Because I must.

Your outpouring of support on yesterday’s post (okay, 27 comments, 2 of them are mine, but still) has put me on Cloud Nine. I actually caught myself daydreaming, “Maybe I'll never blog about weddings again...”

But then J.Crew released this ugly-ass wedding jumpsuit, and they're all omg we're so edgy, who says you have to wear a gown on your big day? and so of course I had to post it here if only to point out that it is ugly.* 

Right?? I can't quite figure out why... I think because it's neither form-fitting nor slouchy, it's just sort of there. And also THOSE HIDEOUS BOWS GOING DOWN THE BACK. They are hideous.

And also I don't really like lace. There. I said it. I don't really like lace.

Someone should take my wedding blogger card away.

via Refinery29 and also Jezebel (with thanks to Rachel and Meghan for the heads up)

______________________________

*I would also like to point out that we've been discussing wedding jumpsuits here on ESB since May of 2011.

HOW BOUT DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE FUCKING PHOTO OPS

also: wedding bikes are so 2009

(via bhldn)

I have to wear this because I am a good daughter....

I am writing to you because I trust your style and I love esb! 

My mom bought me this dress from bhldn (yikes!) for my small low key wedding and I have to wear this because I am a good daughter and I love her. plz plz help me, how do I make this whole outfit look good? shoes? jewelry suggestions please. Thanks!

sincerely
a good daughter from chi city

*****

You are a grownup.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO WEAR THE DAMN DRESS JUST BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER BOUGHT IT FOR YOU

Fare thee well, Anonymous.

I really didn't want to do this. I've been avoiding this forevs.

But.

I just disabled anonymous comments.

This was the last straw.

Most of the offers for fake vagina, Loans for Bad Credit and 49rs jersey cheap just go straight through to my inbox and don't hit the blog.... But as Rob pointed out, if you subscribe to comments they go straight to your inbox too. And lately the ol spambots are getting way out of hand.

I really really love all you anons (no, really), but something had to give. Please just create a silly fake profile name for yourself and keep on keepin on, mkay?

♥


SKY FACE by LARISSA HAILY AGUADO

How many wedding photos should I post on Facebook?

Hello ESB!

How does one know what's an appropriate number of wedding pictures to post on facebook? Things to consider:

1. I don't want to be obnoxious. So that means I'll probably have to keep the number of portraits down.

2. We don't have a functioning wedding website we could send.

3. I don't want to email our proofing site from the photog to all 150 people there to look at over a thousand pictures, most of which are of just us, or worse yet, just me.

4. I do REALLY love all of our wedding pictures! Our photographer did an AWESOME job! I want to show them off!

5. Everyone keeps asking to see them. Isn't it better on FB where they can look at them at their own leisure without any obligation to comment or acknowledge that they even looked?

Maybe I should already know the answer to this and haven't seen it yet?

Thanks for the help,
ObnoxiousFacebookBride

*****

WHY ARE YOU STILL ON FACEBOOK

Photo by Louie Banks via Fucking Young!

Help! Future Sister-in-Law Wants Us to Postpone

Hey ESB,

My fiance's older sister has asked us to postpone our April wedding in Virginia. After a two year engagement, she decided to get married in July in California. 

When we told our families that we had finally found a venue and a date, she responded via text: "i am respectfuly [sic] am asking you to move ur wedding. its [sic] my time to shine. i only plan on getting married once."

Now what?
--already frustrated and haven't even sent save the dates 

*****

I know you want me to say FUCK HER, but the truth is this woman may well be in your life for the next 40+ years. If you don't push back your wedding, she will never let you forget it. Ever.

Be the bigger person. Get married in the fall.

Clémence Poésy by Corran Brownlee for the lab magazine

HAVE I LOST MY EDGE YOU GUYS??

1. I have linked to BHLDN twice in the past 8 days. Unsnarkily.

2. I have sponsors and I actually like them and I sometimes worry that I mention them on the blog a) too much or b) not enough.

3. I just emailed Malin + Goetz, again, to beg free product for review. WTF? I mean, yeah, $48 for glycolic acid pads is def not in the budget right now, but HAVE I NO SHAME?

4. Omigod I hate myself. I'm going to target to shop for a new mattress cover and a bamboo flatware organizer and maybe a tiny digital kitchen scale because my big stupid plastic one with the matching plastic bowl does not fit in our new cupboards. kthxbye

Photo by Jed Root via Kylea Borges via Egle Šlipaitytė

two things.

1. This dress is bonkers.

2. The bride and groom are gorgeous, &c. But.... I wish there were more photos of them WITH THEIR EYES OPEN. D'you think they are just shy, or can I blame the photographer? This feels like a disturbing new trend.

IT'S NOT A LOOKBOOK, PEOPLE. IT'S A WEDDING.

Dress by Miss Tashina, Photos by Jessica Lorren via Once Wed

on wedding themes

Dear ESB,

I need to ask you a favour...I need you to write about 'themes'. In my 'defense' I have to mention we do not have such a thing in Spain and just started exporting it from the US, but...

what is an organic engagement?
why would someone want to be married in fairyland?
what is vintage-chic, urban-cowboy, black tie-martians????

What the hell is a wedding for an average US citizen? You tell me please...I am so over colour palettes plus themes plus...it's too much for me.

My question is...is a wedding a disguise party?
and a birthday too, right? we also have cowboy and pirates and fairies here...
and organic engagements..

I would love to see pictures of a wedding with NO decor, NO DIY, NO party favours, NO external beauty...just inner beauty...

The next thing after photographing childbirth is themed childbirth, right?

Yes I can see that...I was born a princess...bad luck my dad was not ready with a cookie wand and a tutu (sorry that's a fairy...)

I don't mean to hurt anyone...but I needed to bust it out.

I like who I am, no disguise, I may or may not like who my family and friends are, but I trust that letting them be who they are is more important than coordinating their shoes. I loved seeing my people glow in our wedding, and having a good time, and some looked gorgeous and other's looked gorgeous too, just in different ways. Some photos were great and other's are bad, they show how nervous we were, how tired we got and how difficult life was being at that time for our families. My husband chose what he wanted to wear and I did not get to see it beforehand. He has a personality, you know? and he was not happy being dressed as a dwarf, just like I had expected (for my fairyland...you see)

I did not WOWWW at all aspects of my wedding at first, but I can WOWWW at them all life long. People keep letting us know how happy they were, how much they enjoyed it, but this will stop...I am happy as long as they keep calling, keep trusting, keep sharing with us. In...fairyland...

Love,
The princess_fairy

P.S: do you have carnivals?..

*****

Here's what I think about wedding "themes."

If you're getting married in a raw loft space or an empty backyard, or, say, throwing your reception in a desolate catering hall, a theme and/or a motherf*cking color scheme will help you to pick out the chairs + tablecloths, narrow down what kind of centerpieces you want, etc. Nobody says you have to have centerpieces or flowers or bunting or any of that shit, but do you want to do the thing in an ugly blank space just to make a point? I don't think you do.

You can take the color scheme to an extreme, and tell your bridesmaids exactly what shade of purple, cocktail-length dresses they are required to wear, at which point they will email me because they can't find anything under $200. THANKs.

And you can -- obviously -- take the theme to a crazy extreme, maybe because you always wanted a fairyland themed birthday party and you never got one? Not sure about that.

Anyhoo.

Here in the US we have a penchant for taking things too far. Though I have never been to Spain, my dear princess_fairy, I suspect y'all are a little more.... restrained over there. I hope you are.

p.s. I guess an organic engagement means you're holding a cabbage bouquet and/or a pitchfork in the fucking engagement photos?? Please advise.

Image: Mel Robson via The Jealous Curator

Non-Game Changers

I've got a couple more to add:

Napping all weekend

Not washing my face

Roz Chast via The New Yorker

From the librarian's mailbag

(Did you all know I moonlight as "the librarian" over here? Cevd can't be bothered to answer emails from crazy people.)

7:47am

to librarian:
Your widget appears on a block called “F*ck Yeah! Book Arts”  (I added the asterisk for the filters) and it really reflects badly on your brand.

*****

8:14am

to marketing know-it-all:
Are you fucking kidding me?? That blog looks fantastic.

Thank you for alerting us.

*****

8:26am

to librarian:
Well, I won’t be sharing it with my hundreds of Facebook fans and PInterest followers, because I don’t want them to think I hang with juveniles who think it’s cool to say “fuck” as many times a possible. Grow up.


Image: Alicia Martin, Contemporaries (2002) via Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

I am so over every version of this weird petal-y skirt. Who does it look good on??

No one, is the answer to that question.

It looks good on NO ONE.

Watters Fall 2011 via GinnyBranch Stelling via Martha Stewart Weddings

For the record, I think Quail Bridal was the first one to make the weird petal-y skirt back in 2010?
______________________________

Sidebar: I think my blogging has been suffering since I quit drinking coffee. I had a cup this afternoon and I feel terrific. Maybe a teence headachey, but TERRIFIC.

This Is Not Vintage Wedding Photography

Noa got a lil bee in her bonnet about.... Well, you'll see. And she asked me if I'd let her write a post.

I said FUCK YES. Obv.

I have been shooting "vintage"-inspired photography since I was at least 14 or so. As one of the first photographers in the alternative wedding industry to be labeled a "Vintage Photographer," I was proud and happy to see that people were categorizing my work this way and that they were clearly able to see my influences. 

But in the past few years, the Alternative or Vintage Wedding thing has grown into its own mainstream. And once something is mainstream it doesn't need a name anymore, except for maybe "mainstream." It's kind of like what happened with the alternative music scene back in the 90's: eventually every band started sounding "alternative" and everyone started listening to that type of music, which made the whole thing NOT alternative anymore.

The way the word "vintage" is used lacks accuracy most of the time, and can actually suppress creativity, as opposed to how it helped open a new route for creative expression back when I started....  If anything is slightly inspired by a bygone era, we slap the word "vintage" on it. 

If you score a beautiful wedding dress from the 1930's on Etsy, it's a vintage dress. Awesome. If you use mason jars for your centerpieces, it's not vintage, it's Martha Stewart. There is nothing vintage about the balloons in your engagement photos. Air plants aren't vintage. If you process your digital images to look like film, well so does everyone else these days, so let's not call it vintage. And if you shoot actual film, that's not vintage, it's film. If you found some fabric from the 1960's to use as a backdrop, that fabric is vintage. If you have a tattoo, that's not vintage, it's a tattoo. If you throw a swing-dance-party-themed-wedding, right on, but it's Retro, not vintage. If the vibe is Old Hollywood Glam, then call it Old Hollywood Glam. If you and all your hippie friends run around naked in the forest and eat shrooms after your ceremony -- your wedding is a Hippie Wedding (and you NEED to hire me to shoot that!). If you have a photography site and you are influenced by old photos, we should be able to tell that by looking at your work -- you don't have to tell us it's vintage. Please reduce the use of the V-word. 

And, I would like to present the following idea to all creatives in the industry: what if you remove the word "vintage" from your info/description page on your web site (unless of course, you rent actual vintage items out or something) -- would you still feel fully confident that your work speaks for itself? 

Since "vintage"-influenced wedding design/style/photography is now fully mainstream for us, isn't it redundant? If we don't use it to describe our own work, we can have more freedom to be influenced by anything, and therefore we can have more space to allow our creativity to go wherever it wants to... Which is how this whole current movement began. I propose we use "Progressive Wedding Industry" instead. I like that, and it's accurate.

Vintage used to be a word that signified imagination. It meant that interesting and artistic people could actually express their own taste, personality and ideas in their non-traditional & non-generic weddings. This "new" (ironically, the exact opposite of the word vintage) wedding movement was an alternative to the boring, traditional weddings that were leftover from the 90's and all the cheesy things that went along with them. Nowadays, we're all creative and everyone is influenced by old stuff, so it's embedded into what we do. Therefore making the V-word superfluous.

If you are using the word "vintage" to describe anything but an item that is actually old, you are probably overusing the word. If you frequently use the term "vintage-inspired," you are probably, no definitely, overusing it.

(All photos by Noa Azoulay-Sclater of Feather Love)

IS THIS TOO SNARKY FOR YOU??

I'm the biggest loser of them all because I'm not drinking tea or coffee at the moment.

Got incredible joy out of walking to Downbeat and ordering a fucking DECAF LATTE on Saturday. It wasn't even a good latte.

But the no caffeine is helping my headaches. A lot.





Sigh.

Fishs Eddy via amy*
______________________________


*So annoyed that permalinks for comments have disappeared. I need to speak to Google about that.

Did your mother boycott your wedding??

Dear ESB:

A friend of mine is marrying a really awful person. He's mentally abusive/controlling, uses my friend, and is possibly (probably) marrying her for her money. Joke's on him since her mother changed her will now that he is in the picture. But I digress! He's kind of turned my friend into this weirdo I don't recognise who now hates her mother b/c he's brainwashed her into thinking her mom's a bad person, which she really isn't. He gets angry on the rare occasion she talks with her mother, follows her movements, all kinds of stuff that she says she's okay with (it's b/c he loves her!). Basically she's marrying her father/mom's asshole ex-husband (don't get me started on him). 

I've known this girl since she was born, her mother is like a second mother to me, she is one of the only people outside my family who I can trust (and it's probably due to the fact she -is- like family to me!). Granted, she is rather conservative, and the girl rebelled quite a bit at university, but I didn't think she'd end up hating her mother like this. It's to the point where she has /no/ friends, doesn't speak to family, and this all started during her 2nd year of university when she met this knob-head. He's the only guy she's ever dated/been with, etc, I feel like he preyed on her because of that, like she was an easy target. I mean, 3 months into dating him we went out while she was in town and she said she can't tell him we're going out because he needs to be with her when she does. She accidentally answered her mobile and he chewed her out to the point where she stopped having fun and wanted to leave.

I've tried talking sense into my friend, but she's stuck on the idea that her mother is the problem and whatnot. She thinks she's all kinds of mature and ~worldly because she's 25, and a woman, but I've never met a more naive person in my life. She's smart and independent!!! :|||| 

Now they're engaged, and well, that's it for the most part. Her mother doesn't plan on attending the wedding because he is just that bad. My mother (who is the only person she trusts) tells her she's going to regret it, I tell her the same thing, but she refuses to go, and I know her, she will not go. It always feels so hopeless. I just look at divorce rates and pray to the almighty to make it happen, or make something happen before it's too late.

My question for you and your readers is: how many have been in the situation where your parent(s) didn't attend your wedding because of your choice of spouse (or anything, for that matter)? How is your relationship now, has it changed at all? I only wonder because I don't want my friend's mother to make a decision that will change everything forever with her daughter for good. I guess I'm kind of hoping that there's actually hope for their relationship in the future.

Any words of wisdom? Bittersweet experiences at all?

Best,
Not Naive Friend.

*****

Throwing this one out to you guys....

Photo by Ilva Heitmann by Markus Pritzi for Sleek Magazine via Fashion Gone Rogue

I feel like a Hasidic cast member on Little House on the Prairie

Dear ESB,

I've been a fan of the site since I got engaged, but have considered myself lucky not to need your guidance until now. But now I've hit a roadblock, so I'm turning to the wisest blogger I know.  

Anyway, a little background: my fiance and I live in NYC, we're both creative types (he's a writer, I do music PR) and we are getting married in February. We initially wanted something really small, but because I'm the eldest of three sisters, my mom has sort of co-opted the whole thing and it's gotten a bit out of hand. I know she must be feeling many strange feelings, and if she needs this to be a big fancy wedding, I understand. We are an easygoing couple, so it hasn't been a huge source of contention. Plus, my folks are footing the bill, so we are very thankful and willing to follow their lead.

The feel is Boardwalk Empire/Fancy haunted house? I guess? Prohibition era glam party bourbon bar? The wedding is also Orthodox Jewish, so we're beholden to all the traditions and confines related to the faith even though my fiance and I are secular and eat at Momofuku and have tattoos. You get the picture.

Everything was moving along fine until I got my dress! I am a curvy girl, so we ended up going with a custom dress by a fairly well-known designer. I have lost a lot of weight since we ordered (56 lbs yeahhhh) and yesterday I had my first fitting, meaning I actually saw the dress for the first time. Everyone cried. EVERYONE -- including the sales staff and all the seamstresses and my mom and the wedding planner, but I just sort of stood in front of the mirror in shock. It's not that the dress isn't gorgeous, because the fabric is breathtaking (platinum threading in ivory lace, white sequins, it's actually kind of 1970's glam) and the body of the dress is very flattering, but it is just so totally modest!! I was always on board with having to cover my shoulders, and since my back is tattooed, I knew I would have to camouflage that too, but the way everything has come together, I feel like a Hasidic cast member on Little House on the Prairie!

It is just so totally divorced from my personal style (80's goth-meets-UWS shrink? A lot of sheer blouses, bold lips, skinny pants and over-accessorizing) that I can't imagine wearing it on what is supposed to be a special day. I'm not allowed to lower the neckline or really make very many alterations at all, because of the modesty thing, but I just feel so totally un-sexy in the dress!

Help! Is it all in my head? Do I just need to be thankful and know that my fiance will love it because it is kind of silly and just live with that? Is this normal dress regret?  

I have attached a full picture of the dress, but you can't post it because it is TOP SECRETTTTTT but you can post the photo of my back because you can't see the rest of the dress ahhhh getting married is hard.

Thanks in advance,
Laura Ingalls "Help Me, I'm Drowning In Lace" Wilder 

ps. please ignore the white chicken feather hairpiece, it is NOT HAPPENING

*****

I don't even know you, and I know the Laura Ingalls dress is NOT. YOU.

Tell your mother thankyouverymuch but I can't wear that, go for mimosas with your BFF and (I can't believe I'm saying this) ask those damn ladies at Kleinfeld to help you find a killer, curvy, Probihition Era-modest dress.

Helpful Hint: F*ck lace.

Photo of Laura Ingalls Wilder via Pamela Smith Hill

How do I tell my dad he's not giving me away?

dear esb,

i'll cut to the chase: i need to figure out how to let my dad know he isn't walking me down the aisle.

the long and short of it is that for most of my life, my father and i have had a terrible relationship. he treated my mother horribly their entire marriage and since i was "just like my mother" (who, by the way, is probably the sweetest, cutest of momma's you can imagine), to say we never got along would be a gross understatement. they finally separated while i was in college and divorced a few years later. for a few years,  we barely spoke. then about two years ago or so, we started to have breakfast together every now and then to catch up . . . things certainly are still weird, he cancelled his phone and cell without giving me his number, he drops off the face of the planet for months at a time and then pops up again looking to reconnect. it's odd and sometimes still hurtful, but i've sort of realized that after 28 years of parenting (or not parenting, in this case) he's not really a "dad" and he probably needs our relationship more than i need him at this point. 

things started to get even more weird when my guy proposed. since i (still) don't have a way to call him, i couldn't include him in the slew of "i'm getting married" calls and resulted to facebooking him that i had big news to share . . . he called a few days later to say he already knew. ok, whatevs. he has only met my fiance once, at my grandmother's funeral which was months before we were even engaged and since he barely knows me, i guess i could expect that. we met a week or so later and he surprisingly offered to help us pay for some of our wedding (not before warning me that because my fiance is a musician, i should "watch out." he doesn't even KNOW him, for goodness sake). he later sent me a few messages to ask when i needed money . . . i responded and haven't heard back from him in two months (yes, i just sent him a "hello, are you alive and ok???" message; no response.) my mother (bless her heart) took me aside the other day to say that he had called her (HUH???) to ask how we, "we" as in my two siblings and me, were doing. why didn't he just call us??

all the while, i've never once said anything to him about walking me down the aisle. he knows the date and (if he opens his mail) has an invitation with the location like the rest of our guests. i've always wanted my younger brother to do the honors of giving me away to my husband. our wedding is a very small gathering of close friends and family, they all know our family dynamic and even if i was okay with my dad walking me down the aisle, everyone would know it was one big farce. my brother really good friends with my fiance and has pretty much been my protector since we were teenagers. he's taken care of my through knee surgeries, given me fashion advice and been one of my best buddies my entire life. he even went as far to say that if i suddenly changed my mind and wanted our dad to walk me down the aisle, he wouldn't be offended. that will never happen, but i appreciate the sentiment.

OKAY- so this weekend, my mother lays on me that she suspects dear old daddy is expecting to walk me down the aisle. the wedding is in two months, i still haven't heard from him after my "are you alive?" plea and i don't really feel like dissing him via facebook message. i also don't want to stoop to his level and hurt his feelings, but i desperately want to avoid a temper tantrum scene with shouting and yelling all sorts of other lifetime network worthy drama the day of my wedding when he realizes he has no part in the ceremony. i'm set on taking the high road in this situation . . . without compromising what my fiance and i want. which leads me to wonder, what IS the high road?????

sincerely,
nowhere near a daddy's girl

p.s. i cannot flip off and tell him f-you. well, i could, but i would end up more miserable than him in the end. so that's not an option.

*****

I'd tell you to tell him in person, but since he's been communicating everything through your mother -- WHY BOTHER? Ask her to do you the sorry favor of breaking him the news.

Photo: Kelley Ash by Annie Edmonds for Fashion Gone Rogue

______________________________
Mansies, you guys. I need to make a tag for dad-walking-or-not-walking-me-down-the-aisle issues.

What's with all the WUSSY MEN??

Hi again ESB,

So, I wanted to send a followup to my last question because it's gotten that much more interesting, sort of. So, on the advice of you and your generously helpful readers, I gave my fiance my support that if he wanted his parents at our wedding, I would be happy to have them there. He really mulled it over and basically told them that if they wanted to come, they should come. 

Since then, they've been sending endless emails about what he should be doing, got upset at my fiance because he suggested that his mom rethink wearing all black to the wedding, which culminated to a knockdown-dragout hours-long fight that ended with them threatening to tell me (at the wedding) every specific doubt he's ever had about me when he used to confide in them early in our relationship. 

They then followed that up with asking him if he really wanted them at the wedding (which is next week), because if he didn't, they wouldn't go, but if he did, they would treat it like any other invitation and let him know if they were attending. After all this, he asked me if I wanted them at the wedding.

Cue the silent screaming.

*****

This is where you tell him, "No, of course I don't want them at the wedding. But they're YOUR PARENTS, so you have to make the decision, douchebag."

The photo is of Lily Allen, yes, smoking a cigarette. Feel free to nail me.

I Don't Want Him to Walk Me Down the Aisle

Dear ESB,

I'm getting married in November. My father and stepmother didn't speak to me for six years prior to my engagement because my stepmother interpreted a look on my face as "frozen" during a conversation we had about facials. My stepmother (who has been married to my father since I was two years old) is paranoid, narcissistic, and cruel. My father is loyal to her, however, so if she decides to shut someone out of her life, my father will shut them out too. Despite numerous attempts to reach out to them, they haven't met my fiance, who I've been in a relationship with for 4 years, and they haven't met our son, who was born over a year ago.

I sent them both a wedding invitation. My father told me that my stepmother won't come to my wedding because she "doesn't expect any relationship changes." I did apologize to her (for the perceived slight), and even asked my father for advice regarding how to make things right with her so that everyone could feel comfortable at the wedding. She wasn't interested in my attempts to reconcile though and has decided to just not come to the wedding.

In a recent email, my father said that he wanted to walk me down the aisle. I want my son to walk with me during my ceremony, and not my father, but I don't want to hurt his feelings. Should I set aside my feelings, and allow him the honor of walking me down the aisle? Or risk hurting him by walking instead with my son? I know traditionally the father walks with the bride, but our wedding will be anything but traditional.

This has been the most stressful part of my wedding planning so far, and I need some perspective. Thank you!

Signed,
If You Walk Away, I'll Walk Away

*****

Your dad forfeited the right to walk you down the aisle when he didn't speak to you for six years. And he hasn't even met your son? FUCK THAT.

Tell him you've got another plan.

Photo by Melissa Cowan

Dear ESB: I want to cancel my wedding.

My fiancé and I have been engaged since last December and we are getting married next June. I can't wait to marry him. He is my best friend and just basically all around wonderful.

I have been reading various wedding blogs since before we were engaged. I love the idea of an awesome DIY wedding. So, soon after he proposed we found an awesome barn and started developing our vision for the wedding. We've also secured most of the major vendors, i.e. photographer, food, dj.

My problem is that for the past few weeks I've been re-thinking all of our plans. I love the idea of our wedding, but the cost has quickly started to add up. I know I should be better about sticking to a budget, but I'm the type of person who, once I have an idea, I want to do everything I can to execute that idea. So, I'm not the best at making cuts. Also, the planning is intense. Nothing is included with the venue or the caterers we have chosen so I have to plan for everything. Down to things like bringing salt and pepper. My fiancé and I both work crazy hours and so, even though we have a ton of time still, I'm worried about my ability to do this. Also, most of the wedding is going to be outside, including the ceremony and dance floor. And so, I'm paranoid it's going to rain. Which I know I should have thought about before I picked the venue, but again, I tend to let the vision overwhelm the practicality of things.

Finally, this brings me to my point. I'm not even sure I want to do this anymore. All that I really want is to marry my fiancé. I'm not sure if I want to spend the next year saving every penny we possibly can so that 170 people (70 of whom are the obligatory invites) can eat green salad and dance on a soggy lawn. I feel like our money would be better spent on an intimate ceremony followed by a less crazy/ involved bash (maybe something in a restaurant?) with those people we really want to celebrate with, and then going on a kick ass honeymoon.

I think if it were up to me, I'd say screw it all and cancel everything. However, my fiancé is reluctant to take such drastic measures. He doesn't disagree with my feelings that it's insane for us to spend such ridic amounts of money on one night when all we want is to be married. But, I also think he likes the idea of a giant shindig with everyone we've ever met present, because he feels like we should celebrate to the fullest extent.

So, my question: am I crazy for wanting to cancel the venue, food, etc. and try to totally scale this thing back? Am I just having a momentary freak out? (This did begin after seeing the proposal from the caterer.) 

Any advice is much appreciated!

*****

Fuck the obligatory invites. Cross them off of the list right now.

I've heard a lot of brides express regrets about not shelling out the money for a kick-ass photographer, or not splurging on the shoes, but never once have I heard anyone say, "I wish we had a BIGGER WEDDING."

Defaced image from Margaret Howell via Kylea Borges