#rlchild

I knew WAY more people than he did and had way more extended family than he did (in the States). Instinctively, I knew that inviting any one set of people meant that I had to invite ALL the people that I knew, because if I did not, this was somehow a gigantic social diss. I also know a wide range of people, including people who actively dislike each other. I began picturing how the whole wedding day would revolve around MY anxiety about people I cared about who didn’t like each other being in proximity to each other. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to think about anything but that. That sounded miserable and completely defeated the point of it being OUR special day.

We talked about what the core of a wedding actually was. As far as we could figure, it was a special day to celebrate the two of us coming together permanently. It was a public promise with witnesses. The actual role of those witnesses was to remind the two of us, in tough times, about our promise and the great good that the two of us share. But how could people who did not watch us grow in our relationship together remind us of our process? How could they be witnesses in the full sense of the idea, when they only witnessed the promise and not what led up to it?

From there, we developed a very short list of people who had actually watched us grow in our relationship together: My parents, my two sisters, the pastor and his wife who counseled us, and Sergey’s best friend. His mom had not gotten to know me yet because of geographical distance, but she was his only family in the States. We also opted to bring in an old friend of mine and her husband as the photographers/videographers, but there were no further exceptions. That was the entirety of the guest list. The pastor served as our minister. My Mom was Matron of Honor (no bridesmaids). Sergey’s best friend was his Best Man. Dad walked me down the aisle. One sister read scripture for the ceremony. The other sister was Master of Ceremonies for the reception.

I got some blowback over the super-restrictive guest list decision. I was surprised and more than a little frustrated when I was on the receiving end of anger. “Whose day is this, anyway?” I thought. Most people understood, or came around to understanding, but there are one or two who are still angry with me over how I chose to conduct my wedding day.

This day, we decided, was about us. That meant we were going to do it in a way that made us the center and let us enjoy our day as much as possible. So we made a lot of changes to the normal state of affairs.

We chose the pastor’s church as our venue. It is small, and outside there is a large circus tent on the grounds where we could hold the reception. It was going to be available pretty much any time we wanted it, and we only needed verbal permission. We would have to fly in, though, since we had moved to a different state in the meantime.

I planned, brainstormed, and tested decorations in advance. The church would be decorated based on the four seasons and the reception would have a video game theme. Decorations were: synthetic flowers, synthetic autumn leaves, seashells, dangling Christmas lights, removable wall hooks (Amazon). Yarn, tulle, glue & glue gun, paint, crumpled green packing paper (Michael’s/Joanne’s). Moving boxes from a local box store. Tablecloths were loaned by the church. Other odds and ends were purchased as needed. I arrived a week and a half early to begin painting boxes into Mario-type bricks and question mark cubes, painting 8-bit cardboard “health hearts”, hanging the “four seasons” items in the church, and scrubbing the inside of the circus tent. My youngest sister made tons of 3-D paper snowflakes for "winter". Mom and my youngest sister helped me for several hours a day on each of these tasks.

We’d thrown out the idea of a wedding cake early; Sergey doesn’t like cake, and no way in hell was this day JUST about me. Two days before the wedding, we began baking cookies and mixing huge batches of mint lemonade. There were six different kinds of cookies (some with multiple flavor types). The “wedding cake cookie” was the absolute tiniest Russian tea cookie we could make, cut with a big old cake cutter on top of a “companion cube”. I tried to mash the cookie against Sergey's forehead. That didn’t really work, but got a laugh. We each fed each other half the cookie. It was ridiculous and we loved it.

Looks for the wedding were chaotic. I told everyone to dress in something nice, but there was no coordination. I couldn’t care less if peoples’ color schemes matched. I wanted to wear a unique wedding dress and I spent a long time working to get that in place. However, Sergey often mentioned how miserable tuxedos were to wear. So, much to the chagrin of many people who saw our photos later, Sergey wore a dashing button-up, long-sleeved plaid shirt (that I think made him look quite sharp) and black slacks. We got some sideways remarks, but I shot them down fast. Sergey was not some accessory for the day, and because of that he enjoyed himself way more and was genuinely part of the day. Just because I wanted to dress to the nines didn’t mean he had to suffer, and I see no issue with that.

The waiting music was the soundtrack to Breath of the Wild. I walked up the aisle to Goodnight My Someone. We walked out together to When Can I See You Again. Our reception DJ was Spotify, a playlist of favorites and in-joke songs (plus a little selection work by the Master of Ceremonies) and we danced ourselves to exhaustion. Everyone gave speeches, memories, and toasts at the table, not just the Best Man. At the end, we handed out self addressed, stamped envelopes and cards, and asked everyone to mail us their best marriage advice instead of giving us gifts.

The most expensive part of the wedding was flying four people in (me, Sergey, his Mom, his friend) and getting relatively mainstream hotel rooms. The second most expensive parts were a tie: catering, my dress, and photography. I hear weddings usually run for the price of a new car up to the price of a new house, and we came in well under that and enjoyed the entire day.

We collapsed in our hotel room on the wedding night and slept like rocks. The next day we flew home to Texas, spent a week at home, and then left on our honeymoon cruise. We gave ourselves plenty of time in between so we weren’t rushing around, frazzled and snappish, to get from place to place. That slower pace really showed up in how much we could enjoy ourselves through the whole process. We could even laugh about how we got dog-sick on the last day of the cruise and spent all day in the cabin, taking turns in the bathroom.

Nothing about our special day was up to the standard of what I’d seen weddings look like all my life. We spent a fraction of what a normal wedding costs, we baked the non-cake desserts ourselves, we cleaned and decorated the facility, there was no tux, and the guest list was a dozen people with over half participating in the functions of the wedding itself. And yet it was a day overflowing with joy and laughter. That’s the tone I wanted set, not just for the wedding, but for the marriage. We have three years of marriage and eight years of relationship under our belts, and that tone hasn’t changed. The center of our marriage is us, not other people, as it should be.

If a big, elaborate wedding has a deeper meaning to you, by all means pursue it. I have nothing against large weddings. I have a great deal against weddings that are performed under the pressure of what a wedding is supposed to look like (which tend more often than not to be large, elaborate, and expensive). Don’t let such a foundational day be dictated by anybody but you and your spouse. Don’t look back and wish you’d done it differently. Look forward enough to see a smile on the face of your future self whenever that person remembers the wedding day. It’s well worth it to remember who the wedding day is really supposed to center on.