Weddinging.

Our invitations arrived this week. They looked good upon first glance, but then I looked twice and they were misspelled. She misspelled the words "reception" and "immediately." Seriously? Why is everything bridal so difficult? How can it take 16 weeks to ship a dress, or really, anything? Why am I supposed to spell out the year any time I write it? And do they really expect me to wear a tiara?  All of that's just not happening for me.

From the very beginning of all of this, I didn't want a "wedding." Sure, I wanted to get married but I didn't want a wedding. We're doing this mostly for other people, which sounds terrible but is true. The second we told people we were engaged we were SWARMED with people asking for a date, what our wedding was going to be like.

As if I ever thought about it!

FYI, I hate talking about all that junk with most people. I will not have a china pattern. I'm not using calligraphy. I hate roses (in almost all instances of design) and I hate gold tones. I hate antique-y. I hate shabby chic. I'm not one for Victorian, tulle, pouf, or white "chocolate." (How do they even call such a thing chocolate?)

I wasn't the type of little girl to imagine her fairy tale wedding. I don't want to look like a princess or a confection. I've never been to a wedding that I thought was beautiful, because it's always so... grossly over the top. I HATE HATE HATE that everyone is going around saying that this will be "my day" so I should have it be "perfect."

First of all, it isn't my day. The wedding industry tries to sell me the idea of "it's all about you, you should get your every wish!"  But it's Jared's day too. And Oliver's. It's everyone's day to celebrate the existence of our awesome family and to be happy that we're together. Who am I to expect it to be all about me?

Secondly... Perfect? Really? They want me to expect perfection?

I know it's not going to be perfect. We're inviting both of our families, after all. Things don't go "perfectly" when family is involved. I have to work on seating charts to segregate feuding factions. At least 4 family members have put in requests demands for things that I just have to do. And outside of that, with such a huge event on such a small, home made budget - things are bound to go wrong. I've never done anything like this before and I can't expect it to run smoothly at my first crack. The only professionals involved are the cake people and the hotel people - the rest of this is just me making stuff up. Things will go wrong, and that's okay.

It might sound like I'm bitter about this, but I'm not. I'm fine knowing that my wedding could be a complete disaster - at least it'd be interesting. I don't want all the pressure of "perfect" when "best I can do" is good enough for me. I just feel like it's not good enough for everyone else.

It's everyone else's expectations that crush me and make me feel pressured. I'm terrible about feeling like I've let people down, even when I know it's not my job to please people. It's that damned Catholic guilt that just keeps coming back again and again to punish me.

So, please, if you're coming to my wedding please just try to relax and have fun. Leave your wedding expectations at the door and come looking for a nice party instead. It won't be perfect but it's as good as we can get.