I hate doing everything by myself...

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MamaJoAnna
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I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by MamaJoAnna »

Forgive me if this gets moved to Wedding Planning, but it's more of a vent about it than anything (that turns into something positive-ish)...

So the past 6 months of my life have been spent (admittedly) obsessing over every little detail for the wedding. We hit two major problems within the last month, otherwise everything was perfect. My future MIL decided to spend most of the reception budget she supposedly had saved up and neglected to tell me this before the 1-month-before-the-wedding mark, so we've had to scramble to cover for her. She was supposed to pay for the food, the decorations my friend Krista is doing, and the cake our friend Kelley is doing. Roughly $700-$800 once we got the food budget calculated (yes, we are spending $300 to feed 80-100 people...gotta love bulk stores!).

So as I said above, we got the food taken care of this past weekend. $300 and quite a selection that we go to buy next week. No problem. But of course, my fiance decides to pull the "oh we can find someone when we get our marriage license to marry us" card, and because this is my first marriage (and after all this BS it better be my only) I just blindly went along with it. Well, in Virginia, no one can just go and get ordained and marry you - VA is one of the few states that requires ordained people to be licensed, which can take up to 6 months. Hmm, 6 months, I was just starting to plan at 6 months prior...ohhhh noooo honey you can do that later...NO YOU CAN'T!!!!! We have learned this the hard way!!!!!

I literally called every clerk of court in the county we live in, every clergy person between myself and my roommate's knowledge (we aren't too religious so that was a near last resort) wanted marriage counseling that we don't have time for, and my fiance's friend who normally would come through for us said no, and I can't tell you how many times I have tapped the "end call" button on my iPhone and broken down in near-meltdown mode because I was literally exhausted from doing everything myself. It took this morning, less than three weeks before the wedding of hearing no from our few last-resort options (and yesterday seeing that one of my best friends who *could* do it say "oh I might not make it because I just got a new job making me work Saturdays"...impeccable timing...) and then it hit me.

We have a neighboring county that is roughly an hour away. I wasn't sure if legally it could be done, but I made some calls anyway. The ONLY clerk of court actively working down there wasn't there today (as my luck would have it), but the secretary there DID give me the number of a lady who used to work there. I spoke with her and after countless calls and nos, I FINALLY found a yes.

Which leads me to this...ladies, ELOPE. It will be THE best decision of your lives. Don't EVER count on the guy to help you except for financially (unless you're awesome and can do that yourself too). It will spare you a lot of heartache, tears, and vents. I literally begged my fiance for TWO WEEKS to talk to his co-worker as a last resort and the guy (co-worker) said no. Either elope or go find someone to marry you fairly early in your planning. DO NOT wait until you get your marriage license and try to get it all done the same day - from experience, it doesn't work. Literally everything that has been planned for this wedding other than food (cake being the exception) has been planned by me: what people are wearing, who's marrying us, where it's happening, who our DJ is, who is doing our cake, what our cake even is to begin with, decorations, photography, the wedding party...the list goes on and on.

I'm just relieved at this point. Finding someone in a neighboring county to marry us was the last piece of the puzzle. All that's left to do now is call people about cooking the food, buying the food ourselves, and getting the wedding party presents. All very simple things. It really is true though - the only way you get things done right is doing them yourself.
RIP Dad - 09/30/2017 :angel:
Kayliecoburn
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Re: I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by Kayliecoburn »

Glad things worked out. I eloped with my husband (with literally no plan...I said the night before let's elope tomorrow). I did that because anytime I thought about planning a wedding, I got a headache and I knew I would never go through with it. I also just felt iffy every time I thought about being intimate in front of family and friends. Plus I knew my mom would be a horror through the whole thing.

The elopement was really rednecky...haha all we could find last minute was an elopement chapel in another town and all we could afford at the last minute was a drive through wedding with a nice picture in a chapel afterwards. The whole thing was hilarious and totally stress free. We spent all the wedding budget on one hell of a honeymoon. We even had a little family reception where I bought a nice cheap wedding dress to take pictures in.

Sometimes I see pictures of weddings and feel slightly sad that I didn't have that but for the most part I'm extremely happy we did things like we did and cut out all the bs. We've been married almost 5 years now :)
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TaylorKnows

Re: I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by TaylorKnows »

I am so glad everything worked out with that! Stories like this make me glad I changed my career path from wedding planning to teaching! Hope your day goes a lot more smoothly than the prep.
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Re: I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by fossilfinger »

Why were county clerks telling you to get counseling? They should have no business saying anything like that. When I got married and called justices of the peace they based it solely upon whether or not they were available the day and time I was getting married, and asked almost no questions.

When I was first thinking about marriage, I wanted to semi-elope. My "dream wedding" was just having my parents and brother and his parents (he has no siblings) and a JP at the beach or something. No ceremony, just a nice dinner afterwards. We ended up compromising and had some of our extended family, but we only ended up with about 30 guests. We still ended up going to a restaurant for dinner (with a fixed menu and planned ahead, obviously) so we didn't have to coordinate caterers and all that. It was very nice and very little stress.

I'm glad you got it worked out, though.
thegooseiscooked

Re: I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by thegooseiscooked »

When I got engaged, my dad offered me to pay a contribution towards the wedding or he would simply give me the money and we could do our own thing, elope, travel, put some money towards our house etc.

I was outraged at the time. What? Not have my big day?

We had a beautiful wedding. Would I do it again? NEVER!!!!!! The stress you go through for one day is nowhere near worth it. My parents were fighting with my in laws, everyone wanted their say on how our wedding should be. Three ring frigging circus. And ours worked out fine.

I'm already telling my 10 year old daughter "Don't have a big wedding!"

Glad it's worked out okay for you.
MamaJoAnna
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Re: I hate doing everything by myself...

Unread post by MamaJoAnna »

fossilfinger wrote:Why were county clerks telling you to get counseling? They should have no business saying anything like that. When I got married and called justices of the peace they based it solely upon whether or not they were available the day and time I was getting married, and asked almost no questions.

When I was first thinking about marriage, I wanted to semi-elope. My "dream wedding" was just having my parents and brother and his parents (he has no siblings) and a JP at the beach or something. No ceremony, just a nice dinner afterwards. We ended up compromising and had some of our extended family, but we only ended up with about 30 guests. We still ended up going to a restaurant for dinner (with a fixed menu and planned ahead, obviously) so we didn't have to coordinate caterers and all that. It was very nice and very little stress.

I'm glad you got it worked out, though.
The religious clergy people were recommending our way were telling us they would need counseling - the clerks of court in our county were booked up for the day. Sorry if that was a little confusing.
RIP Dad - 09/30/2017 :angel:
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