Ceremony, Ceremony; Where for art thou ceremony?

Of all the insane details that go into planning a wedding, you would think the reception MUST be the most important part. After all, the minute details just keep coming and coming like the tide rises and it only settles after all of the debt accumulated from planning this single day has come to an end. There's the plated meal for each and every one of your 250 guests that cost $30 each, the centerpieces for 30 tables that cost $150 a piece, the cake, the favors, the dj... The list is never ending, but at the end of the day what really should matter most is the unity between 2 people as husband and wife, and somehow in the midst of all the madness a lot of us brides lose sight of this.

I am a prime example. Immediately after getting engaged I dove into a wedding magazine and didn't resurface until I had at least 700 ideas of what I wanted the cake to look like, which dress I wanted, and the type of flowers I wanted to be in my bouquet. I didn't even stop to think about the actual wedding ceremony and what it means.

About 2 months ago I came to a realization. The entire wedding industry is beginning to remind me of what Christmas has come to be for so much of the world. The significance of Christmas, to celebrate the birth of Christ, seems to have been shoved behind the modern upside-down evergreens in peoples' living rooms. For some of us we still understand and cherish the true meaning of Christmas, but for others it's a bit foggy from the glare of millions of twinkling lights. Whether you're a Christian or not, I'm sure you understand this principle.

We've had our reception location booked for months. I've had weekly conversations with the wedding coordinator at the venue. We also have the dj and the dresses... but no place to have the ceremony itself. Parts of me wish I had pushed my way through the fog coming from the smoke stacks of the wedding industry a little earlier. Maybe then I would have realized that we haven't even talked about having the wedding anywhere but our hometown. Since then, we've found locations all over the country that we think would be perfect to get married at... but then what about our grandparents who are unable to travel? What about the fact that we've already booked the reception venue here?

We've searched churches in our area, and this is most of what we've come up with:

1. My childhood church has an interim pastor and doesn't allow photographs in the sanctuary.

2. A few churches don't allow weddings without a membership or a relative with a membership.

3. 2 churches are way too small for our guest list.

4. One church has the Christmas pageant booked on the same day.

5. Everything else is at least a 15 minute drive (in December) from the reception venue.

We've thought about having the wedding at the reception venue, but there's something that bothers us about sending the guests out of the room and then bringing them back in after the staff rearranges everything. We've also thought about renting a heated tent and having the ceremony in a local park or another scenic area. We researched how much this would cost and the $3,000 price tag doesn't exactly fit in our budget. There's a location at a nearby park that we fell in love with as soon as we discovered it (see the photo on the right), but again.. our wedding is in December and that's highly unlikely. It's a beautiful little spot, but our guests might not appreciate Ohio's December 5 average temperature of 47 degrees.

So our search continues. However, this time instead of being a simple detail I can work out later, our ceremony is at the top of our list of priorities.

Only Time Will Tell

Future hubby, Steven, and I are getting married December 5, 2009. That date's been set since sometime around 1994. No, just kidding! It's been set since about a week after we got engaged in March, but it feels like 14 years ago. The reason we chose that date will, I'm sure, be brought up in a later post. It's rather touching if you ask me, so keep an eye out for the day when I finally get the guts to write about it without crying (or probably WITH crying). Either way, December of 2009 feels like it's never going to get here.

I've been planning for this "blessed" event for 6 months and I feel like I'm in need of the honeymoon already. Although, at this point the honeymoon would simply compose of a bubble bath in a secluded area; no family, no stress, and Steven probably wouldn't be invited.

Based on that last comment you would think I had most of the planning done. The truth is, we don't even have a place to get married yet. We have absolutely no ceremony location. We'd love an outdoor ceremony, but it's December people.. in Ohio. It's not going to happen. The only details we have are the dresses (another story), the reception venue, and the dj (thanks to Mom who insisted on an old friend of the family).

I'm in a bit of a dark age for wedding planning. It's frustrating to stress so much over one day that's not even going to take place for another 15 months! Our wedding coordinator at the reception venue talked us into attending a bridal show on October 12. I practically had to grovel at Steven to go with (it's football season.. GO BENGALS!) since it's on a Sunday afternoon. Chances are I'll either come back from it ready to head full swing into planning again, or I'll want to crawl into my closet and stay there until next winter.

Only time will tell.

Who's Calling Me "Bridezilla"?

Bridezilla: A bride who focuses so much on the event that she becomes difficult and obnoxious.
It's not exactly the most noble title is it? Not one sane bride on the planet wants to be associated with the title, yet there's almost no avoiding it. At some point throughout the absurd amount of stress wedding planning brings, most brides find themselves coined "Bridezilla" by some uncompassionate prude.

For me that uncompassionate prude was my mother, who took it upon herself to announce at a neighbor's graduation party that I am "Bridezilla." The guests were taken aback. Most of them stopped eating their barbeque, and some scooted their chairs away from me as if I was going to start breathing fire and stomping on buildings. I got up and stormed out of the party, only to spend the next few hours proving myself worthy of the title she'd bestood upon me. I got in my car, drove out of my neighborhood as fast as I possibly could, and spent a good 3 hours yelling at my fiance.

It was then that I realized the only reason why she would call me "Bridezilla" is because she knew it would upset me. The term is used to manipulate brides into embarrassment so that their friends and family can plan the wedding the way they see fit. Letting my mother get to me was only proving her point.

Hence, I choose to embrace the title. I am a "Bridezilla" in my own sense of the word. I will remain focused on creating the happiest day of our lives (for the fiance and I) at all costs. I will accept the frustration that comes with planning one of these white extravaganzas with class rather than try to avoid it. I will be stubborn in standing up for my opinions and beliefs. Shall my mother (or anyone else for that matter) choose to announce my humble title again, I will accept it with charm and wit.

Alert the authorities... Bridezilla is on the lose.