Thursday, April 05, 2007

a plea to keep your engagement short.

i don't know what it is about me lately. if i weren't 26, i'd wonder if i was beginning menopause because of all the weird hormonalness i feel. but there's really no excuse - i've got no hormonal changes happening, i can't blame it on PMS, and i'm certainly getting enough sleep.

is this all just the wedding?

i've started to step the planning up a notch. and maybe that's just what's been so awful. i feel like i'm going to fail, like this is just one gigantic moment to show everyone i love that i don't know what i'm doing. in the back of my mind, i know i'm trying to plan this to show my mom that i'm good at being in charge, that i have really incredibly warm, smart and interesting friends, that i am not a failure because i work at an evangelical church, and that i'm actually an adult now who's able to make good decisions on her own.

and is it really my mom who thinks those things? or am i trying to prove it to myself?

it seems like it'd be a hundred times easier for someone else to plan the wedding, so i could show up on the day of and not carry any of the responsibility for it being everything or nothing like anybody would have forseen it.

instead, i'm trying to figure out if a wedding reception that ends at 10 pm is necessarily lame, or if i want to risk potentially awful august weather and tent a piece of land that won't have much in the way of "real" shelter nearby. i have to figure out if i want to spend more than $400 on a dress i'll never wear again in my life or if possibly staining said wedding dress with bbq at the reception is worth it.

as for the decisions that jon and i make together, well, why i get so frustrated i don't know. it frustrates me that i get frustrated. do i actually care whether or not the wedding party is introduced by an mc when they walk into the reception? no! but instead, i withdrawal from him. and inside i'm thinking, "are you kidding me, mary? be a grown up!" but argh! nope, it's the silent-treatment girl that wins out - if even for a few minutes. and then i know jon is frustrated with me when i get that way, but as soon as i feel sorry for making him feel that way, i feel frustrated that he'd be frustrated with me when i'm the one who's initiating this wedding planning. seriously, i need someone to shake me ...

you know what i want more than anything? i want to fly down to los cabos, mexico on that $189 round trip ticket with jon and our intentions to elope, and when we get there, all 300+ guests will be there, waiting to surprise and celebrate us. i wish i could pray so hard for it that it would just happen.

and people wouldn't be pretending to enjoy the moment, they'd really enjoy it. they'd make new friends, they'd dance with strangers, they'd build bonfires and play games.

maybe my problem IS that i'm planning this wedding for too many people. what would happen if i planned this wedding for jon? what if i planned a party for him that made him say, "wow, this woman really loves me"?

hmmm ... maybe i have been totally focused on the wrong thing.

if it's something you do, maybe you'll think about praying for me in these next four months as we go through details. maybe you'll pray that i plan something that says "i love my husband" and not "i have to prove something to everybody else" or "i have to prove it to myself."

i'd appreciate it.

phew ... thanks for letting me vent.

2 Comments:

At 11:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do it for yourselves, and never lose sight of that. For some that means two people in a courthouse, for others a big party with lots of friends and family. Don't stress the details. It's not a challenge to prove your adulthood. I'm confident your wedding will be wonderful for you guys, and what the rest of us think doesn't matter.

 
At 7:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like your description of the Mexican wedding. It reminds me of Sara Groves´ song ¨Every Moment.¨

¨I wish all the people I love the most could gather in one place and know eachother and love eachother, well. And I wish we could all go camping and lay beneath the stars and have nothing to do and stories to tell. We´d sit around the campfire and make eachother laugh, remembering when.¨

 

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