It'sOfficially Wedding Season

I have a couple of couple friends who for years at a time were on the wedding circuit - at least one weekend a month, they had weddings to attend. MJC and I have never really had such a lifestyle. We have attended a handful of weddings in our four years together besides our own.
This season is our first exception.

Last weekend, we flew up to the Bay Area for a cousin's wedding. Next weekend is MJC's brother's wedding on the east coast. On the very same day, my Maid of Honor from our wedding is getting married in Texas. We were invited to a wedding at the end of June in Michigan, which we will not be attending and then there are two more in September. I will be the Matron of Honor one week after we celebrate our first anniversary and then at the end of September we will celebrate with some friends of MJC's from undergrad.

Despite having several weddings bundled together, I do my best not to follow the impulse to group them together as the same thing. Sometimes I hear wedding guests talking in such a removed fashion about each wedding as if it was just another party with bad fashion and shitty food.

Weddings are very much a big deal. Each guest at a wedding was carefully selected, each detail considered and probably argued over and for most couples, there are many tears and sleepless nights before it is all done.

As a recent bride, I can more fully appreciate the painstaking energy and emotion that goes into everybody's wedding. One of my favorite things is to examine each of the decisions the bride and groom or in some cases, their parents or wedding planners have selected.

As I selected my wedding invitations, a co-worker gave me a piece of advice when I thought I did not really care what they look like. The wedding invitation will set the tone for the event. I thought about it. What is the feeling that I want our guests to have at our wedding? I wanted it to be classy with an old Hollywood feel, but relateable and welcoming; traditional but artsy; I wanted guests to know this would be a fun event - we were there to celebrate their support as much as each other. The most important idea I had about everything is that I wanted it to feel like us. I wanted our guests to walk away feeling like they knew us a little better than before and at the very least that they knew why we were a match.

I felt like our invites were unique and playful but not too edgy. MJC and I picked an invite with large font that looked like an image itself - There were no flowers or hearts or scrolls, just a large almost doctor's handwriting calligraphy that scrawled over the entire card with a bougainvillea pink band around each one. We both loved them.

Both invites for my cousin's wedding and MJC's brother were more traditional. They had classic calligraphy, a blue, green, purple family of colors and a similar bloom of flowers accented each printed piece. These two brides could not be more different from myself in many ways. They are also very different than each other.

One like me, is an artist, but she has a wedding planner and a mother who have been handling most of the details of her wedding. The other is a recent graduate school graduate who is not from the US. I don't know much about her except that she is incredibly bright, beautiful, warm, and happily, she seems to love my cousin very much.

However, after their ceremony, I do feel like I know them better. They did a beautiful job at incorporating her culture into the ceremony. Her dress was simple and clean and elegant like her invites. Their ceremony was outdoors in a beautiful setting that was simple and peaceful with touches of humor and fun - so was their reception. I had a blast.

I am not someone who examines the weight of the paper or notices a letter-pressed invitation beyond it's aesthetic effect. I don't think a couple is better or worse for paying more for their stationary. I think people who do are a bit ratty. I am, however, very judgemental about what mattered to me at our wedding: Does the wedding seem like a celebration of the couple or a generic ceremony? Can I walk away understanding why they love each other? Did they express themselves and their families?

I am eager to see how the other blue/green invite reflects the event we have yet to attend. I can't believe it's already here!