After the Wedding Mother of the Bride Blues

This may be a disorder that I am the first to discover but that does not mean that it is not real.  It is something that I may very well be currently experiencing.  After the Wedding Mother of the Bride Blues is not hormonely based like Post-Patum Depression, but it seems real enough to me.  My symptoms include nightmares about all the little things that went wrong during the wedding, a sense of loss of my life's purpose and major tiredness. 

Although no one seemed to notice all the little things that went wrong but me, that doesn't mean that they didn't happen.  The pergola flowers weren't right, Jenna forgot to carry her bouquet during the ceremony. we lost the stuff for the sand ceremony and I had 30 minutes to get ready.  I think that these things are laying heavy on my mind because I put so much of myself and my love into the planning that I wanted everything to be perfect for my "little" girl. Don't misunderstand, everything about the wedding was beautiful.  Perfect weather for a beach wedding, my daughter was so beautiful and looked so happy, and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time including me, the food was great, decorations looked great.  So why am I focusing on the little things?  I seriously believe it is a disorder.

I am having a difficulty time getting back into my "normal", pre-wedding planning routine.  Maybe it wouldn't be quite so hard if I had a 9 to 5 job, but since my current job consists of writing a parenting book I am finding it very difficult. 

Anybody have any advice or cures for what is ailing me?  No, I don't have another daughter to marry off, and I have no aspirations to become a wedding/party planner (too much stress associated with that job).  Currently my only ideas are to find a part time counseling position and to just dive head first into my writing again.  The writing may not be my best work but that is what the editing phase is for, cleaning up what was written in the forst go round.

So ends my series on planning a wedding.

The Wedding Dress and The First Fitting

I went with my daughter yesterday for her first fitting for her wedding gown.  That means that the wedding is a meer six weeks away.  The dress didn't fit quite as well as we both remembered and in the end straps were added to the dress.  After a sleepless night, I called my daughter and suggested that we have another fitting to try the other suggestion that the seamstress had.  Although she said she thought the dress was okay with the straps, she did agree to the second fitting.  I, like any mother of the bride, just want everything to be perfect for my daughter.  Not just okay.  Called and set the new appointment for the fitting.  Fingers crossed that the dress will be all she wants it to be.  It looks gorgeous on her either way and it makes me cry everytime she puts it on.  So I guess I'll be crying again come Friday.

Some Hard Learned Lessons From the Mother of the Bride

When I got married, my mother made all of the decisions with regard to the wedding.  That is the way it was done.  Now that my daughter is getting married, I have found that things have changed.  The bride is the one making the decisions.  In my daughter's case, she wants to make many of the decisions, but not all of them.  It feels like a balancing act, trying to figure out when she wants to make the decision and when she wants me to make the decisions.  In the last few months, I have alternated between hearing "it's my wedding" and "I don't care, you choose". 

The most important lesson that I have learned about wedding planning is do your homework on the internet before going out to visit vendors.  I wasted a few days making the trip to the wedding location before catching on to this one.  This is not quite as important if you live in the area where the wedding is being held, but we live about an hour to an hour and a half away. I searched for venues, bridesmaids dresses, rental companies, photographers and florists.  Picked out the two or three that best fit our needs and made appointments with them.  I even searched through pictures of hundreds of bouquets and floral arrangements.  E-mailed the top forty pictures to my daughter.  She picked out her favorites in each category.  I am taking these pictures to the florist which saves my daughter having to make the trip and saves me time as well since I don't need to look through all the florists pictures.  Some prep work has saved me hours and hours of time.

Picking Out the Location for the Ceremony

Picking out the location for the wedding doesn't seem like it would be too difficult unless your daughter has decided to get married at the beach with 100 guests. I started out by trying to find a beachhouse right on a private, nondriving beach to have the wedding and reception at. After looking for hours on line, going to see about 20 houses and calling eight management companies, no luck. The funny thing is people don't want a 100 people in their rental property. Go figure. Then I moved on to asking friends and family if they knes of anyone who owned a large enough beachhouse, no luck. Next, I came up with the idea of the ceremony taking place at a hotel or resort. This posed a problem because the people staying their would be sharing the beach with us and she is getting married during spring break. Lastly, I came up with the idea of the national seashore. When I called them, I was told that they only allow 20 people at a ceremony but if I wanted to I could apply for a varience. I applied and got it. Location for ceremony found. Phew. Took a lot of man (or woman) hours to find the location for the ceremony. Now I only have the location for the reception, location for the rehearsal dinner, flowers, caterer, cake, DJ, bartender and centerpieces. Thankfully my daughter is not a bridezilla, but she is testing me with some unique requests. If you can afford it, I hear getting a wedding planner makes all of these headaches go away. I want her to have everything she has ever dreamed of in her wedding and then a few personal touches that she hasn't even thought of. I am not sure that someone who doesn't know her very well can do that. I'll let you know if I still feel that same way in a few months, after I have done more of the planning.

My Daughters Getting Married...Follow My Wedding Planning Experience

My daughter is getting married in March of 2012 and I am busy trying to plan her dream wedding. I thought that it might be fun to have a log of how the planning is going throughout this process. So I will be updating you about how things are progressing. I made the promise to her that it would be her wedding, not the wedding that I want. I am counting on you to keep me on that path. I think that all too often we, as the mother of the bride, plan the wedding that we always wanted and didn't get because our own mothers took over the planning of our wedding. My plan is to break that cycle in my family and give my daughter the wedding she has always dreamed of. This may be a tough promise to keep because she has some pretty unusual ideas. She wants a beach wedding for 100 people, sandcastle centerpieces and three bridesmaids who shop in three different departments to name just three of the challenges that her wedding wishes present. Keep checking in for my updates on how things are going.