Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

There's something about weddings that bring out the inner "expert" of everyone around you.  Friends, family members, the old lady who sits in front of you at church - even strangers on the street: everyone has an opinion that they're more than willing to share.

Ever since B and I got engaged over sixteen months ago, I've gotten more unsolicited advice than I have during the previous 23 years of my life combined.  These well-intentioned words of wisdom have ranged from helpful to humorous to downright hurtful.  Here are a few gems for your viewing pleasure:

"If I were you, I'd start your wedding 30 minutes after the time printed on your invites. You'd be surprised how many people will show up late."

"You're wasting your time with this.  No one who will even notice those details but you." 

"You're going to tell people where to sit at your wedding?  Nobody's going to like that..."

And my personal favorite:

"You can't have your ceremony start on the hour, it's bad luck!  The minute hand of the clock needs to be moving up when your ceremony starts, not down, so you should make sure to start during the second half of the hour."  

Um..what?

Then there are those fellow engaged friends and acquaintances who seem to view your wedding as the "competition."  They never come right out and say it, but you can just tell when they ask questions about your planning that they're really just sizing up your wedding to their own.  It can be a petty, petty existence, planning a wedding.  Sad, really.

And finally, we have the guests themselves.  Couples (oh, let's be honest here -- brides, mainly) feel tremendous pressure to accommodate their guests in every way possible.  We go to painstaking lengths to make sure they feel welcome, comfortable, and have a blast.  I'm not saying that I disagree with these efforts; I'm definitely doing all I can to think of our wedding from a guest's point of view when planning all our details.  All I'm saying is that there's a hell of a lot of planning that goes into just one day, and if anything goes wrong, the bride and her family tend to be the ones who look bad.  I try really hard not to be cynical about weddings, but there's an undeniable judgment factor that comes with the territory, and you simply can't please everybody.

So, despite all your careful planning, something is bound to go wrong.  A save the date will get misaddressed.  A cousin will be upset at not being offered a larger role in your wedding.  You will offend a family member by registering for new china patterns after she has offered you hers.  And whenever it happens, you will feel like a horrible person (I should know - all three have happened to me).  You will inevitably inflict much more guilt on yourself than the other party will (although sometimes that won't stop them from throwing some more in just for good measure).

I know I shouldn't worry so much about what people think, but those little guilt trips really get under my skin.  When does a wedding stop being about you and your FI, and suddenly revolve around pleasing everyone else?  And how do we get the focus back on what's really important?