As I mentioned in an earlier post, I consider myself as having pretty simple tastes. So my* choices for this wedding (now just under nine months away, eek!) have so far steered clear of fussy, frou-frou details.
*By the way, I'm giving up on 'we' unless it's actual reality. It's our wedding, we're getting married etc, but I am most definitely making the vast majority of decisions for the day. I'm realising that this is pretty typical, though I do wish my H2B would occasionally get even a teeny bit enthused about the likes of stationery and favours! But that's another blog post...
Going for the simple option has often also been dictated by our budget, which isn't tiny, but is less than half of the so-called national average.
For example, the first thing we bought for the wedding were some lovely glass pillar candle holders for the table centrepieces (in the Sainsbury's sale at £4 each – and I think they look a lot more expensive than that). From the beginning, I didn't want flowers: as soon as I totted up a realistic wedding budget, I didn't see the point of spending a chunk of it on something that would end up dead and thrown in a bin.
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| Lotus flower pillar candle holder (Sainsbury's) |
So for each table, we will have this glass holder with an Ikea pillar candle (£1.50), popped on a mirror plate (£3.50) along with a few simple Ikea glass tea lights (£1). And I can sell a lot of it on eBay afterwards and make some money back.
That's just one example of many instances where we've opted for something less showy that also keeps costs down. No towering vases stuffed with exotic blooms and succulents for us...
However, as I said before I have become a little obsessed with looking at other wedding pics. And not just the perfect-world ones that appear on ruffledblog and stylemepretty. No, I'm also obsessing about real weddings now.
Last week, an old friend from school whom I've not seen in almost 20 years posted some pics from her wedding on Facebook, and I was immediately scouring them for every last detail: dress, bridesmaids' outfits, men's suits, car, church decorations and so on - purely to see whether our wedding choices are, well, better!
And, even worse, another friend from my home town - who I do actually keep in touch with - is getting married later this month, and there's a rather large part of my brain that is feverishly wondering what she will have as her centerpieces, if they're having favours, whether her dress will look ten times as expensive as mine, and - oh please no - have they booked a photobooth like we have?
But why do I care? All this is doing is making me second-guess all my/our decisions. Like those glass candle holders, which up until this week seemed like the perfect choice. But I'm now starting to fear that they will look small and ineffectual and like we haven't made an effort. I've been fretting over whether I went just a step too far in being practical, and maybe we should have blown a few hundred quid on some gorgeous bouquets in vases after all.
There is still a sane part of my brain, though. And it keeps telling me not to stress about stupid things that probably no one will notice anyway.
Well, apart from the photobooth. I reeeeeally hope they don't have a photobooth. I want ours to be the first wedding among our friends that has a photobooth, dammit! It's myyyyyy photobooooooth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
