Posting by Jen:
Since high school I have wanted to be a wedding and event planner and have back issues of Martha Stewart Weddings which date back to 2002. My mind is always reeling with ways to design a fabulous and memorable wedding. I could have a winter black and white wedding at the Boston Public Library with fabulous books as favors (I’m a big reader) or it could be a wedding held in a barn during the fall with gorgeous browns and oranges and flowers spilling out of a vase made out of a hollowed out tree branch... or it could be the summer wedding we decided on: blues like the sea, salt water taffy, vintage North Shore map invitations, a clambake...
What didn't factor into my detailed plans was the emotional nature of the planning. This wedding isn’t just about me, or even just about AJ and me. AJ cares a lot more about details than I anticipated he would. My mom wants to be an active part, or at least know about, every aspect of the planning. The planning is far more an exercise in love and communication than just working through the details.
I had assumed that because AJ was a guy and because my parents were moving from the home where they spent the last 15 years that I would be taking a load off both of their shoulders by doing the work. But I wasn't taking a load off my parents’ shoulders; I was excluding them from being the hosts of the event they were throwing. And in “taking the load off AJ’s shoulders” I was missing an excellent exercise in how to communicate with him that would benefit us in the future.
I was holding so tightly to my “perfect” wedding, but maybe the perfect wedding is the one where I’ve grown in my relationships with AJ and my parents, and not the one where guests sat on chiavari gold chairs and ate lobster tail…
