How weddings are like jeans

I am down to one last pair of jeans. I've either worn them out, my husband got paint all over one pair, and somehow, here I am. The jean shopping experience is again in my future. Fortunately I have a few months of summer left.

Jeans are a great analogy to weddings because of all the diversity, viewpoints, and pressures, both social and financial, to chose one type or another.

On the one hand, jean shopping, like weddings, should be very rational. Find your budget, figure out your requirements, match your budget and requirements, and out come the right jeans, or the "wedding you should have."

But we know it's never that simple. Sometimes the options you first see are either priced wrong, or don't "excite you". You know there must be more! Then often you find something gasp inducing in its glory. Maybe it's The Jean With All Your Requirements. Or it's the exact wedding invites you've been looking for, down to the type font, exact shade of paper color and size.

At this point either the price tag makes you gasp again and rethink your original requirements, or you mention your discovery to a friend who has an instant opinion. "Ooh, you have GOT to check out this!" Or I found the best deal here (regardless of whether that place has what you're actually looking for.)

You are often educated on all the options you didn't know exist and the benefits thereof (sure the jeans are crazy expensive but not only will they look amazing on you but they'll last so much longer!) Or instead of one flavor of cake, go with three separate tiers with a flavor each (thereby tripling the discussions, confusion and potential cost, though adding the ever-desired ability to make everyone happy.) You hadn't thought about three flavors before! You didn't really think about the long lasting wear of a high quality jean.

The next stage is usually over saturation of options, prices, requirement questioning, and sometimes, as is often the case for me, the desire to wax poetic about "the old fashioned days" where you could go to the store and just buy A PAIR OF JEANS. You didn't have 120 choices of cut, style, waist fit, zipper or button, shade, pocket placement.

When you're at this stage there is nowhere to turn. Your best bud is not over saturated and is quick to give you her opinion. The sales person just wants to make a sale and has all the ways to talk you out of competing opinions. Your fiance or spouse has never cared that much, or at this point only cares that you SHUT UP already and make a decision. That of courses ticks you off and now you've just notched up your stress.

Some of us will then grab the first thing we have time to get, whether it fits our requirements or price. Others of us will just stop altogether and return to the task some time in the future when we're not so uncertain. And others of us will do what we always do - focus on price (whether that is the frugal price or the highest price because we believe price always reflects quality.) And still others of us will let the sales person convince us and with exhaustion, hand over the credit card because we just don't care anymore.

Temptations and obsessions in wedding planning and beyond

I have been thinking a lot lately about how there are so many temptations in wedding planning that can cause great frustration. You maybe run into the most amazing wedding invitations, or go to a wedding and they have a photo booth and you just LOVED IT and really want one for your wedding....

but money is tight and you know it isn't necessary or a responsible financial decision...

but you really, really can't stop thinking about it. You begin the slow (or fast) process of justifying why you need it, want it, why it isn't that much of a waste of money, or take the "life is short, just do it!" approach.

How does your spouse-to-be handle temptations? Are you often on the same page or have the same process of rationalizing bad decisions?

Right now the big temptation for my husband and me are the coolest pairs of eye glasses that combined are about a mortgage payment! We fell completely in love with our respective glasses at this boutique shop and can't find anything remotely satisfying anywhere else. It is to the point I'd rather not get new glasses at all than "compromise" on a lesser pair than the ones I found. My justifications are that I've had my pair for 8 years, that I'll be doing extra consultations soon and can use that extra money for something I really want. My husband tries to justify that if he loves this pair so much that instead of buying glasses every 3 years or so (he wears them out fast!) that he can just get new lenses. The problem there are the lenses are really pricey, too, not just the frame.

We feel like we went shopping at a Lexus store and are now trying to find a Lexus-quality car at a Yugo shop! We regret ever going to the eye glass boutique store and wish we could just forget it.

Wedding planning can bring these feelings out in spades because you have the pressure of "THE once in a life time day" and the romantic notions around weddings. There is so much pressure to make it The perfect day and to reflect "your style"... even though most of us don't go around wearing tuxes and wedding dresses on a daily basis. : -)

One of the pieces of advice we got from my former bosses husband has stuck with us. During our wedding reception he highly encouraged us to go travel and have fun on our honeymoon. I believe it was in reference to a gorgeous china cabinet we wanted to get but was really expensive (we apparently have expensive taste in things, ugh!) He basically said that a fire can burn down your possessions but when you are up all night with two young children and life is wearing you down, you will always have those MEMORIES. It's the memories of experiences that lives on well beyond any furniture, or eye glasses, or "stuff". This is of course part of the way the wedding industry tries to sell us on the "stuff" of wedding planning, but sometimes, just sometimes, there is truth to it.

So what would make a memory and what is the unnecessary "stuff" you can say no to wedding planning to free yourself to make memories later with the money saved? Can you block the temptations that you know are not necessary to make a beatiful wedding? Can you move past the decision to have a less exciting....dress, food, music, because ultimately you are chosing to save money or to reduce your stress and time spent planning by being able to MOVE ON once a choice has been made?