Wedding Countdown 6 - Are You Nervous?
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this phrase in the last 3 days. “Are you nervous?”
My answer, still, is “Not yet.”
The nerves were the part of the process before I asked Jen to marry me in the first place. Ever since I got to that point where I knew that I wanted to be married and that Jen was indeed the person to whom I wanted to be married, the nerves kicked in during the engagement ring buying process. I went over all those thoughts about how permanent this marriage thing is, and eventually starting a family and all those other things.
THAT made me nervous.
Now, I am not nervous at all about being married. The whole wedding, with its pomp and circumstance puts me a little on-edge, but it has nothing to do with the idea of being married.
Wedding Countdown 5 - Occupying My Mind
While I don’t think I am all that nervous, I will not leave home for the wedding weekend without tons of distractions available to me. I will certainly give myself every opportunity to distract myself from all the thoughts that could creep into my head over this fateful weekend.
I have a few strategies. First of all, I always have downloaded radio shows on my iPod. I have Opie and Anthony shows, Ron and Fez shows, and even some old Ron and Fez shows from 2002 before I started listening to them.
I have TV shows at the ready on a DVD. I have the latest episodes of Smallville, which is a bad show that I watch. I have the first four episodes of Dexter, which I have heard are really good. On top of that, I have the first (American) season of The Office at my disposal.
If that is not enough, I will also have my 60 gig iPod filled with music. That is a necessity just so I can keep up with my workouts at the hotel gym.
I think I am well prepared in case of emergency. Short of packing up my X-Box 360, I don’t know what else I can do. But really, I don’t think I will be nervous. That doesn’t mean I am not going to be cautious with my potentially fragile psyche, though.
Wedding Countdown 4 - The Paragraphs
When Jen and I decided to get married, there was no conversation about who was going to actually do the marrying. One of Jen’s long-time family friends is a pastor and all-around cool guy to hang out.
And then as a part of doing the ceremony, he asked Jen and me for paragraphs discussing why we wanted to marry each other. It was my assumption that he wanted to refer to it and maybe use a sentence here or there. So, basically, I thought I was giving him soundbites.
Turns out, he wants to read Jen’s, assumingly word for word.
I admit that I procrastinated a little bit, and possibly misread the assignment, but I don’t think that I presented a paragraph that was meant to be read word for word.
So, is he going to read mine word for word? Or is he only going to read Jen’s? It’s like I don’t get a rebuttal. Maybe mine isn’t very good. Oh well. I am going to go with it. Nobody will remember an hour after the ceremony anyway, right?
Wedding Countdown 3 - Flowers, Ribbons, and Bows (oh my!)
I imagine a lot of these decorations were just “nice-to-have” accessories in the past. Now every wedding presumably has a cabal of people who will tell you what is “right” and “wrong” with regard to decorating.
It got so bad yesterday, that Jen got upset with the ribbons and decoration of the groomsmen gifts. I had to talk her off of that ledge. It just doesn’t matter. I appreciate her sentiment in wanting everything to be “perfect” but seriously, what’s the big deal?
I would laugh directly into the face of any groomsmen who would sit in judgement of the wrapping paper, anyway. By even commenting on the decoration of the gift-wrap, any self-respecting male will make himself look like an ass.
I think Jen eventually felt OK with it. I do feel like I am getting a sneak preview into what it is going to be like after the wedding when Jen finally has enough time to decorate our house the way she would like to see it.
I wonder if she will notice when I sneak into the basement.
Wedding Countdown 2 - Music is Hard
As a music guy, I found the whole “song-choosing” portion of the wedding process to be quite annoying.
Why?
I don’t listen to “wedding-appropriate” music. I just don’t.
Whether I am rocking out to Minus the Bear (sarcastic,) Acid Bath (morbid and pissed off,) or Counting Crows (horribly depressed) I really don’t have much to enter into the conversation when it comes to wedding music.
On top of all this, keep in mind how much I love epic songs that usually top off the clock somewhere in the realm of over five minutes, and it is clinched. I am incapable of picking appropriate wedding music.
So, I ended up green-lighting Jen’s pick for our first song. And it isn’t like it isn’t a bad pick. It is a great one. I just think that I should have been able to come up with something as the “music person” in the relationship.
Wedding Countdown 1
This is the wedding countdown week. Jen and I are getting married sometime on Saturday. I can’t tell you exactly when, yet, because I haven’t studied my itinerary closely enough to delineate between all the points in time that I need to be places and do things. I will continue to update my little sidebar here as we go along.
I have to say a little something about the state of weddings in this day and age. While I appreciate all the work that people have been putting in to make this a special event, I think we have all gone a little too far with this whole wedding thing. It used to be that people would be apprehensive about “walking down the aisle” and getting married. I am apprehensive all right. But it isn’t about getting married in the legal sense. I am apprehensive about getting married in the “this is a big deal, big money event that is expected to be perfect.”
Now come on people. Weddings haven’t always been this way, right? This is a result of the whole culture of television, magazines and high-priced wedding industry, isn’t it?
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