooking he does a little hip-shaking dance in front of the stove.  And then I feel tremendously better.  Partially because it’s relaxing and fun to be unashamedly in love, but also because it reminds me why I’m planning a wedding in the first place. At the end of all this, I get to be married to Collin! And that is so awesome, it deserves a big celebration like this wedding. Stress that is undoubtedly worth it is somehow not so stressful.

What are your pre-wedding stress-busting tactics?

-Robin

On Growing Pains & Leaps of Faith

Hi, my name is Dana and I am constantly fighting against myself to make myself do the things that I fear most.

I have lots o’ friends and family members who go through life avoiding things that scare them – or worse – are paralyzed by their fears and thus only fulfill a small portion of their potential, because they’d prefer to not try, rather than try and risk failure. That is, to me, a fate worse than death.

Source: bootsandcateyes.blogspot.com via The Broke-Ass Bride on Pinterest

Now I’m not saying its easy. Oh no no no, not at all, young grasshopper. Sometimes, it takes me years of stutter-starts, excuses, or just plain old hiding out before I build up the gumption to fight through a fear. In truth, there are some fears I wonder if I’ll ever fully conquer. But part of my personal mission is to constantly evaluate what’s holding me back, and to find actionable ways to vanquish the beast. It keeps me from sinking into passive mediocrity. It keeps me growing and evolving.

Two years ago, Hunter, I and our bestie Nick began dreaming up a TV show, and started slowly writing, sketching it out and building out the world of the story. It was casual and organic, and since the show is kind of clearly about us, we got to poke a lot of fun at ourselves along the way. We had a great time. It came very easily.

Nick has worked in television for the past 5 years, under the tutelage of one of the sitcom world’s most profound directors on the sets of tons of great sitcom shows. He’s also just about the most likeable guy on the planet. So, when we started bandying about the idea of shooting the script ourselves, his coworkers and cast members generously and eagerly offered their assistance to help Nick make his (and our) dreams come true.

So, here we are today, a month away from shooting our first scene of our pilot episode, leading a team of Hollywood veterans whose resumes boast such titles as Cheers, Will & Grace, The Sopranos, Gary UnMarried and more. And we’re four days away from a giant fundraising party to help make it all possible. And we’re learning how to do it all as we go along.

So, as you can imagine, its a bit overwhelming, totally scary, and a whole lotta awesome.

Mostly, I’m just fighting through the fear. Focusing on the positive. Making myself do the things that are most uncomfortable and foreign because it strengthens me as an artist and businessperson, and I’m learning a LOT along the way.

Source: fitandhungry.com via The Broke-Ass Bride on Pinterest

It’s just like planning a wedding. It’s not something most brides have experience in doing before they’re thrown into the fire. There are elements that are scary and feel near-impossible (negotiating with vendors and in-laws, anyone?). You worry about money, and timing, and details and the big picture. You worry about the “mights” and “what if’s”, and at times you just want to throw in the towel and run off to elope, because your To Do list is multiplying in its sleep, and you can’t imagine a world in which you can possibly pull all this off and still have the strength to walk down the aisle when the big day finally comes….

…But somehow, it happens. Things fall into place. You force your way through the fear and trepidation, the moments of paralysis and bi-weekly weepy meltdowns. You lean on your team for help. You learn how to do things you never imagined yourself being good at, and surprise yourself when you realize that not only are you pretty good at it, but you actually kind of enjoy it. And at the end of the day (or planning period), you reap the benefits of plowing through your fears, and growing through your pains, by sharing in the creation of something spectacular with the people that you love the most.

This is what I mean when I talk about how wedding planning can be a launchpad for your life. Having been through the fire, and with the hindsight the past two years since, I am continually amazed by how much the process of our wedding planning has informed the kind of artist and businesswoman that I am, and shaped the way I approach my future. Not without fear, but through fear. And it makes me feel pretty bad-ass, I gotsta say.

So, yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot, over the past few weeks, how grateful I am for having planned our own wedding and for this blog as a space to explore what that means to me. I have shifted and grown more in the past three years than in most of my previous years, because of those things. I’ve learned to turn a “what if I fail” mindset into a “what if I succeed” mantra. And here I am today, making a television show with my friends and the trust of industry pros. I’m not gonna lie. That makes me feel pretty darn fancy and seriously proud.

Has planning your wedding helped you grow in ways you never imagined before? I’d love to know how!

Healthcare Nightmare (a rant)

I’ve been crying on and off all morning. I freaking HATE the medical system right now. I want to move to canada, or sweden. Because this just ain’t working for me anymore, and I just need to write it out to try and feel a little better.

Yesterday, my surgical coordinator called to tell me the hospital pharmacy is refusing to order my $18,000 drug implant because of “some problem with insurance”. Of course, she didn’t have any more detail than that at the time. Of course, I’ve been paying out the nose for my own insurance for the past year. Of course, I’ve had this exact surgery like seven times before, with no problem. Of course, they’ve had TWO MONTHS to get this shit settled in advance. But here I am, two weeks before my surgery, totally blindsided by this news.

Today, she called to say that there will be at least another 48 hour delay in approval, and the drug takes 2-3 weeks to be delivered, so yeah…. its probable that my surgery (which I’ve been planning my LIFE around for the past 2 months) will be delayed.

So I called my insurance company. They say, “we have no idea what the problem is. Your hospital called, requesting pre-authorization on the implant… but this surgery doesn’t require it. Maybe they’re upset because we can’t guarantee benefits in advance, but as long as they submit the claim correctly and provide backup, it will be paid – just like your other surgeries were”. SO WHAT’S THE FREAKING PROBLEM?!?!?

I am waiting for the director of UCLA’s pharmacy to return my call and explain just exactly WHAT the problem is and WHAT RIGHT do they have to REFUSE my implant order when I am a FULLY INSURED United States citizen who depends on this surgery to preserve MY ABILITY TO FREAKING SEE. I am waiting for my surgeon to get out of the OR and call me back so I can demand to know how this happened, and have him explain to me what he’s able to do to make it right. Because, surely, someone has to be able to do something. Right now, it seems no one is doing anything.

But waiting is not my strong suit.

I am a proactive person. I like to make shit happen. This situation is like wearing a straight jacket, a blindfold, earplugs and a strip of duct tape over my mouth. I am unable to do anything to help the situation. I am castrated. I am useless. And I don’t cotton well to feeling impotent, especially in matters concerning my healthcare. So instead, I alternate crying with fits of anger, and intensely staring at my phone like if I concentrate hard enough it will ring with the words “good news, its all cleared up, and they’re rushing your implant here on time after all.”

But it doesn’t ring. I am not, much to my chagrin, telekinetic.

Please please please send good healthcare and patience and love vibes to me. I need all that I can get at the moment.

Thanks.

Phew, that feels a little better. I’ll keep you posted.

PS – Dishing for Dana is over $10,600 today. You guys are SUCH bad-asses, and you lift my spirits in ways beyond expression

{Ask Liz} About Wedding Confrontations

First of, thanks to everyone who called yesterday to get their 15 Minutes of Wedding Planning with me. I had a great time answering your questions (plus I got a blog post topic for next week), and here are a few more:

Dear Liz,

If These are supposed to be the same color, they really need to be the same color. (Courtesy of Kristina Hill Photography)

So I did the very responsible thing and went through a bridal shop for my dresses, and they just came in, and despite ordering them at the same time, they came in at all different times.  This made me skeptical about them really being dyed together.  Lo and behold, they are different colors. What’s a girl to do?

Signed,

Untied Over the Dye

Dear Untied,

Get two of the dresses that are different colors together, then call the shop immediately or  just take them in. Taking them in is better. Physical evidence is the best proof. If you’re comfortable with them re-doing the order, then ask for another set, with Rush delivery. If not, ask for a refund or discount. I know you’re probably worried that they won’t take care of this, but it’s definitely in their interest to take care of this, especially if it’s right there staring them in the face. Deep breath – it’ll be okay.

Dear Liz:

Yeah, NO. Not even if they're as cute as these. (Courtesy of The Gap)

I realize I cannot control what people wear, but I don’t want my FMIL going around telling people to wear jeans. Am I crazy for letting this bother me? Up until this point, I’ve been extremely relaxed about all details of the wedding, so I don’t want this one to set me off. What would you do?

Dear Casual,

Well, first I would put my head on the desk and bang it against the surface a few times. Oy. Then I would inform your FMIL that odds are she’ll be the only one wearing jeans, and you expect that every other woman there will be wearing a dress, from the time the ceremony starts to the end of the reception. Repeat as often as necessary. That way, if she does show up in denim, she can’t say you didn’t warn her. Have her son talk to her, too.  Encourage him to use the words “Have to wear a dress.” No one wants their mother looking like a fool at their wedding. And if all else fails, you can always put “dressy casual” on the invitations so there’s no confusion.

Liz, I need some advice:

My fiance and I are having a small (75 people) reception in my fiance’s home town. To save money and to make our reception more personable, we are doing most of the work ourselves. We are also having a friend of his family cook the food for our reception. Every time that I talk to my FMIL she always suggests/insists on having something or doing something for our reception that I don’t want. Example: I suggest one kind of food, and she decides that we will have another, etc. I love my future in-laws, but how can I take back control without being mean?

Signed,
Menu Madness

Dear Menu,

You know, when I wrote about this a couple of months ago, a future mother-in-law wrote in to say that she was never sure how much she should get involved and she appreciated the advice to lean towards backing the hell off. Dealing with parents, and mothers, especially, can be a wedding tightrope. You want to please them, because you’re used to always pleasing them, and you want to maintain a good relationship with them, because they’re always going to be around. And they’re used to steering you in the right direction, because they’ve always steered you in the right direction. Even though you might be uncomfortable with the idea of confronting her, if you’re really upset about how things are turning out, you need to do it.

You don’t have to be mean, you just need to be clear. Instead of “I don’t like any most of these food choices”, be specific. I don’t like this, I don’t like that, and instead, I want this and that.” Use phrases like, “I just like this better”, and ” I always wanted to have this at my wedding.” No “could we?” or “is it possible?”, which is an invite for her to come up with a reason why you can’t and it isn’t. And thank her for her help beforehand and after, be very positive about that.   And, if you can, get the number of the caterer, so you can contact them yourself – don’t make her have to order the changes on top of the rejection. Yes, it’s rejection, and there’s no getting over that. But remember, it’s not personal, it’s just personal taste, specifically yours. You deserve to have the wedding you want, and not be bitter because you got the wedding she wanted instead.  Bitter sucks.

And to clarify what I previously emailed you about warning your fiance, I meant that you should tell him that you don’t like what’s going on. Be specific with him as well about what you don’t like, and warn him that you’re going to talk to his Mom, and ask him to back you up. Because you know she’s going to say something to him about it. BACK-UP, only. Do NOT ask him to talk to her instead – it’s your issue, and it will muddle things if you have to resolve it through a translator. Which is the exact opposite of what I told the previous bride, but this one is really between you and her.

So, are any of you having these kind of challenges and what did you do? And what do you see as the difference between the solutions to the last too questions?

See you at the end of the aisle,

The Engagement-Period Stuff Freeze

Here’s something no one tells you about getting engaged: your engagement is a period of several months where you cannot, in good conscience, buy any home goods for yourself.

You’ve got this gift registry, and after much suffering you’ve put on that list every single small kitchen appliance and home linen and handheld power tool you can possibly imagine—and some you can’t. ["What is a garlic wheel?" "$10.99." "Add it!"] You’ve theoretically got this whole bounty of home goods coming to you. So buying anything you could register for before the wedding feels self-defeating.

[source image]

And there’s the small(ish?) matter of all the money you’ve set aside for the wedding—it tends to leave the “new vacuum” fund a little shrunken.

If I were an optimist, I’d talk about how your engagement is a wonderful time for your home goods to break because replacements are on their way in the form of wedding presents. But I am a big old grump, so when our vacuum started to suck in the wrong sense of the word, I thought, “Well now what am I supposed to do until my wedding? Haul our living room rug out to the front porch and beat the cat hair off with a wooden stick?” Puh-lease.

And then there are the things you don’t even remotely need, but want, NOW. Collin decided he couldn’t wait until July for a pasta machine. I lamented losing an item from our registry, but got over it the first time he made fresh lasagna noodles (YUM!).  But when he started to buy pasta-making accessories that I’d put on the registry, I had to draw the line.  “If my Aunt Kathy can’t buy us a gnocchi board she might not come to the wedding in protest!” “Robin, you’re being irrational.” “I’M being irrational!? You bought a pasta machine six months before our wedding! That’s like if I had bought myself a diamond ring a week before you proposed!”

In the wake of the Pasta Machine Incident, Collin got on board with the Stuff Freeze.  Sort of. The compromise we’ve worked out is to patch up what we can (buying a new filter for our vacuum cleaner to give it a few months more “effectiveness”) and to buy cheap temporary place-holders for the new stuff we can’t wait for.  Like when we got tired of bickering over Collin’s running clothes getting mixed in with my dry-clean-only sweaters, we ordered me a separate laundry basket, a little plastic number that ran us less than $3. When it arrived we found out it was comically small, but it will hold (a tiny amount of laundry) until July.  And we can leave our luxurious $30 hampers on the registry. Everyone wins!

So an unexpected side-effect of the Engagement Period Stuff Freeze is that it is good training for broke-ass living, even when there isn’t a wedding in the picture. Isn’t it ironic that expecting dozens of gifts is helping cure us of our irrepressible American consumerism? At least Morrisette-onic?

Have you suffered from the frustrations of the Stuff Freeze since getting engaged? Do you have any other strategies for hanging in there until that glorious day when UPS shows up on your doorstep with a stand mixer? Is this the easiest problem that comes about from planning a wedding?

-Robin

{Confession} The Wedding is Winning.

I wrote once before about how hard it can be, Having a Wedding. I want to say this right up front: I’m 9 days away from my wedding, and it is completely womping me.

(source)

That’s just it. That’s the word, the verb, the action, the connotation, for how my wedding and I are interacting. Have you ever babysat a toddler? And the whole night it screamed to be held and coddled and paid-attention-to? But then every so often, out of NOWHERE, it punched you in the face with its meaty little toddler-fist? … Like that. My wedding and I have a relationship like THAT.

And I think that’s pretty normal. In fact, I’d wager that there are women out there who have been married for months who, every now and then, have someone ask them about something completely unrelated to their wedding, but a verbal cue kicks up alllllllll that residual exhaustion. And suddenly their left eye has that pre-nuptial twitch again, and their urge to hurl flowers at innocent passers-by is almost as overwhelming as the urge to huddle beneath their desk, whimpering in frightened defeat.

My point– and I have one, I think– is that in the epic battle of Mallory vs. The Wedding, The Wedding is totally winning. I haven’t been this exhausted or anxiety-riddled or efficient since the last 48 hours before I submitted my thesis for its final review. I haven’t slept as little or coherently communicated about as much, literally, in years. My brain is a color-codes Filofax of dates, times, errands, to-do’s, to-make’s, to-avoid’s, timelines and deadlines. (I also just started my dream job, which has been amazing in more ways than I can describe, but it has me running point on project management for an entire TV Network digital media department.)

I’ve found that I can do one OR the other, but not My Wedding and My Job at the same time. And let’s not even talk about the barren, derelict wastelands of MoxieMissives and 11Eleven11, which haven’t been updated since 2010.

Which brings me to My Other Point: My wedding insists on touching EVERYTHING. Like the petulant toddler of the earlier anecdote, it has its little fingers in all my cookie jars. I can’t have a conversation with The Groom without The Wedding butting in. I can’t walk into my bedroom, or get into the car, or go inside the house without The Wedding popping up, confronting me with everything that has to get done.

And it’s not in an overwhelming way, which I found surprised me. I expected to feel completely hopeless and bogged down and like there was simply no way for both The Wedding and I to make it down the aisle in one piece. It’s not like that at all. We’re co-existing peacefully, juggling a million glass balls back and forth, The Wedding and I. But… Here’s the kicker. That juggling act is sucking the life out of me, and The Wedding never gets tired of it. As long as I don’t lose focus, we’re both OK. But there’s all this frustration right below the surface, waiting for the smallest of imbalances, biding its time for the debut of its fury as it watches the show.

It’s like constantly being reminded that there’s high-maintenance guest staying in your house, using all your towels and demanding all your conversation and making you feel bad if you devote any time to anything else while it’s in town.

And that, my dears, is how I’m holding it all together. I keep reminding myself that The End Is Near. Hallelujah. And I mean that. This wedding is going to be beautiful. It’s going to be the perfect culmination of creativity and love. And I know, in retrospect, I will look back on the day and decide that all the head-to-desk action I’m getting now was well worth my transformation from Miss Mallory into Mrs. TheGroom. But in the meantime, I’m pacing through my cluttered life, muttering to myself about how the day The Wedding packs its bags and hits the road CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH.

And isn’t that how we all feel when we’re babysitting a misbehaved toddler? Or hosting a guest who demands all our time? When we’re juggling as much as we can carry? When we’re working right AT capacity, teetering over the edge? We always pray silently to ourselves as we scope out the exit strategy, then look back and minimize it in our mind. “I had everything with Little Johnny under control,” you tell yourself and your friends, quickly glossing over the part where he lit your hair on fire.

The Wedding can have this round. Because in a week and a half, I’m going to rock this wedding’s world with all the love and laughter and perfection I cram into its limited lifespan. My wedding won’t even see me coming. I’m going to nail it from left field, and I’m bringing all my friends and family and the love of my life along for the ride. I am going to celebrate that day so hard that The Wedding won’t have a chance to resist. It’s just going to have to give me my way, go with the flow, concede to the awesome force that is a validated, empowered, well-loved woman sweeping in and victoriously reclaiming her life.

So The Wedding can win for now. This is just one battle, the neglected websites and forgotten blog posts and the missed deadlines. It’s just temporary, this exhaustion and the strained effort it takes to keep from letting small unravelings morph into irreparable breakdowns. The Wedding can viscously destroy my manicures and split my ends and plop huge bags under my eyes.

It can womp me all it wants.

Because next Friday, I’m riding in with my flag flying high, both guns blazing, and I am stomping my wedding into a deliriously happy, joyously jubilant, deliciously decadent pulp. I am going to wedding The Wedding out.

And when I emerge victorious, the wife of the most marvelous man I’ve ever met, I will look back on today, and this blog post, and I’ll smile with satisfaction.

Then I’ll go take a nap.

Because, ohmygod. I’ve earned it.

-MM.

The Engaged Wedding Guest

I’m going to my cousin’s wedding this weekend.  I’ve come to realize that an engaged person is the most dangerous type of wedding guest.  We cannot be trusted to simply enjoy the open bar and reconnect with the family or friends we’ve been thrust upon.  We are analysts. We are nit-pickers.  We are judges.

OK, maybe I’m a little rash in using the first person plural.  Maybe the average bride-to-be goes to weddings during her engagement and is as gracious as the next guest.  Maybe you’re reading this thinking, “Wow, that Robin is a self-centered brat.”  Or maybe you know EXACTLY what I mean, and your experiences as a wedding guest who is in the midst of planning her own wedding have prompted one of these classic reactions:

Holy $pendoli. A Broke-Ass Bride learns early on in her  wedding planning process just how expensive every little bit of a wedding can be.  Going to a wedding while planning a wedding can turn your mental image of the reception tableau into a catalogue spread. You’ll hallucinate price quotes next to every last detail, and do quick mental math that produces heart-stopping figures estimating the total budget.

[source]

D-I-AY-AY-AY! Before you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of planning your own wedding, handmade wedding details probably seem charming and quaint.  But once you’ve signed on for your own do-it-yourself projects, and watched them gather dust in your living room corner, anyone else’s completed crafts can send you into a punishing shame spiral.  One how-to on the Internet can make a nervous DIY bride break out into a cold sweat.  So coming face-to-face with an entire wedding of crushingly creative crafts? It’s enough to make a delinquent DIY bride throw a gin and tonic in her own face to camoflauge her suddenly-flowing tears of panic.

Wedding Zen-vy, or it’s flipside, Bridenfreude.  If you’re a neurotic nutball like me, one of your biggest fears about your wedding day is that your anxiety will crowd out all other emotions.  So seeing a perfectly serene, beamingly happy bride as an engaged wedding guest can inspire a bit of envious wonder.  How is she so calm? Is she on drugs? She must be on drugs. Conversely, a bride who jitters her way down the aisle and looks like she might faint once she reaches the altar can provoke the engaged wedding guest to feel incredibly cruel relief.  I’m sure I can hold myself together better than THAT display of bridal panic. Maybe my hands will shake, but at least MY ushers won’t be taking bets on whether I vomit on the ring bearer. Sure, it’s not nice to take solace in the pain of others, but the engaged wedding guest can’t be trusted to be nice.

So have any of you gone to a wedding during your engagement? Was it just another wedding for you, or can you admit to falling into one of these patterns of thinking?

-Robin

Avoiding Harried Hostess Syndrome

Hosting a party for the Big Game last weekend brought into harsh relief one my biggest anxieties about my wedding: that I will come down with an acute case of  Harried Hostess Syndrome.

[source]

Harried Hostess Syndrome, also known as “Can I Get You Anything?”itis, is a condition wherein a hostess of a party becomes maniacally obsessed with the well-being of her guests.  Symptoms include high anxiety about no one having a good time and increasingly desperate efforts to correct this perceived guest-dissatisfaction.  Effects range from buying three times more food than is necessary to plying guests with alcohol to the point that an entire fleet of cabs must be summoned at the party’s end. In the most severe cases of Harried Hostess Syndrome, there is a high risk of conga lines and other mandatory-participation group dances.

I had a frightening bout of HHS when I threw my party last Sunday, even though it was just 20 people in my living room watching a football game.  I need to start working now on strategies to combat coming down with HHS on my wedding day if I’m going to be able to relax enough to enjoy it.  I certainly don’t want to turn to my guests halfway through the ceremony and say, “Is everyone doing all right? Is the temperature comfortable for everyone? Does anyone need their drink topped off?”

But I know it will be hard to psych myself into believing I am a guest of honor instead of the host at my wedding.  Even though in the invitation-wording-as-secret-code-for-who-is-paying sense of hosting, Collin and I are the hosts “along with our families,”  I feel the mostest-hostess because so much of the wedding will be the product of my planning, my decisions, my efforts.  I’m the one who chose our venue, so if our guests hate being there, it is my fault.  I’m the one who decided “no flowers, no cake, no favors,” so if our guests miss those things, I’m the one to blame.

So how do I escape this neurotic mental trap so I can fully enjoy my wedding?  Here’s the strategy I’ve come up with:

1. Deflect. No matter how much of my own time, stress, and money I’ve put into my wedding, when the day comes, I’m going to imagine it as a party thrown for me and Collin.  I’ll be sincerely, profoundly, and outwardly grateful to his parents, our families, our friends, our vendors, everyone who is making the day come together through their efforts.  This will distract me from worrying about how everything I set up is working out, with the added bonus of making me a gracious bride!

2. Deny.  Words are powerful.  I’m going to trick my brain into feeling like a happy, relaxed guest instead of a Harried Hostess by telling my guests, “I’m so happy you could share this day with us,” instead of “Thank you so much for coming.”  That’s hostess talk and I’ll have none of that!

3. Delegate.  Members of my Bridal Hootenanny (that’s like a bridal party, but bigger and more unwieldy), I’m putting you on notice: it is your job, not mine, to make sure people are having fun.  This will primarily involve filling the dance floor whenever it thins out, so be sure to limber up during the cocktail hour.

4. Dance. If I’m having enough fun, I’ll be too distracted to worry that anyone else maybe isn’t.  More importantly, I believe that my happiness will infect the crowd and make our wedding a good time for all.  And the best way I know how to stop worrying and be happy is shake a tail feather.

So that’s my four-part strategy for avoiding the burden of Harried Hostess Syndrome at my wedding: deflect hosting respect, deny hosting status, delegate hosting duties, and dance my ass off.

Anyone else worried about feeling like a stressed-out hostess at her own wedding? Do you have any other ideas for how to shake off the symptoms of Harried Hostess Syndrome?

-Robin

{Tip} Accept Audience Participation

I think the most debilitating thing I’ve taken to doing in this wedding process is a knee-jerk response to offers of help with, “Aw, thanks, but… it’s OK! I’ve got it!” Don’t get me wrong; I’m fully aware that I’m a total control freak, and that everyone expected me to be like this. I’m not rocking anyone’s world when I claim to have it all under control.

And for the most part, I’m being honest. I love making my paper flowers because, at the very least… I can control those. All the variables. The colors. The fluffiness. The adhesives. Everything. In a crazy world where there are a billion variables, I love that I can go into my studio with confidence that I can create exactly what I set out to produce. And, most importantly, I can control, almost to the cent, what everything ends up costing us. If it’s too much, I simply pare it down or find a way to make it happen for less.

But. There are so many things that are beyond my control, so many things that dance just outside the grasp of my power. The weather, for example. And whether or not my sister can resist the open bar. When it came to putting together the invitations I found myself at the mercy of The Market, which has succumbed to what I have called “Birds Kissing” syndrome.

Now. If you have birds kissing as any part of your motif, please don’t take offense to the affectionate moniker I came up with. You have to understand that I think kissing birds are quite adorable. Too adorable for The Groom and I, who are, admittedly, messes. We’re far too discombobulated and quirky for a clean, elegant invitation. Or a sweet, affectionate invitation. We… are goofballs. I needed a missive to send to our families that was as left-of-center as we tend to be.

Happily, The Groom works for Marvel, and we’re fortunate enough to boast a lot of talent in our pool of friends. There’s also a lot of generosity. But really, this is about the talent. The sheer, awesome, jaw-dropping talent. One of our friends, Dennis Calero, also happens to be one of those jaw-droppingly-talented human beings, and when he heard my plight with the “Kissing Birds” syndrome, he offered to draw our invitation for us.

Half of the women out there are cheering, because, duh. It’s an absolutely amazing offer– kind, generous and exceptionally personalized. But. I’m a control freak. So instead of jumping right into my happy-dance, I paused for a moment to contemplate letting someone else take on a project as big as The Invitations.

The Groom and I talked it over and finally, the voice of reason broke through. It sounded a lot like my future husband, and the comic-nerd in me, both really, really excited that Dennis had even offered. I never had a single doubt about wanting Dennis as our artist. I had doubts about my ability to release the death-grip I had around the neck of my wedding.

This is the {horrible} sketch I sent to Dennis to give him an idea of what we were looking for.

This is the gorgeous artwork that Dennis put together for us. The man is truly a master.

And this is the beautful back-of-the-invite art that he drew. He drew that! With his hands and his brain and his talent! {I’ve removed text because there are too many names and addresses to make blurring things out look “nice”}.

After we worked out all the details with Dennis {who can be found on Twitter here}, I stood there for a moment, blinking at the newfound rush of adrenaline I felt. I let someone help me. Maybe… maybe I could let two people help me. I booked another friend of ours– Ella Romero– to cartoon our RSVP cards. The freedom. It was intoxicating.

And you know what? Here’s my tip for you: DO IT. Release the reigns, just a little, and let someone else take care of things for you. Take a look at your family, at your friends. What talents do they have? What do they enjoy doing? How are they trying to contribute to your big day?

Ask yourself: Where can you let people help you? Then give yourself an honest answer.

There are things that I’m never going to let anyone else touch. Those paper flowers? They shall be my immortal wedding legacy. I will guard them, and defend them as my own in the way any woman would for the one thing that’s keeping her sane (because, some days, that’s what they are).

And yes, keep the things for yourself that will keep you sane. Because you’ll need them. Why? you ask. I’ll tell you why. Even with all the meticulous planning, something, somewhere along the line… will “go wrong.” When I acquiesced to The Groom and let him get postage for the invites, and he came home with liberty bell stamps… It took a spike in my blood pressure and a couple deep breaths before I realized it wasn’t something that was really worth fighting about. People throw the envelopes to the invitations away. It was fine, everything was fine, the world was not ending and the wedding could go on. But you know what? I felt a lot better about the stamps after I sat and focused on a couple dozen paper flowers.

All of this goes to say that the past two weeks, getting the invitations designed and printed and assembled has been a lesson in calming down and letting things go. It’s been exceedingly good for me– both as a bride and as a human being. And look at how beautiful and personalized our invitations are! I couldn’t have found invites better suited for The Groom and I had I been willing or able to spend thousands of dollars.

Don’t be afraid to let your talented friends and family members contribute to your Big Day if it’ll make life easier for you. Don’t forget… we’re all in this together.

-MM.