Easy-peasy

Being in the midst of wedding planning, I am naturally interested in everything wedding related. We won't even discuss the giant stack of wedding magazines in our apartment (and that's after I gave a huge pile of them away to two engaged friends). But I read tons of wedding blogs, and I love movies about weddings, and I love looking at pictures of weddings, and I love reading books about weddings.

And in the process of surrounding myself with everything wedding, what I have learned is that I am very, very lucky.

Everyone says that they are so impressed with how organized I am, how calm I am now that the wedding is fast approaching, what a great bride I am and how this is proof that if you just do things in advance, it is possible to remain calm. And that's true, to a certain extent. I have been organized, and my goal always has been to get everything done ahead of time so that we did not spend the week before our wedding super stressed and sleep deprived.

But part of it is luck. I read the blogs and the advice columns and I see incredible problems that brides face. And I don't mean the really huge stuff like a family member dying or the groom suffering a huge medical problem or something. I mean the stuff like bridesmaids going crazy, and guest lists tripling through no fault of the couple, and then, what I think would be the worst thing, families acting insane.

And really, we are so lucky. I have definitely done my share of complaining about my future mother-in-law on here, but I know that pretty much all the problems that I've had with her stem from circumstance and cultural difference, not from innate meanness or dislike on either end. And when it comes to the wedding, she and Torsten's dad have both been fantastic--giving us money to help pay, and then being curious and supportive but not interfering.

And my parents have been the same way. My parents paid for the majority of the wedding costs, and while according to the wedding magazines that gives them a pretty strong say in how the wedding goes, with them it hasn't been like that at all. And I'm not saying that I would have been opposed to them having more say in wedding-related decisions if they had wanted to. But you read about parents who put 100 acquaintances on the guest lists, parents who insist on doing everything their way with no regard for the desires or personalities of the couple actually getting married, parents who start huge family feuds over wedding-related trivialities.

And my parents? Well, here are the issues on which they have offered an opinion (not including moments when I have turned to them for advice, at which times they have been supportive but still not insistent):

1. What time the cake is cut. (I did not have an opinion about this. My mother, to my surprise, did. So, I went with her suggestion.)

2. Who sits at their table. (Fair. And we agreed. In fact, their suggestions solved pretty much the only seating dilemma I was having. So it was easy.)

3. That the DJ play music they can dance to. (They take ballroom dancing lessons. And they're good at it. We picked a good DJ. All set.)

4. Actually... I can't think of a fourth.

See what I mean? Part of the reason why I have been able to remain so calm, and get so much done, is that people have been supportive and accommodating. Nobody has tried to create conflict, nobody has taken anything overly personally, nobody has made anything more difficult than it had to be, intentionally or not.

We've been really, really lucky. And I'm so glad that at our wedding, we can just sit back and relax and not worry that there will be some sort of unexpected fighting or drama. Everyone will be relaxed and enjoying themselves, us included. We have really great families.