Handling Excitement

The wedding process has ups and downs and yesterday was a definite low. Z and I are both stressed from third party projects.  We just wrapped a short fillm that took way more time and caused way more anxiety than either of us bargained for. So we're a little on edge. I made a comment about feeling wedding stress and Z couldn't take that one last straw. Enter fighting. And my fighting looks a lot like staring blankly at a wall. (Thanks passive aggressive gene pool! You're the best!)

I'm putting that out there because I think it's important to admit that planning isn't all roses and peonies. It's a strange growth process and growth processes often aren't easy. (Ask anyone who has bought a house. Or had a child.) They're stressful and they can lead to explosions.

But every time we get into anything like this, we ccome out the other side with more insight and understanding of each other. That never makes the process itself easier, but it's nice realization when the smoke clears. Here's one thing I've learned: I don't know how to be excited about wedding planning. I have a tendency to over analyze and Weddings fall into that category. I don't want to be too weddingy. I don't want to be That Girl. But I've never even met that girl so maybe she only exists on cable shows. Either way, she's always present in my mind, whispering, "Oh you're getting so close!"

Boredom:
I hate boring people. It's not hard to tell when you've ventured into unappealing topic territory. My FMIL loves to ask about the wedding and she's one of a handful of people I really actually do like talking to about it but I can totally tell my FFIL gets bored with the conversations. That's not a slam against him. There are topics that bore me. I am wholey sympathetic to this.  I just don't know how to have a conversation with her (which I really enjoy) w/o boring the crap out of him (b/c I enjoy his conversation too.) I don't want to put his comfort as a second class issue b/c there happens to be a wedding going on.

Helpage:
What I could have never foreseen is how much of a bride's time is managing. Everyone wants to help (which is sooooo great) but you can't just snap your fingers and suddenly a pile of precut flags and a full sheet of instructions appear. To give people a task means you have to know 1.What tasks need to be done and 2. How to explain to them how to do it. Again, all of this takes knowing what you want and having a master plan. Having a master plan. Ooooh. Queue laugh track.

So sometimes it really is easier to just to do it myself. But sometimes I need to ask for help and do the legwork to make that help possible. It's hard, however, to know the difference between the two.

Ownership:
Sometimes I don't play well with others, especially if those others are blood related. Early on in the process, Z's and my vision was not the vision of my family. Every time my Mom got excited about something, I had to more or less tell her no. Every time it hurt her feelings. Not fun. So now I'm hesitant to brainstorm because I'm worried it'll lead me to being a jerk and hurting someone's feelings. Again, mostly a family issue...but an issue none the less. (Luckily family is more or less totally on board now. I'll give this theory a test run tomorrow in the car when discussing ideas for an hour with my Mom...an hour or the 5 minutes it may take me to get moody. Hahahaha. *voice whispers* "You're getting so close.")

The Glass Problem:
I am a half empty girl. Your glass is brimming. I fully and honestly believe that. But over in my glass, it will probably rain. Grandma will probably want to bring her dogs. And I am inevitably pissing someone off by spelling their name wrong. So. If I don't show you my glass, it's like the glass doesn't exist. And I can be a size 18 bride and no one will know the difference.

I'm mixing metaphors but basically if I don't get excited then people won't have anything to compare to the final (inevitably flawed) event. If I don't get excited about a certain design or flowers or whatever then no one can think, "Oh. She said she really was excited about this thing here. It's not here. What happened?"

Because clearly no one has anything better to do than keep these kind of checklists on MY life. Right.

Ahem.

It's not rational. None of the individual piece are. But together, they sit like blobs in the brain. And some days they make it hard.

I want to fight through these things. Not just for the wedding but because they are symptomatic of issues I face when dealing with life. 

Z asked me (like 8 hours in to our 20 hour hell day) why we having a wedding. This is not "why are we getting married." It's about the event as opposed to the thing. And the reason is because a marriage is a cool reason to throw a fun party. It's a type of thing that allows you to have reason to have an event.* And I love thinking about events. I have to remember that I find joy in creating 100 invitations. So yes, they may stress me out a bit, but really, it's doing something I really really love doing. I need to focus on that and not how theoretically far behind our short put us. Because I still get to do the fun things, in this case invitations and installation are and dressing up my best female friends in jewelry they'd probably never pick themselves. I still get to partake in all of that. And that is a reason to get excited.

*I should note that people have different reasons for having a wedding. I'm merely stating our reasons, not that I think other reasons are invalid.