Wedding Planner

It's no secret this will be my third wedding. The first was a City Hall elopement when I was 18, and as casual a ceremony as could be. I wore the dress in which my mother met my father, a lovely 1960s cream chiffon with little black polka dots. We didn't know if we needed one witness or two, so to be safe we invited our two closest friends, and Richard volunteered to be my "maid of honor". Afterward, the four of us went out for Chinese food in nearby Chinatown, then back to the NYU dorm where my new husband lived, hung out with our friends and never told anybody we got married for months.

My second was a much more formal affair, a church wedding with a reception, again in NY but this time in Brewster, where my parents live. The whole family was invited and many of my fiance's family flew out for the occasion. It was a good-sized wedding, many of my NY and NJ "cousins" were able to attend. One of the best things about it was wearing the dress created by my mom & grandmom that I had envisioned, a lovely white off the shoulder dress with a flamenco-style skirt. We held the reception at Sciortino's, one of the nicest Italian restaurants in town.

It was during the preparation for this event that I realized that hosting a wedding was not unlike producing a play (which I'd done for years) ~ actors, setting, costumes, props, sound design? Check. Straightforward, until the day of the show, when things started going awry and it fell to the "producer" to straighten things out. So, when we arrived to the reception hall and there was one table less than required, I had to chase down the waiters to set up a new table. And when my cousin decided to change the music tapes to play more dance music, I had to soothe my new husband's rightful indignation. And when the priest skipped over a part of our ceremony, I had to decide to let it slide...

I'm looking at my next and please God, last wedding. I don't want to hand off responsibilities to anyone else unless they're really interested in spending the day focused on an element of a special party. I understand why couples hire wedding planners, but we don't have the budget and as we're doing without many of the trappings of the "perfect" wedding, I'm not sure if a planner would be an appropriate addition. Yet, neither do I want to spend my day focused on the decorations, carpool logistics, food heat and champagne chill temperatures, etc. I have a wedding to think about. With my maid of honor coming in from out of town, with her two young children in tow, I can't just hand off duties to her as if she were a stage manager.

How do we host a celebration that doesn't make us insane, or worse, unfocused? Mark is confident that going the relaxed route is best, and while I know he's right, I'm not sure he fully appreciates how complicated this could get.

And so, another conversation needs to be held between us, sooner rather than later, about how we're ever going to pull off this wedding stress-free and well... We've decided to spend a little time talking about it this weekend!