So I have expressed my, um, doubts about whether our wedding plan will turn into an unmitigated disaster of angry, broke, hungry people.  You see, we have firm contracts for:

1.  The vacation rental where we will be staying with my family,

2.  The photographer,

3.  Our day-of coordinator, and

4.  The music.

But what we don’t have, and can’t get until the very last possible minute after invitations have been mailed – and which may be unavailable to us when we need it — are the meat-and-potatoes of the wedding, both literal and figurative:

1.  Ceremony site

2.  Officiant

3.  Food

There are days when I don’t worry about the fact that we’ll have 50 people at the City Hall who won’t be allowed to come in with us and then we’ll ask them to follow us home only to discover that the Chinese restaurant won’t fill our order because it’s too large.  And then there are days like yesterday, when I wake up to find a kind and well-meaning comment in my inbox telling me that ALL YOUR FEARS ARE CORRECT.  YOUR WEDDING WILL UNRAVEL BEFORE YOUR EYES.  YOUR GUESTS WHO SPENT ALL THAT MONEY TO TRAVEL TO SEE YOU MARRIED AND FEAST WITH YOU IN CELEBRATION WILL BE DENIED THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE YOU GET MARRIED AND WILL BE HUNGRY WHEN THE FOOD NEVER ARRIVES.

Oh, holy hell. 

So I mentioned to Tony that I was worried about our plan.  I have probably mentioned that I am worried about this plan a few times before.  Because I, um, hit a nerve.  And then we went round and round about it.

Me:   They don’t have a catering menu, only a take-out menu so what happens when we call to place our order and they say it’s too large, but we don’t have a back-up plan?

T:  It’s the only thing I want.  Have you called them?

Me:  They don’t speak English.*

T:  Have.  You.  Called.  Them?

And somewhere around here, I kind of lost it.  Because it’s not my wedding; it’s our wedding, and it’s an effing lot of work to put together, and if he wants effing dried fried chicken wings so badly, why doesn’t he call them?  You can probably guess that it got a leetle bit tense.  Rather than go over all of the “and then I said,” [sob], “and then he said,” [hiccup], I will just throw out that a groom should never, under any circumstances, tell his bride that he doesn’t care about the “trappings” of the wedding.  This should be avoided at all costs.  And, for the love of god, don’t use air quotes.  If your bride should tell you that the wedding is important to her, please understand that this means, yes, even the details are important to her.  You may not get all gooey over buntings** and table settings and making sure that every detail is perfect, but she does.  Respect it even if you don’t understand it. 

You are not genetically programmed to nest, but she is.  That’s what the wedding details are — nesting.  We all know in our heads that the important bits of a wedding — officiant, license, groom, bride, maybe (but not necessarily) rings or a similar token — are the only truly essential bits to making it legal.  But we’re not talking about the legalities here.  We’re talking about a wedding: the environment in which we invite all of our loved ones to witness the birth of our new family and to break bread with us in our newly formed together-selves for the very first time.  When we plan a wedding, we are planning our family, our home, our together-life.  So when we take that first step as a family, there is an often overwhelming feeling that even the details need to be perfect.  That doesn’t mean that it needs to look like we spent $100,000 on a catered black-tie Wedding of the Year, but it does mean that the details of how we define our wedding for us need to be taken care of — or at least, capable of being taken care of when the time is right. 

A newborn cannot see more than six inches in front of her face.  Mothers-to-be know this is true, but does that stop a mother-to-be from insisting that the nursery needs to be just so in time for the baby’s arrival?  Nope.  Not one bit.  Because she is nesting.  Life must be in order; our home must be stable and beautiful and ready for our new family to inhabit.  Come hell or high water.

So, grooms, cut us some slack.  You may not entirely understand why the fact that there is a smudge on the “Bride” and “Groom” chair signs matters, but trust me, it is a Big Deal if we need it to be a big deal.  We’re not being Bridezillas, we’re not being harpies or unrelenting nags.**  We’re stressed out.  Our nesting instincts are kicking into overdrive as we are preparing for our new together-lives.  If we say that we’re worried about something, this is not passive-aggressive speak for trying to get our way.  We are genuinely worried about something, and we need you to help us fix the problem together. 

And just in case you’re wondering:  Yes, we worked through this after much crying (me) and gritting of teeth (him) and one feeble stomp of the foot (me, again).

__________________________

*This is not to be mistaken for some ranting English-only diatribe.  They really don’t speak English (or barely speak English) at San Tung, which is sort of expected for a Chinese-Korean restaurant and would not be an issue at all if we were just, oh, going to dinner there for the umpteenth time.  But it’s kind of an issue when you’re trying to talk to someone over the phone about making arrangements for a dinner somewhere else a year in advance.  In fact, when T described his not-so-successful telephone call, all I could think of was “Swer-n-jin!”  “Cok-suka!”

**You may not even know what a bunting is.  That’s okay.  We love you anyway.

***Okay, maybe some women are unreasonable, but that’s not what I’m talking about, so give the stereotypes a rest, okay? Oh, and for the record, T has never EVER called me a name.  Not once.  So this is actually just the entirely irrelevant assumption that someone somewhere in the blogosphere is going to cry “Bridezilla!”.