11 Reasons Having A Wedding Isn’t For Me
As I see my friends prepare for and take the trek down the aisle, I am increasingly certain a wedding is something that is of no interest to me. It’s not the marriage part I have a problem with – I am a fan of formalizing the relationship you and your partner have and committing to love one another for the rest of forever. It’s the large spectacle standing in the way of that marriage that irks me. That spectacle is a huge time and money pit dressed up as a celebration of love. I don’t need a Vera Wang gown and a 300-person ceremony to prove my love (no offense, Vera). Investment in a wedding ≠ investment in your relationship. But worse than the showiness and expense of it all, I honestly just can’t be bothered with the hassle. Here are the reasons why I’d rather skip the wedding and go right to the marriage:
1. I don’t want to spend a year of my life stressing over insignificant little details like tablecloth colors. It’s not that I care about tablecloths. At all. I’m going to spill on it no matter what color it is. It’s just that decision making is stressful, and there are far too many of them to make when planning a wedding.
2. Weddings are expensive as fuck. There’s no happy medium between having a crappy, cheap wedding and a great, expensive one. I’m a competitive bitch, and if I’m going to do it, I’m going to win, but I’m unwilling to put forth the capital required to make that happen.
3. My parents aren’t rich.
4. I try to be a good friend, and I don’t want to put my friends through the hassle, expense and drama of a wedding. These days asking someone to be in your wedding is asking them to make a huge time and financial commitment. I’d rather go on vacation with my friends than have them spend their money on some ugly dress, a prom-esque updo and a bridal shower gift I don’t need.
5. Between the stress of the day and the need to make my rounds to all the guests, there’s a 100% chance I would over-drink and under-eat. I don’t really want every person I know to see me shitfaced. Who’s going to hold the bride’s hair back?!
6. Speaking of making my rounds, I am TERRIBLE with names and would surely offend a number of guests. I have enough difficulty keeping track at a small gathering. Identifying who everyone is at a large wedding is well beyond my memorization capabilities.
7. I can’t maintain a steady enough weight to fit in a dress today and 6 months from now.
8. I don’t want to spend the “happiest day of my life” stressing about if everyone is getting along, liking the food and having a good time. With the amount of shit I have talked at other people’s weddings, there would be no escaping the horrible assumptions I’d make about my guests’ opinions of my special day.
9. One of my grandmas lives in California and the other in Pennsylvania. They are both too old to fly. How on Earth do I decide who gets to come?
10. I often feel weddings are more of an excuse for a girl to get a shit ton of attention for a day than a celebration of the union of two people. I don’t even like the attention my birthday brings, and that results in tears 9 times out of 10. I’d be willing to bet that my emotional state on my wedding day would lead to a swift divorce.
11. Taking pictures to me is torture. When I return from every single vacation and scroll through my photos, there are usually a couple of the hotel from when I first arrive and then that’s it. Why would I sign myself up for a full day of “okay now make a silly face”. Dear God no.
Sure, weddings do have their merits. They’re usually a blast (at least the open bar ones), and they tend to gather people together who do not get so see each other as often as they’d like. But for me the combination of photos, fake smiles and mediocre food is a personal hell I’d rather not pay tens of thousands of dollars to experience.