Weddings…

I am surrounded by weddings.

At one point in your life it seems like your Facebook newsfeed becomes filled with pictures of babies, engagement rings and wedding posts from pintrest. The invitations start to come in the mail, and summer vacations that were once your own are now solely dedicated to flying around the country to celebrate someone’s love.

I see it as a forced vacation to see friends and family. Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to get together with the ones you love. What I don’t enjoy is the time commitment and financial burden that ONE weekend has. I loved the justification my friend gave when I expressed that this wedding of hers between plane tickets, car rental a bachelorette weekend, hotels and so much more is going to make my bank account a very sad looking place. Her reply “You think it costs you a lot, we are spending a fortune on making this a great day for our guests” HA. Point taken. Got it.

To me you are crazy to spend a minimum of $10,000 for ONE day to celebrate something as pure and wonderful as love. I can live off that for a year, I could spend the year traveling with my partner on that. NO JOKE.

What is a joke though, is the fact that we believe that our day has to go a certain way. We need to make sure the wedding checklist is all crossed off, that everything goes a certain way… according to who??

We are sold a dream, from the time we are young, most women are planning their wedding. They are told you are supposed to be a happy bride, you have to have a white dress, wear a diamond engagement ring (*Cough De Beers ad campaign *cough cough) have a ceremony that will impress all your friends and family. So when it comes time to actually plan the day, us ladies never stop to think how do WE want to be represented on this day. How do we want to express ourselves and our partner. Instead we pick up a magazine, which only solidifies the stereotype of the “conventional” american wedding. We talk with our friends, who have been led to believe this truth just as much as the rest of us.

Not to mention that when you are busy dreaming of a moment, we forget that we are sharing this day with someone. While we are wrapped up in the idea of getting married and planning this big day, we may have forgotten to take a look at who is going to be across from us. Is this the person that I want as a partner forever.

We don’t realize there are other ways to do it. We can express our love without a large rock on our finger, which tells the world how much money we make, or what our status in this society is.

So lets do this, lets let little girls dream of amazing men, who love them for who they are. Let them dream of beautiful relationships that grow over time, let them dream of respect and communication.

Then together these grown ups can decide how they want their love to be expressed and how they want to share it with those they love.

“They take your dreams down and stick them in storage
You can have them back son when you’ve paid off your mortgage and loans
Oh hell with this place, I’ll go it my own way
I’ll stick out my thumb and I trudge down the highway
Someday someone must be going my way home” – Passenger

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