All my cousins are boys except one who is much younger than me. All I heard my mother and my aunts do is talk about my wedding ad nauseum all my life. Never mind the fact that all 7 of them got divorced - some more than once. I knew early on that it would be their wedding - not mine. Given the huge fiasco at my brothers wedding just confirmed I would never want a big wedding.
Coming close to doing the deed I had it all planned out. I wanted to fly to Key West and get married on the beach with only my aunt and uncle present since they live in Tampa, in a white cotton dress I already owned. Fly home and then have an extremely small wedding to benefit the wedding hounds in this very small old church in this historical village down the street. I even managed to get a $3000 Italian wedding dress for $300 because the store was going out of business and it was a try on dress and did it so my mom could go through the whole trying on dresses process. With my aunts I did the cake and flowers. This was their wedding not mine. This place was extremely small so it was just family. There was a banquet hall in a historic building right down the street with a bunch of different size rooms - bingo there we go....no fuss, just a dinner.
His mother was going through the whole traditional scene, but failed to realize my parents weren't paying for this thing - we were. That drove me nuts too.
The wedding never happened. (It was for the best) and I have a $3000 wedding dress in the closet for anyone who is a size 2 to 4 - LOL. I'll probably give it to my younger cousin when she decides to get married.
So, no I wouldn't spend my life's savings on a wedding.
Women are conditioned for a wedding and a man is conditioned for a marriage which makes the woman's expectations dashed after a couple years because the grand romance in their head became a plain and ordinary day. I've posted this article before, but she has some great things to say about this same thing:
Gilbert: I'm such a romantic person and I love "Jerry Maguire" as well. I love that scene, I love that moment. But I think there does come a time when we have to distinguish between the romance of love and the reality of long-term, decades-long intimacy.
Sometimes what happens is we long for the fairy-tale ending. I'm a little bit more of an advocate for the fairy-tale beginning. I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion and excitement, that's how it should be.
But I don't necessarily know that it's the wisest thing in the world to expect that it ends there, or that it should, 30 years down the road, still look as it did on the night of your first kiss.
'Eat, Pray, Love' author tackles marriage - CNN.com
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