Jackie Sion works in the digital marketing world and has used her digital knowledge to help tackle the many facets of wedding planning. She is lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend the majority of her time researching and interviewing vendors. Besides wedding planning, Jackie enjoy spending time with her fiance, family, friends, watching movies, BBQing, swimming, and YouTubing funny videos. Jackie has been a regular writer for tech blogs and her own personal blog, and is glad to be helping out other Yentas in need with The Wedding Yentas! Stay tuned for more stories during the planning for her upcoming nuptials.
The first piece of advice I was given, on the day I was proposed to, was “Take the time to enjoy being engaged.” Easy enough, but I chose not to listen. No one really tells you how conversations and people change once you get engaged. First, everyone wants to see your hand, which I am more than willing to show off. Second, they ask questions — lots and lots of questions. When I got engaged in April, the kinds of questions I was asked took a total 180. It used to be, “When are you getting engaged?” and now it’s “When is the date?” “Do you have colors yet?” “Will kids be invited?” The list goes on. With the barrage of questions I felt like I always needed an answer and “We’re not sure yet” wasn’t good enough. It was this need to have all the answers that was the real reason I didn’t listen to the great advice I’ll now pass on to newly engaged brides.
Only a few months into my relationship with my now-fiancé, I knew I was going to marry him. In fact earlier this year, before I had the ring (it’s beautiful and perfect!), I was already secretly reading wedding blogs and picking colors. If I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve been planning my wedding since the first time I watched Cinderella, but it was a completely different story when I knew who it was going to happen with. It’s one thing when you’re 5 and your favorite color is pink with sparkles than when you’re 26 and the previously blurred face at the end of the aisle wakes up next to you every morning. I knew it was no longer about what I wanted and I had to take his opinion into consideration. In my previous game of wedding-planning solitaire, I never had to consider anyone else’s opinions, but now there’s a real groom involved and he has put the kibosh on anything too princessy. Okay, okay, do I really want to be in a full ballgown with real glass slippers with my hair in tight curls? No, not really. But hey, it was fun to dream.
Completely ignoring the sage advice of a bridesmaid, once I became engaged, I dove deep, head-first into magazines, blogs, trends, colors, and the list goes on and on. I didn’t have a budget, date, or guest list yet, and I was already worried about which colors would match and what theme we would have. And when we did have a budget and guest list, I found that the slew of magazines and blogs I read on a daily basis completely hindered our creativity. The hardest part for me to swallow was that what I wanted for all those years, regardless of the fact that I was 5, was probably not feasible. Due to budget restrictions and the way that some of our decisions were unfolding, what I wanted was not going to happen. The little girl in me had a mini meltdown because the wedding in my head was perfect and beautiful. And as our engagement progressed, the wedding in my head was moving farther and farther away.
What I was thinking in my completely overwhelmed and stressed out mind was if the perfect wedding I envisioned wasn’t possible, then what was the wedding I was planning going to turn into? Soaking myself with inspiration from the magazines and blogs was actually hindering my creativity and ability to see my own wedding and that scared me. How could I not see my own wedding? How was it possible that I didn’t know what I wanted anymore? I should have 21 years of “planning” under my belt and now when it was real and happening why was I having problems making a decision?
It took only one conversation with my fiancé to bring me down to earth — way down. Should I have listened to that first piece of advice from the get-go? Absolutely. Did I kinda-sorta need that moment where I channeled my 5-year-old self and tried to plan the wedding of my dreams in one afternoon? Totally.
Back down to Earth and a with few more weeks of planning under my belt, I now love being engaged and love even more imagining the rest of my life with the man I’m going to marry. What I’ve learned so far is that there is no cookie cutter wedding and therefore no one way to plan. For some brides, maybe it is living out the 5-year-old’s dream, and for others it could be using their creativity and unique style to do everything themselves. The key is to find out what works best for you as a couple and within your budget. I’ve figured out what works best for me and now planning a wedding is a completely different experience than what it was when I started.
