A Practical Wedding: DIY versus the WIC

As some of you may know, I have a reputation for being a bit high-strung and type A. Yes, they call me the Cruise Director. Poor CJ has really learned to cope with my frequent "come-aparts" and is really quite forgiving. Like that one night I was taking my miserable mood out on him because eleventy hundred of my friends were engaged and not us, not knowing he was going to propose the very next day [still kicking myself for that one].

Coming to terms with my often demanding and judgemental self [hey, who doesn't appreciate telling it like it is??] means that it is vitally important to me that this wedding business does not create excuses for bridezilla behavior or 'but it's MY special daaaaaaaay' attitude. It's not MY special day, it's just me and CJ together gathering with loved ones who support our life-long endeavor. 

This post [linked to from the title] is a must read. I appreciate the discussion around the intensive pressures to reach perfection from both the wedding industry [or Wedding Industrial Complex as I like to call it] and the DIY movement [thanks a lot, Martha!]. The Practical Wedding sees the simple crafters and DIYers [think Etsy folks, $2000 Wedding] as the answer, but my favorite advice is from the comment about the more modest and less corporate affairs of previous generations. 

A great nugget of perspective is this photo, my grandmother, who could barely find enough fabric to make her white dress right after WWII to marry my grandfather out in Idaho. I don't imagine they worried about color schemes or save-the-dates, and I definitely don't think they went into debt or borrowed thousands from their parents to showcase their awesomeness. They were potato farmers for crying out loud. Anyway, this is another guiding philosophy of mine/ours, thought you might be interested.