I got married about a year and a half ago. My wife and I are older than the averageage for first-timers (late 30s and late 40s) and we our first decision was to keep things as simple as possible (do you really need to release butterflies, light the unity candle, do the chicken dance, toss the bouquet/garter, etc.?). That reduces the number of decisions you have to make, the cost, and the logistics.
Even if you don’t have an opinion on something (e.g. the colors, the flowers) pick one when asked. It’ll make your fiancé think you do care about more than beer
If there are other things you find you do care about (and I suspect you will find a few as time goes by), be prepared to make a few compromises. I was against having guest favors because they usually get thrown out or left behind, but I compromised when she came up with a food idea (small jars of jam with a custom label (“We jammed with XXX & YYY” and the date) I finally said OK (and most of them were taken and from what I’ve heard from guests, used).
Finding vendors (photographer, caterer, etc.) that are self-sufficient made things easy. We gave them good directions and they did the rest.
Finally, make it fun for yourselves. We thought of it as throwing a party for a big group with a ceremony thrown in. Find a band or DJ that you like so you can enjoy the music. During the reception spend some time talking to your friends and family (but you won’t get to everyone unless you have a small group). Don’t forget to eat (you’ll need the nutrition and you will be paying a lot for the food so you may as well enjoy it too).
And once it’s all over, plan to be somewhere for a couple days that you can sleep a lot.
This is how I handled it. My wedding was significantly less expensive than yours coming out to a grand total of $4,000 or so. The only thing I really did was choose what flavor of groom’s cake there would be, I had some input in the colors of the wedding (there are wedding colors?), I had some input on the location of the wedding, and I chose my own tuxedo. The only thing I was heavily involved in planning was the rehearsal dinner which I did entirely on my own.
Odesio
PS: I did select some wedding music. Do not choose “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon. Seriously, just don’t.
Is this how you’d respond if she came home and told you she’d had a rough day at work?
You could at least show some sympathy for all the stuff she’s expected to do for wedding planning. Even if you won’t help with the planning, you owe her that.
I don’t think referring to something that is clearly important to her as “bullshit” is very respectful to her, either.
The best piece of advice we got for our wedding was this:
People will, at best, remember three things about your wedding. Most will remember none, one, or two. Nobody except the tackiest people will give a shit about things like whether the napkins match the flowers or whatever–and you don’t give a shit about the opinions of tacky people.
So choose three things that you want to be memorable at your wedding, and make 'em memorable in a good way. Make everything else just barely good enough that nobody notices it.
We chose food, location, and music, and we spent a long time getting those three things right. We didn’t pay much attention to things like flowers, tablecloths, chairs, speeches, or any of that–we made sure that stuff was okay, and then we went on with our lives.
It really cut down on the stress.
I don’t know if that’s helpful in your situation, but like I said, it was the best wedding advice we got, so I pass it on every chance I get.
Ignore the fact that it’s a wedding. It’s your chance as a couple to throw a big party for your friends and family. I can’t imagine that if you were to simply throw a party, you wouldn’t care about some of the details? You already mentioned the music and the alcohol - there may be a few others too. So focus on those, and volunteer to do some of the leg work around those. It should be a day you look back on and enjoy (not necessarily the Perfect Day), so make sure you include things you’d like.
And the rest? Regardless of whether she’s planned this since she was a child (and I can gladly say I have not, and am actively resisting planning a wedding right now!) she’ll more than likely have an idea about what she’d like it to be like. When she asks you what you think, if you have a constructive opinion, give it. And if you don’t, ask her what her preference is, and go with that. She’s happy to have her opinion validated, and she’ll feel like you’re backing her up.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t have a discussion NOW about expectations and budget. Nip those issues in the bud early, and you’ll have less to stress about closer to the time.
(And relax. This is going to be so much easier then choosing everything your first child will need!)
I got married a little over 2 years ago, and I was somewhat lucky in that her folks were paying.
What I did was to basically assert a certain degree of control, or at least maintain veto power over a very few things (venue, alcohol, DJ) and wanted input in the food.
Everything else was for her and her mother to thrash out. Worked pretty well too- I still get told how much fun people had, and how we had the only wedding they’ve been to with great beer and wine.
The key was finding a venue where we could bring our own booze in, so we bought in bulk and got the corresponding discounts.
I couldn’t have cared less about the flowers, decorations, chair covers, etc… and I didn’t even try.
I will share a secret strategy with you. When your fiancee asks you about something that is just as stupid as all gonzo fuck (i.e., pew bows, the color of the bride’s made dresses, the little thing in which the bride holds the flowers, etc.), do the “No. No. YES!”. That is, you don’t like the first two, but you like the third one alot!
But here’s the downside. My wife (when she was my fiancee) eventually picked up on this and started asking me “WHY” I liked the third one. The only strategy at that point was to kill myself (I got better).
You are analogizing planning a wedding to talking about a rough day at work. But the better analogy is to shoppping.
Let me ask you this–when you are buying a guitar, what type of wood do you like for the fretboard? Do you want three single-coil pickups, two humbuckers, or something else?
Now, if you don’t play guitar, your response to these questions is probably the same as the OP’s responses to the questions about wedding stuff–i.e., you don’t know all the considerations that go into the decision, and you just generally don’t give a flying fuck.
So, the OP’s reaction to this fiancee’s questions don’t have anything to do with how sympathetic he’ll be to her bad day at work. He just doesn’t like being asked about stuff he doesn’t understand or want to understand (and with respect to which his understanding wouldn’t matter one bit).
But that doesn’t mean that’s what I’d say to my husband, if he were interested in guitars and were asking me those questions. I’d show some interest for his sake. Yes, the OP can think that all he wants. But what you think and what you say to your fiancee when she’s talking to you aren’t necessarily the same thing.
If she actually cares about all the details, all you can do is discuss budget and offer to do leg work. If she’s just gotten sucked into the great American wedding industry, you can gently help her try to escape. It’s easy to get miserably obsessive about everything.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer while my husband and I were planning our wedding. I ended up letting a lot of stuff just sort of happen. We never got around to hiring a photographer or a limo. The centerpieces were what a friend of my mother’s put together. I cared about the ceremony and the food, and those ended up working out very well, although they weren’t totally conventional. People continue to tell us that it was one of the better weddings in their memory.
(I really think not having a photographer is a great idea. You skip a lot of the standing around waiting, and people’s snapshots are just fine for remembering the day. I doubt I’ll sell many people on this one.)
Doesn’t what both of you all are saying boil down to, “Even if you really don’t care about whatever she’s asking your opinion on, at least sincerely pretend to care”?
Whose expectations is she trying to fulfill? If she’s pursuing something she genuinely wants for her own sake, great, the OP should work with her and assert some of his own interests at the same time (e.g. encourage her to not agonize over microscopic details). But if she’s struggling to fulfill what she believes someone else expects of her, well, that’s some bullshit right there; she should be encouraged to cast off that yoke and figure out what they really want for themselves.
We hired a photographer for the formal portraits, which we took before the wedding, eliminating the standing-around part. The other photographs (reception) were all taken by friends, and we have hundreds of them. That disposable-cameras-on-the-tables idea pays off (and it was a shower gift).
Everyone I know that did the whole “disposable camera thing” on the reception tables, hated the results. Tons of pictures taken by the flower girls of peoples butts, the ceiling, extreme out of focus close-ups of the each others noses. I guess you get a few good shots out of the few hundred that are taken.
I recommend this. It also means there’s less time for anybody’s hair or makeup to get mussed between when they’re done and when the pictures are taken. And it does eliminate the pause between the wedding and the reception, which is something that nobody likes.
If you know you look brain-dead without your glasses, don’t let a photographer make you take them off for a picture. I can’t focus without my glasses, and my eyes are such that you can tell in a picture. A lot of our pictures were ruined by the photographer telling me to take off my glasses. I know I will never look good in a picture of me taken without glasses, but I didn’t want to cause a fuss, so I let the photographer pressure me into taking off my glasses. I look like Terri Schiavo in a lot of my wedding pictures.
… Average wedding in the US costs 20k? That’s absurd.
With that said, we’re also planning ours for this year, for a tenth of that amount… Neither of us want to do a public ceremony, but know that we’d catch hell from family, if we do not. But the said families are helping, so that’s a condolence. It’s a strictly ‘no presents/informal’ affair.
Only suggestion 'd offer is to keep it small, and draw on skills of friends/family, whether it be floral design, photography, or skill with musical instruments. If some of that family’s got crazy planning skills, even better!
We did the disposable camera thing with god results. I guess our friends and families were mature enough to know what kind of pictures to take.
We also hired a professional who took pictures after the ceremony. It went very smoothly. I think that may have been because I had gotten one of my Stage Manager friends to act as a wrangler. She got a list of poses from the photographer, and made sure everyone was lined up and ready to go when it came time for their picture. The photos took fifteen minutes, tops.
If you’re worried that you’ll get bad results from the disposable cameras, like Wilbo523 did, assign them to trusted people instead of leaving them on the tables. It can be something you ask people to do if you can’t ask them to be in the wedding party. We did get a some up-the-nose bad shots, but enough good ones to make it worth our while not to pay a photographer for hours.
Don’t get tied up in minutia. Hire a place that will do most of the work for you. That is, don’t plan something where you have to separately hire/pay for every little detail. You’re way too busy to be bothered. Just go to a restaurant with a good banquet reputation. Tell them your colors, your budget, and how many people will be attending.
What I did was handle the budget and savings plan which in turn set the timeline. I was very careful to point out that I’d be willing to have a short or long engagement, but the length of that engagement would more-or-less determine what sort of wedding we’d be having.
I also organized the guest list to make sure it was fair and balanced; my mother is really pushy and tends to feel slighted on the behalf of others. My guest list organization was good for dispelling the myth that my wife’s family is so large that they would dominate the event and more practically, it gave me some level of control on the size of the wedding when so much of the cost is based on number of heads.
Don’t forget your “traditional” responsibility of planning the honeymoon and making sure your side of the family is aware of the rehearsal dinner responsibilities. Don’t force this on them… just check to see if they were planning on doing anything so that if they aren’t, you can get budget & plan for it.
Help her, in a nonjudgmental way, figure out what’s important to her. It’s important to be nonjudgmental because if you say to somebody “X is so stupid. Do you really care about having X at the wedding?”, you’re less likely to get an honest answer than if you ask “Is X something that’s important to you to have at the wedding, or something you think others will expect you to have?”. If it is something others might expect, you should discuss whether it’s a reasonable expectation. A wedding isn’t just about the bride, the groom, or even the couple after all, it is also about the guests. You wouldn’t have a party and not even think about what the people you’re inviting might like or dislike while you were planning the party, would you?