I always said I wouldn’t get married so planning a wedding was never on my radar, which meant pulling together our big day was an interesting experience.
The Wedding Backstory
So the girl who was never going to get married was suddenly engaged.
Honestly the thought of being tethered to someone til death do us part was a terrifying prospect for a lone wolf like me. Then kinda out of nowhere it suddenly just felt right to take this next step.
So I said yeah ok when Pablo proposed on a Brooklyn street corner.
False Start
Roll on 18 months later and there were no wedding plans in sight.
There were so many choices to make and everything was so expensive. Every time I psyched myself up to open a wedding magazine, or do some research, I instantly felt overwhelmed.
My first instinct was of course to say fuck it. I’d always loved the idea of a rebellious elopement so started pricing up a wild Vegas trip. Pablo on the other hand is much more traditional and vetoed that plan. Which was totally fair the wedding was our day to bind our relationship and we both had to be onboard.
So it was back to the drawing board. I looked at hundreds of venues, dresses, and got a lot of unsolicited advice but nothing felt quite right.
The planning itself wasn’t the stress keeping me up at night. I was a dab hand at event planning having assisted huge events in my previous job (including banquets in Buckingham Palace and Mansion House). It was making it feel like “us” that I struggled with.
Pablo and I are both really laid back casual kinda people, I was proposed to on the graffiti splashed streets of Bushwick and we celebrated by drinking beer in a dive bar and stealing the glasses as a souvenir. This was the vibe I wanted to recreate but even the simplest of wedding venues seemed too polished and elaborate to match our style.
Actually Planning The Wedding
After almost two years of being unable to commit to anything other than each other, we once again returned to my default fuck it attitude. We scrapped every wedding idea we’d come up with then wrote a list of what was actually important to us. Stripping everything back gave us the clarity we had been searching for and we had lit a fire under our asses.
Within a week we had booked Islington Town Hall, headed to Scotland for Christmas and told our close family to block out 15th March in their diaries.
During this time I was also working on my Love Your Way card collection. Sketching out my frustrations was hugely cathartic and help us whittle down what we actually wanted.
Being married was about the unique love we have for each other.
A celebration that came authentically from the heart.
A gesture of love that we had held for a decade.
It was about the two of us.
What I learned from wedding planning
If I was to plan a wedding all over again the advice I would give myself would be not to listen to the noise and the pressure that comes in from all sides the moment you mention wedding (and a little after you’re done).
In my experience it does not matter how hard you try there will be at least one person who doesn’t understand or agree with the way you choose to celebrate your love and you know what they don’t have to!
Love is an individual bond that no one but the two of you will truly understand. So plan for that love and those who support it.
*Both images of Pablo and I are by the awesome Kaye Ford , in the next post I’m going to share how and why we selected our suppliers and how it made the day extra special.
