Sunday Flurries: The Opposite of Writer’s Block
May 15, 2011
There’s so much going on these days to share, that the dearth of posting, in part thanks to Blogger’s downtime at exactly the wrong time, has naught to do with having nothing to say. Though, I’m hearing that blog posts and comments from mid-week were deleted so I suppose it’s a good thing I hadn’t posted anything close to that time – I’d be furious about losing those!
Where to start?
Work.
Thailand.
Dog.
Wedding.
(You’ll note that the wedding falls to the bottom of the list. That is representative of something.)
But I have been writing, organizing and doing and you shall soon enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Budget: Traditionally, my family expects you to spend between $20-30K on a wedding for a standard 300-400 guests (“they pay for themselves” etc). “Thank goodness for formulas” except PiC and I are going off the grid, particularly because “standard Asian traditional” for me would have gone right through the roof to 400 on my side alone. So we’re starting from scratch too.
I love regular budgeting but …. I don’t love wedding budgeting. Maybe it’s because I’m cranky about the mark-up on everything just because it’s a wedding?
No matter how awesome you are at negotiating, it eventually becomes a zero-sum game. You can either have it, make it, or do without if you’re going to hit your budget. Unless someone donates it. So again, somehow, it feels a lot less fun than regular budgeting even though it is exactly the same principle.
Vision: I haven’t got a vision. Or a theme. Or colors. For the love of smooshy, stop asking about colors, please?
Eemusings is also engaged but her take is a bit closer to my attitude of “Not ready to plan yet” despite my probably most-pending-nuptials of the three of us. I could use a real kick in the pants to get moving on making things happen because between now and the projected “Hey, can we do this?” date of early November – we have major work events (June), travel (July), more travel for work (undetermined), weddings to attend (June), work (August), other people’s weddings (September) …
Yeek! Who has time to plan a wedding? Or go to one?
Is it just me or do the years book up really fast? Is anyone else feeling a bit overwhelmed by their schedule and wanting to opt out? (Funny about Money, you come to mind.)
I’d be terrified if my wedding budget depended on my relatives ponying up the proper amount of hong bao:)
Weddings are hard – the wedding industry makes its money convincing women that their life will be a failure if their wedding day isn’t perfect. I know we’re all supposed to be more grown up than that, but, let’s be honest, a lifetime of relentless advertising is a hard thing to overcome. I have great faith that you’ll manage something that you enjoy and doesn’t break the bank.
Luckily, I’m one of those people for whom a conventional wedding would have been a nightmare. Total cost of my wedding–around $30! Just hoping my kids feel the same way.
I filled up my year with fun stuff this year. I’m thrilled.
But um, dog? Thailand? Can’t wait to hear more!
Well-Heeled has asked my opinion/advice a couple of times, but i think she has now learned that she probably did more research in her 1 week than I did in my entire process. 🙂 I’m impressed with it 🙂
The website offbeat bride really helped me tap into the joy of a wedding. Those other websites made me crazy. I kind of opted out since it’s the groom’s family that paid for the wedding. I picked out my dress and make-up. It was fine but sometimes I wish I had an offbeat bride wedding. Looked way more fun (and cheaper!)
I’ve been engaged for over a year now, and still: no date, no budget, nothing. My fiance is still finishing school and we are planning to tie the knot after he’s done, but his completion date is TBD so our wedding? TBD. We’ve already had a fairly long engagement by some people’s standards and it’s about to get much longer! (Though one of my closest friends was engaged almost 8 years–gosh, I’m not hoping to tie that record).
Even though we have no date, some of my friends have been strongly encouraging me to get married on a military base (very common among Filipinos who grew up in San Diego with dads in the Navy) and to start planning/make the reservation now as you often have to reserve halls on military bases at least two years in advance, or maybe a year and half if you get married in the off season and there’s a cancellation. Crazy! Seeing as I have no date, not even a remote one, I can’t do this, but we’ll see. My fiance is Chinese so maybe we’ll consider a banquet-style reception at a Chinese restaurant. So many options.
So no worries about dragging your feet on the planning; you’ll plan it in your own time at your own pace. It’s a pain to deal with the questions sometimes, but you get used to it.
I know you are not enthused about the wedding planning/budgetting but I feel I must tell you that you gotta get a move on because pricing goes up once you start making decisions close to the date. November seems far enough away but 6 mths is basically the best time to start ordering things because after that it becomes “rush” which is added costs. There’s less room to negotiate because “there’s no time” and you may end up more frustrated than you might be now.
Just a word of advice, based on experience (Bridesmaid dresses 2 months in advance…headache headache headache)