Wedding Bell Blues

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John Selden said, "Marriage is a desperate thing." 

Truer words.  We haven't even gotten there yet and I'm already feeling the heat.

I always knew marriage would be an endeavor fraught with all kinds of peril for me.  There's this vast disconnect, you see, between my need for personal freedom and the weight of societal expectations.  In the day to day you don't feel the pressure so much.  After all, no one is policing your household or watching you as you negotiate the chores or argue about the dishes.  This wedding thing though. . . it invites it all in.

I was trying to explain this to Wes last night--badly--because I haven't fully comprehended where all my angst is coming from myself.  Ultimately, I decided, the wedding is just one area of life for which I feel ill-prepared.

I am ill-prepared for the display of womanliness and femininity and domesticity that weddings kind of demand.  I am ill-prepared for the pressure to make it beautiful, to be beautiful, to feel beautiful.  I am not and never have been that kind of girl which brings it down to the core of my discontent.

I was not at all prepared for the sheer force of my desire to be that kind of girl.  I am shocked and dismayed and off-balance by how much I just want it.  It's like this wedding is my one chance to binge on white, lacy, frilly things without ridicule or censure and something in me wants to just go for it.

I have no idea where this is coming from.  The wedding I want is less traditional and formal than anything you usually see in Brides or on The Knot.  The wedding blogs I hit up. . .  okay yes, daily . . . are not centered around those kinds of weddings.  They don't exert pressure.  They are sensible and sane and approach alternatives for the budget conscious in positive ways.

And yet . . .  last night, I was looking at our wedding budget and our rest-of-our-life-budget and wondering where I could squeeze an extra three thousand dollars from to pay for wedding photography that costs more than twice our budget for the whole shebang.  I found myself looking at low budget Vera Wang dresses on David's Bridal and wondering if it wouldn't just be worth it to spend the damn money.  I was considering wedding favors-which I personally hate. 

All the plotting gave me a flipping headache.  Then it just made me kind of sad.

How do you hold on to your sanity?