Today kicked off wedding venue shopping, or more formally, Our First Official Wedding Activity.
KT became engaged two weeks ago in which she'd asked us to be present post-engagement for time w/ both families. She'd already planned to be in town for the holidays so we made hay getting some appointments scheduled for venues and a wedding dress experience.
Thanks to brain and soul healing, I've been excited to be part of this and to be helpful. I feel no desire to control anything; not her, the wedding, the details, etc. I finally feel that most things happen as they need to and are often not a big deal. Things get stressful often when we make little things big things.
In my soul, I know now that her wedding will go well, there isn't anything to worry about and I can stand down. My hypervigiliance in this area is largely gone and I feel very relaxed.
As a result, I was able to ask a lot of questions, drive the various venues and help her process and collect data.
The process is creating clarity around what will be important to her and how she'll want to spend her budget. A few highlights:
- The wedding industry has created an artificial impression of how expensive everything has to be; weddings have to be expensive to be wonderful
- She wants to focus on nature, being with people and decorating
- Of the few really bad things she feels could go wrong at her wedding, none of them have to do with the venue
- She wants to stay within her $10K budget
- She doesn't feel just adding more money to any size budget will solve any problems or make her happier; she doesn't feel that's a great way to start off their life together
- She'd rather spend money on a house for people to stay in beforehand to be together and also be near the venue to decorate and setup
Here is a young adult saying yes to life and no to consumerism. Saying yes to relationships and no to more stuff. Yes to nature and no to manufactured stress.
I didn't expect to come away from this experience feeling proud and deeply gratified. On top of a fun, awesome day together, I got that too.