While we have had lots of fun attending weddings of family and friends, the thought of planning our own is way too stressful. Instead, we're having a very, very small and low-key ceremony. I'll be posting a few things about our nuptials to help out either of our 2 readers who may be planning for their own civil muffin ceremony. So without further ado, I give you my tips to plan a wedding in two weeks. Though our actual wedding isn't happening for awhile, our planning is essentially done! Hooray!
- Harass your girlfriend until she consents to marry you. With The Librarian, this was a work in progress! As with all things she freaks out about, I just kept bringing it up until eventually she agreed with me. One night a few months ago, I said something like "let's look at wedding rings" and instead of responding with her usual "Ughhh! No!" she said "OK." Shocked, I checked that she had not suffered from a stroke, and made sure she was actually consenting to marriage. She replied "You knew you'd get your way eventually" and proceeded to look at rings with me. Win! I am definitely the Mark to her Allen in our relationship. So keep nagging ladies and you'll eventually get your way!
- Have siblings who have paved the way to not having a wedding. My sister and bro-in-law got married at a quicky place in the city where they lived, and didn't tell anyone for NINE MONTHS. That's right. They moved right after they tied the knot and everyone in their new town knew them as a married couple, but none of their friends and family were any wiser. So since we are at least telling people before the event, we're doing great!
- Have siblings who've had big-ish weddings. On The Librarian's side, her siblings both had traditional weddings with the dress, reception, the whole she-bang. Since that has been covered by my out-of-laws we feel no familial obligation to do it ourselves. Thanks guys!
- Live in a place with a discriminatory legal system that allows you to plan the event before you can actually do it. Because I've been scheming to marry The Librarian for a few years now so I had basically decided what I wanted to do a long time ago (as previously discussed, she always comes to my side). We have the fascinator picked out, the spot, the people, and that's all we care about so it was easy! We just had to put the plan in action once we had the green light. While if you live in the U.S. you don't have this advantage anymore, start planning early in line with Tip #1 above.
- Make a list of all your family and realize it's a ridiculous amount of people. Then throw away the list. We decided having a lot of people was not worth the stress and expense, especially as we had 60+ with family alone. Yikes! We love y'all, but no.
- Pick a spot that's hard to get to. In line with throwing out your list, pick a spot they couldn't all fit anyway. I don't want to get married at the courthouse because people get sentenced to jail and pay parking tickets there, so it seems like bad juju. Instead, we've picked a pretty spot in the mountains. It's a short hike, but a hike nonetheless, and there's definitely not enough space for 60+ people on the mountain, let alone in the tiny parking lot. We decided it's more important to us to be in a spot we love and have the ceremony be about us and our relationship, rather than including everyone we care about.
- Be old. Not being in our 20s, we are more removed from our parents and immediate families and so don't feel like we have to please anyone with our personal decisions. This is great for doing what you want and not being pressured into having a big celebration, a dress you hate, accommodating everyone, etc. Not that our families would be high maintenance, but the more people you include the more opinions there are. And we're both super stubborn and don't like being told what to do. Many people we know who did get married in their 20s and had bigger weddings have expressed jealousy at our low-key plans so we feel pretty smug about it.
- Have a friend who's conveniently a pastor IRL. Even though I'm a heathen, we're being married by a pastor. Not Pastor Skip, as I'll call him. He's in my cohort at PhD school and has a desk in the same shared office space as me. So as soon as I had obtained consent from The Librarian, I asked Not Pastor Skip how he felt about mountains and heights, and we had our officiant.
- Get a tiny wedding entourage. Going with our low-key plan of not having anyone fly out for our wedding, we're not going to have our folks or siblings there. We'd love to have them there, but see numbers 6 and 7 for not inviting them. Plus, our families live far away so when they come we want to visit and hang out, which is not something we want to do after we get hitched. So instead, we're just having Not Pastor Skip; Indigo Labrys as our Best Homo/Queer; and our friends/family Old Married 1 and Old Married 2 as our witnesses. Offspring of Old Marrieds will be our ring bearer in spirit though he's not allowed anywhere near our actual rings (sorry OoOMs, you don't have enough motor skills yet).
- Only do the traditions that matter to you and your woman. Since we're not going traditional, we are just picking the things we like and skipping everything else. It makes the planning a lot easier. We're having rings (already ordered!), a tiered cake (at a simple party several months later), and that's pretty much it. Easier than playing 'spot the lesbian' at a Tegan and Sara concert.
