Your wedding: destination or party?

As a guy blogging about planning a wedding, I’m a bit like white tiger in the wild – a genetic anomaly, a freak of nature, a very rare and peculiar animal. With all the billions of dollars devoted to marketing to brides-to-be, all the column-inches and pixels devoted to informing women about wedding ideas and tips, it’s not oversimplifying things to say that women are the gender that gets marketed to the most as well as worked up the most about weddings.

I can’t speak for Gen Y or the Millenials, but for Gen X women and the generations that came before, weddings and marriage were topics and ideas planted in young girls’ heads from early on (see Exhibits 1 and 2, Cinderella and Wedding Day Barbie). It’s a topic that us guys are certainly aware of when we’re kids and teens, but until we get to marrying age and actually find someone who will even consider spending their lives with us (which for those of us who don’t look like Brad Pitt is fairly difficult), we honestly have a tougher time relating to it than you women do.

Which brings me to my point. I think because of all the buildup women go through from girlhood to womanhood, all the dreaming and planning, their wedding day becomes a destination. It’s the one perfect day in their lives in which they play the starring role. It’s this mystical, magical event that they’ve dreamed about for years. It’s the culmination of months and months of planning and preparation. It’s the single, ultimate expression of their relationship and the passion and friendship that anchors it. Which is all pretty cool thing.

However, for us guys, we haven’t really given our wedding day nearly as much thought other than what our dreamgirl will look on our wedding night (insert X-rated fantasy here). I’m selling us a bit short here, but I’m just saying that we’re just not as … obsessed isn’t the right word … neither is fixated … let’s say as detailed about our thoughts concerning our wedding day as you are. While you think of your wedding as a destination, we think of it more as a party. Not a drunken bacchanal where people are wearing togas and getting sloppy drunk (although I imagine a few weddings over the years have achieved such lows), but more of a celebration, a time to be enjoyed with family and friends and ultimately an opportunity to share with the people close to us the unbelievable feeling we have about this great woman standing next to us.

I think that’s why lots of brides have a post-wedding hangover. Not the alcohol-induced type, although that may also apply here, but rather a feeling like “Wow, it’s over. That’s a little sad.” Whereas, for us, once the wedding is over, we’re more like “Wow, it’s over. Now I don’t have to spend my Saturdays helping choose flower arrangements and we can get back to our great life together.” I hope this doesn’t sound cold, because it’s not supposed to. I just think if we understand what a wedding day means to each of us, then it’s easier to plan it and easier to understand when one of us just doesn’t want to look at another invitation paper sample. Okay???