If you missed it in my last post – I am now engaged. After 18 lovely days of being engaged, I decided to tentatively delve into the crazy world of wedding planning. Woah.

Now, I am a girl who has always wanted to be a wife. Life ambitions, when asked, were to get married and have kids, and raise those kids and look after that man. Whilst baking pretty cakes and having other mums over for tea and looking completely immaculate. Or something like that. Perhaps I was born in the wrong era.

I also have a bit of a thing for wedding blogs. I have been reading A Practical Wedding since Meg was still in the early stages of planning her own wedding. [Brides-to-be - if you don't already have APW in your feed reader, go subscribe right now. And then buy the book. You won't regret it. I love it so much, I'm advertising it in my sidebar for free.] I also go through phases of subscribing to the other wedding blogs. You know, the wedding porn. The post after post of beautiful, amazing, fabulous weddings type blogs. Then I delete them, because I’m not engaged yet and I feel sorry for myself. Then I re-subscribe because I miss having the omgsobeautifulweddingporn in my life.

With this in mind, you may think you can imagine exactly the kind of bride I would be. I’d want the big white princess dress, the tiara, and the mismatched but still totally coordinated bridesmaids in our wedding colours. We would arrive in the posh car (if not horse and carriage, why not eh?) at some lovely stately home, or maybe even a church. I would walk down the aisle to something classical played on strings, going on to a champagne reception I’d want to have a three course sit down meal, while everyone admires the beautiful table decorations I made myself, to really put some of our personality into the day, followed by more drinks and toasts. We would cut the three tier fruit cake with the cute little topper and then have our first dance while everyone snaps away, and we’d dance on into the night before being waved off on honeymoon.

Right?

Erm, well.. no. Actually, not at all.

I love weddings. I love wedding blogs. I love tv shows about weddings. I love seeing the beautiful princess dresses swooshing about, and the brides looking beautiful, and the gorgeous venues. I love looking at their sweet decorations and their colour schemes and what they’ve put the bridesmaids in. I especially love the look on the grooms face as he turns to see his bride for the first time that day, as she walks down the aisle towards him.

Only, I don’t want any of that. It’s amazing, and it’s beautiful, and it’s wonderful, but it’s not me – and it’s certainly not us.

We had already planned our dream wedding, long before we got engaged. Yes, we planned it. As a wise bride said in the A Practical Wedding book, “the wedding is not a surprise party for the groom”. Now that we are engaged, we are sticking to our plan, because it is what we wanted long before there was a budget, or a timeline, or a ring on my finger, and I think that makes it more real. Our day will be our day, and it will represent us as a couple and us as a family. It won’t be very expensive. It won’t be the best day of our lives (we already have a daughter, for goodness sake, what could be more amazing than that?) but it will be the best damn party we ever throw.

So, after those wonderful 18 days I thought I’d have a little google. I thought I’d see if I could find any ‘venues’ that would be a good fit for The Plan, that we could maybe take a look at in the coming months so that at least that important part was sorted. BIG mistake. A day later, I was already at breaking point. I was on edge, waiting for emails back from The Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever, a venue that I already suspected we wouldn’t be able to afford, but I already wanted more than anything ever. We couldn’t afford it. Well, no, we could afford it, but there was no way I was prepared to pay for it. It’s one day, people. An hour later and there’s already another Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever (That’s Even More Perfect Than The Last). I feel sick waiting for an email, a phone call. They reply. It sounds great. It sounds perfect, intact. Only.. we have to wait until April to go and see it.

I continue to plan for The Most Perfect Wedding Venue Ever (v.2) because I just can’t help myself. I’m in it, now. I’m in the crazy wedding space. We’re deliberating over a guest list, I’m googling vendors for chair hire and other essentials. I’m making a budget. The photographer is all but booked, pending our visit to TMPWVE.2 in April.

It’s been three days guys. This is mental. It’s been three days since I thought I would ‘have a little google’, which quickly led to a downward spiral of link hopping, while fretting that no such TMPWVE existed anywhere near us. I was frustrated. I was upset. I was a crazy person.

For a few hours.

Now I see. I see why that thing that happens to brides happens to brides. I see why people talk about ‘planning your wedding’ in the way that they do. We aren’t even really planning a wedding – there is very little that is ‘weddingy’ about it apart from that it is a wedding – we are more just planning a party, and yet I am still this crazy already. Good luck to the rest of you.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I have re-subscribed to the wedding blogs. It’s finally acceptable for me to be reading them, right? No way am I going to pass on all that wedding porn.