One of my biggest faults is that I am a people pleaser. I’m not talking about just being nice to people here and there, I’m talking about going out of my way to try and make every person around me happy. I know this is a good quality to have sometimes, but certain other times it’s to the downfall of my own happiness.
Cue wedding planning. This is supposed to be the one day in your life that it’s acceptable to plan an entire event around yourself and your future spouse and everyone is supposed to go along with it (or decline the invitation). Do you think I could do that? No. I wanted to put my guests before myself. I don’t mean just making sure that they are comfortable and that I have some food everyone will like, I’m talking major decisions here.
I originally wanted to elope, but I knew Mr. SM was an only child. I love his mom, and I knew it would mean a lot for her to be able to see her son on his wedding day. Every mother dreams of the day they get to see their children marry their life partner. I had no problem with this. Honestly, I wanted my own parents and my grandma to be able to witness this beautiful day with us. In fact, we moved our wedding date more than once due to people complaining. We had even offered to pay for a couple of the people to join us and they still made different excuses. It was exhausting trying to find somewhere that was to everyone’s liking, and there were a couple of times we almost gave up. People even had problems when it came to us looking for a venue in our home state.
Mr. Sea Monkey’s parents / Personal photo
Once we found Sole (everyone agreed that Florida was reasonable), Mr. SM told me that people could come or not, but that was the last venue we would be searching for. He was done seeing me so down, because I just couldn’t make every person happy. There was always a reason they weren’t going to come, and if they were choosing that option, that was their choice. We were done moving around. If everyone still had a problem with all the changes, we would just cancel the whole thing and elope. All that mattered was that we were marrying each other. The rest was just fluff.
Another problem we had was from the people we weren’t inviting. I talked a bit about the choosing the guest list. Having the small list we did, I knew that this would be an issue going in. There were people who begged us to move our wedding back home so they could be there. The thing is, we would have to move it to somewhere close to where THEY lived, because they weren’t willing to travel to us. That’s right, there were people who wanted us to move the wedding to their location (which is a far location for other guests) so that it would be convenient for them.
Some people called me up and tried to guilt trip me into inviting them. I’m not talking about people I’m close to, I’m talking about people who only showed up in my life once a year when we were all forced together because of a family gathering. I started to feel bad for not inviting all my aunts and uncles, but really, we weren’t close anymore. We don’t really even get along, and they didn’t include me in their lives, yet wanted me give up my wedding vision to pretend like we did, so they could have an excuse for a free party (they didn’t know it was a dry wedding). I almost caved and changed our whole wedding to suit them, but in the end, I decided to stick to the smaller wedding I always wanted. Mr. SM was on board with it and turned down a few people on his side trying to do the same.
I can’t describe how much relief I felt after knowing that we were both standing our ground. I know some people mean well by their suggestions, but they don’t realize how much is put into making your special day happen. I finally realized that I could just say, “Hey, thanks for the suggestion, but this is how we see our day…” and then move on. I still feel bad sometimes, but I’m doing better at realizing that you just can’t please everyone.
Personal photo
This isn’t to say that we wanted to totally go against our guests. We love them all and wanted them to feel comfortable at the wedding. We were both willing to compromise, but not to the destruction of our overall vision.
Miss Sea Monkey
- Location:
- Sunny Isles Beach
- Occupation:
- Preschool Teacher
- Wedding Date:
- June 2015
- Venue:
- Solè on the Ocean
