Keeping My Cool About Getting Married

I am getting married in two months’ time and I am pretty laid back about the whole thing. People keep asking me if I am stressed about the planning and in all honesty, I am not at all.

We have been together for eleven and a half years and engaged for about eight and we haven’t really been in a rush to get married (clearly with an engagement that long) because we always knew it would happen one day and we had pretty much decided we were for life.

Image - Tumblr

I have never been the type of girl who had a ‘dream wedding’ scenario in her head. I never pretended to be a bride when I was a kid; I wanted to be Superted or She-Ra. And while I have loved seeing friends and family get married, I have never really been that into 'wedding things'.

So when me and himself decided at New Year that we were finally going to say ‘I do’ I didn’t want to spend a year or two painstakingly planning a wedding with all the faff and stress that goes with it. Instead we gave ourselves five months, and decided we would get married in a small ceremony and have a party at a later date to celebrate.

In three months we have managed to do a large bulk of the organising so it’s not even close to a stressful situation. We just promised ourselves that whilst planning, we were going to keep focus of why we were getting married, and that the rest is just add on. If everything else fell down planning wise, we are still getting hitched.

Jim and Pam Forever! (Image - Tumblr)

Because of taking the view that everything else is an optional extra, the whole process has been pretty easy and uncomplicated. We know what we want and how we want to do things. As long as I am there and he is there we are good to go.

When I started looking for venues for the party, I saw a little of how easy it is to get sucked into the whole wedding industry vortex and how costly and complicated it can all be. Before I knew it, me and himself were looking at castle that would cost at least what I earn in two months and then some. 

We stopped ourselves when we realised how ridiculous it was, and asked what it was that we were actually looking for. The answer was a big enough venue that had a bar, a dance floor and a flexible approach to catering. After assessing what we wanted, we found somewhere that met all those requirements without taking a huge financial hit.

I have applied this approach to the rest of the wedding planning and we have prioritised what we want and not bothered with anything that isn't important to us. There are still some things to do before the big day but I'm not losing sleep any time soon about it. It’s something to celebrate, it is the next stage of our adventure together and I can’t wait!