Weddings. This is the most stressful, yet most exciting time. You are stoked that you are planning to marry the love of your life…..but then you see all the details that it takes for a wedding to go as planned. Cue the wedding planning freak-outs now. As a newlywed for almost a month now, I figured I would write a blog for all those are in the midst of planning and stressing. I wanted to share my story, in hopes that it might calm you down….or at least give you a little break from the stress you might be feeling.

When my husband proposed, we set a date 2 years from that time because we wanted to have ample time and funds for all the wedding planning before us. We didn’t want to get down to the wire and realize we still had all this stuff to take care of.

…….joke number one.

In fact, about 6 months prior to our wedding date (that switched 5 times) we decided against the larger venue, and our already condensed guest list, and decided to go to Vegas. We let everyone know that if you can’t come, we won’t take it personally….if you can, well that’s awesome! You will find that when dealing with your guest list….people get realllll flight-y. At one point we were chasing after people trying to get a headcount. Eventually, we decided to cut our losses and go with a headcount for those that were certain. I don’t know if any brides out there are having this issue…but just remember, this is your wedding not theirs. Any unnecessary stress that they are causing isn’t worth it.

Planning a wedding in Vegas while you are in D.C. proved to have some issues too. For all you destination brides out there….you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s kind of difficult when you haven’t seen the venue in person, and you are essentially counting on people from across the country to take care of things for you. For a control freak, THIS IS HELL. We had to have blind faith that the coordinators had all the appropriate information on file. This way when we called them, they could help address any issues.

……..joke number two.

We were actually shuffled around before our reception coordinator got a hold of our wedding details. Then as soon as we were able to breathe a sigh of relief, we couldn’t get a hold of our coordinator. We found out that she had a family emergency. Cue more shuffling around; we finally got another coordinator.

We finally were on the last stretch and headed to Vegas. We had everything packed and ready to go. We had mailed my dress, my fiance’s suit, and all our wedding décor for the reception ahead of time so that we didn’t have to stress about packing it, or the airline losing it..

…..joke number three.

The second day there I spent the whole day in the hospital because of an allergic reaction and a UTI. Then we also found out that our reception decorations, my dress, and my husband’s suit that we had mailed over was lost in transit. Due to spending the whole day in the hospital, we couldn’t get our marriage license prior to our wedding day, and that spoiled our plan of not seeing each other until the wedding. We ended up getting our license done that Friday morning of our wedding, it was noon(our wedding was at 5:30pm) before I even had possession of my dress, and I was in pain and on medication.

I was late to the wedding, at one point I lost half of my bridal party, and we left our marriage certificate at home. Even though we had our wedding attire….our reception décor never made it.

You know what though?

…….this was still the most perfect day of my life. All that chaos leading to that point disappeared when I finally looked at my husband as we were pronounced man and wife. That’s the message I want to share with all of you out there. I know it’s hard to do…..but don’t sweat the small stuff. It genuinely doesn’t matter. No one is going to care about if your napkins matched the table linens, or whether you had hundreds of dollars in floral arrangements or had none. You know what they will remember? How much fun they had celebrating wedding day….and the overwhelming love they felt radiating off the beautiful couple. Yes….that’s you!

Now that everything has settled down, we are back from our honeymoon, and writing thank you notes, we can laugh and tell stories of what was going on in our heads, and how crazy it was, and all those who were there sharing those moments with us. I’ve said it before……and I’ll say it again.

It’s not about the wedding……it’s about the marriage. It’s about being able to take all the wild and crazy things life is going to throw at you and being able to get through it together. When the dust all settles, and the chaos calms…..it’s just you and your significant other taking on the world and all its obstacles. So when you find yourself wanting to pull your hair out, or freaking out because something didn’t go as planned, remember the reason you are doing it for. Think about that, and allow a smile to cross your face once again, and allow yourself to exhale. It’s going to be fine.

A special congrats to all. It’s an exciting time….enjoy it!

Here are some photos from our day.....