I have found the root of all excess in our society. It’s Pinterest. Planning my daughter’s wedding, I have developed a deep love-hate relationship with that omnipresent site. It really, really needs to just stop giving my bride-to-be-daughter an exhausting array of new choices to add to the inherent madness of a wedding.
No, we don’t need to provide heel guards or sunscreen to every guest.
Neither I, nor the busy bride, need to know how to make chocolate-filled strawberries for 1,000, papier-mâché yard decorations or how to bedazzle 6-inch heels. Just stop!
At press time, we have two and a half months until go time and I have sensory overload.
Things have really, really expanded since I walked down the aisle, especially wedding budgets. More seems to be better, as if the traditional wedding wasn’t dizzying enough.
But my very particular bride loves to party plan and has been devouring Pinterest for 10 months, noting a million, zillion possible accouterment and alternatives.
If I could make the choices, we’d be fine, but my girlchild is not the decisive type and so has dallied over four styles of wedding invitation, three variations on table decorations, 12 styles of tiara, six pairs of shoes and who will do her hair.
I fancy that I am the perfect mother, allowing her to ponder all this without threatening to hand her a ticket to Vegas. I expect to be breaking out in hives shortly.
It seems everyone has a theme now. Her theme is “Enchanted Forest,” so she wants the reception in our overgrown backyard. I am madly trying to make both front and back yards presentable. They’re not what you’d call manicured. In fact, they’re big, weedy, with a chipped fingernail with knuckle hair.
We did find her dress, have planned her rehearsal dinner, arranged the honeymoon, hired a caterer, DJ, photographer, videographer, officiate, lighting guy and make-up artist, so I should feel less stressed. I don’t. And I won’t until the last guest has found the way from wedding to reception and has a glass in his or her hand.
Jean Gillette is a freelance writer who has, once again, entered The Wedding Zone. Contact her a jgillette@ coastnewsgroup.com.
