No Pain, No Gain

The moment my parents forced me to have a public ceremony I knew this wedding planning was gonna kick my ass. And kicking my ass it is.

A lot of people think I'm not into the lavish wedding because I've been mentioning the idea of eloping since I was five. Let me explain since I actually have your attention. People, I'm very into the party planning. If I had known this sooner, I would have gone to party-planning college. However, my problem is this thing called perfectionism which leads me to have an all-or-nothing mentality. This awful monster became very apparent at Art Center and it completely paralyzed me because, of course, there is no way one can be perfect at that school. And so I opted for the "nothing" since the "all" was too overwhelming to deal with. And that is why I've been talking of eloping ever since. If Art Center was pressure, imagine my wedding! Not to mention all the guest designers with great taste having an opinion about every detail I pined over for hours or otherwise forgot to attend to. C'mon fellow designers, we know we're painfully critical. And if you're not a designer by profession, every woman becomes one at someone else's wedding.

My parents insisted on having a big public ceremony. They said, "The more people that attend, the less likely you guys will get divorced." What? Oh, right, since all those pair of eyes would be keeping us accountable. The embarrassment factor would be enough to stop us from a divorce.

So I began to plan the 500+ wedding with a grudge. No wait, I lie. I didn't begin anything. I just held a grudge for almost 6 months. You have to realize that we ended up eloping so I really didn't see the point of having a wedding. Finally, with the push of good friends and sister I started to get the ball rolling. And I booked the date, venue, and...no wait Pastor Sam was busy that day. No problem we'll just do it...no my cousin's shotgun wedding is on that day. Well how about...no that's a holiday. Eventually we got it. Venue, check. Date, check. Pastor, check. I went out drinking that night I was so stoked. But I celebrated too soon. My parents called and suddenly mentioned a small wedding which confused me because I thought they wanted to invite all those people because it was their turn to collect. They've been going to weddings since they themselves got married. However, for reasons that I won't get into, my mother felt bad about inviting a chunk of the 500 because she would be burdening them. I was speechless. I didn't even have the energy to be angry. I just quietly told her, "Omma, you just gave me the biggest headache of my life. I'm going to hang up." I went to bed and cried. I cry when I'm frustrated.

I don't know how long the anger lasted, but eventually Brian and my sister convinced me that this was the ticket to my dream wedding, "Leny, you can have your small wedding now!" And it was true, to a certain degree. I still wished I could shrink the guest list to half of 250, but I could live with this. And so the planning began back from square one. This time, I was excited.

And I still am, but I can feel the acid reflexing up whenever I think of details that I still haven't figured out. And I have freak-out moments since we're paying for this wedding ourselves. I have to keep telling myself that the money we're putting into this will be worth it at the end. So I'll mainly pray for love for that day, what the day should be about. Nothing but love... and good weather.