Yup, I got the ring. Well, first I found the right man and then he was smart enough to pop the question. I was smart enough to say “yes.” It’s been about four months since we became betrothed and now we are faced with the dreaded and inevitable task of – gulp – planning a wedding. And while I have long been known to be an attention whore, the thought of professing my love and devotion to someone in front of a live, familial audience fills me with absolute panic and terror. To top it off, I just cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on a wedding, on a party that will last a few hours, on a soiree in which I will spend the majority of the time worrying if my guests are having a good time. (Full disclosure: As a publicist, all you do is throw events and parties and work your ass off to make sure everyone is happy and having fun and it is just dreadful; it’s my least favorite part of the gig.)
Don’t get me wrong – I am not dreading getting married. In fact, I can’t wait to be Mrs. Wahoo and, yes, start having a family. But the wedding thing? I dunno, I was just never the little girl who fantasized about her wedding day. Yes, Freud, it probably does stem from my parents’ divorce and how I grew up with very realistic expectations of love and am always very cautious about matters of the heart. But now I am very much in love, very much ready to commit my life to one person, one man who I feel betters and enhances my life. A man who I want to be the father of my children and who I want to grow old with. But $5,000+ on flowers? No fucking way.
So why not just elope you say? Well, two reasons.
1. My family. I always scoffed when my friends would bend to their parents’ wishes when it came to planning their weddings. But after hearing how happy my mother and grandmother are about this engagement/wedding, I just feel like I owe it to them to give them one. I often think about how I would feel if I was a mother and my daughter was engaged – I would probably want to see her get married too. So that’s the heart of the dilemma – I think they deserve a wedding – my wedding. I am my mother’s only daughter and my grandmother is 90 and may not live to see the weddings of her other granddaughters, who are 18 and 12.
2. A groom who wants a wedding. Ella’s fella would really like a wedding – a church wedding with a reception. And why should I deny him this? Hell, he asked my parents’ for my hand in marriage. It’s important for him to get married in a church (he’s religious, a trait of his that made me fall in love with him). It’s his wedding too, not MINE. If I can’t compromise now, I probably shouldn’t get married at all.
So the real problem now lies in having a NYC wedding. It’s so unbelievably expensive. An editor I know – who got engaged at roughly the same time I did – is getting married this August for about $11,000. But where is she getting married? DELAWARE. What can we get for $11,000 in NYC? Um, vows in a church and, if we are lucky, a reception at Ellen’s Stardust Diner. No, seriously. That’s how expensive it is to get married in this town.
So, we’re working on figuring it out. Trying to find a place that won’t bankrupt us before we even tie the knot. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
