I love biscuits.I love tea and toast. I suppose you could say I'm (yawn) boring. But it doesn't stop there. I can think of one thousand ordinary things that are completely unremarkable but which give me exquisite pleasure. A cup of tea made just so. A block of Lindt chocolate. Freshly washed sheets. Unwrapping a new bar of soap. Putting on a fresh pair of tights. Cracking an egg to discover twin yolks. Adding hot water to a tepid bath. White fluffy towels. A drawer full of polished cutlery. I could go on and on but I won't. Except to say, that when I plan my own wedding, it will probably be perfectly ordinary too. And no, that doesn't embarrass me one little bit.
'Authentic' means you doing you. That's it. Don't worry about labels like 'offbeat' or its dreaded foe 'traditional'. If you're planning the wedding you want, you're being authentic.
It sounds so easy, but in the last few years I've seen a heartbreaking trend of perfectly happy and dare I say it, perfectly normal couples who are...how can I put this?... just too damn ordinary! Or so they think. And therein begins the problem. There's a new trend in town and way too many brides are letting the gloss and glamour of 'offbeat' get them down.
'I know we're boring, but I need to do something different'
'I'm just embarrassed, we haven't planned anything really outrageous, where can we find a weird cake?'
'Do you think feathers in my hair will clash with my dress?'
Real quotes from real couples. And these are couples with a budget to plan their wedding anyway they like. So why the pressure?
I have planned weddings with budgets that made my heart lurch. And at the opposite end of the budget scale, I have been witness at a wedding which consisted of a couple standing at a registry window for 10 minutes. You might think that you know what you want your wedding to look like. What you want your day to say about you. I'm here to tell you something. It doesn't have to say anything. Your wedding is not a manifesto of your style credibility to the world at large.
You're allowed to have a simple wedding. A plain wedding. A wedding that no one bothers to tag on twitter. A wedding that never makes the pages of Facebook. A wedding that has no hope of going viral. You don't 'owe' anyone entertainment, you don't owe them something to talk about for years to come. You don't have to apologise to your wedding planner because you're worried that your wedding is too ordinary. You don't have to flash dance down the aisle. You don't have to weird everyone out with a zombie theme. You don't have to pull anything wacky out of your hat. You don't have to prove you're edgy. And you don't have to send your wedding planner around town looking for a 'weird' cake (although I duly did).
There's something bigger than 'offbeat'. It's called love. And it's what weddings are really all about.
True love shines. So far, thats the only thing I know for sure. You can't put a lid on it. And it will shine wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Whether you have a significant budget. Or whether you're getting married on next to nothing. That's the beauty of a wedding. That's why we cry at weddings, because we know. We know all the wacky we can muster, all the bright lights and squeaky noises we can manufacture cannot compensate for that simple, perfect bond. Love. And have you noticed, that the most exquisite things tend to actually be, well, pretty simple? When it's there, you don't need distractions or compensations. That is what your wedding is all about. And you don't need a theme to prove it.
I'm not saying you shouldn't express yourselves as you truly are. I think all couples should be true to who they are and how they want to express their Big Day. However, we need to think bigger than associating weird and wacky with interesting and original. Plenty of authentic and original ideas can be perfectly plain. Don't believe me? Let me give you an example. You know that wedding I mentioned a minute ago, at the registry desk? They took their wedding budget and decided that instead of having a wedding, that they'd take 1 year off work to spend enjoying each other. Now that's what I mean about being original and authentic and okay, 'offbeat'. About thinking outside the box. And frankly, about being breathtakingly romantic.
'I love what you did for Louise on the 18th. I've thought about it a lot and I'd really like you to plan our wedding too. I hope this isn't too boring for you, but I want a day just like Louise's (I've already checked in with the Parish) so it's going to be about family and sitting down together with a focus on family portraits and whatever flowers are in season although I am hoping for dahlias (can you look into that?). Really I could sum it up as a family focused day with a massive wedding dress in the middle. How does that sound on such short notice?'
Sounds perfectly ordinary to me. Perfectly.
The beautiful ordinary already belongs to you. Don't shake it off in embarrassment, own it.
