Weddings...an overrated experience??

A year ago I wrote a little article in regards to the over hype that surrounds weddings and their preparations. I found this article yesterday and reading it, with all its cycnism, I was wondering how much of those feelings still existed within me. I had written:

"Why such a long engagement?" I asked of a colleague one day as she stood gossiping about her wedding preparations. It seems that I do not quite understand the etiquette of wedding preparations, a conversation which has consumed the entire female population of my office at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I am feminine enough to consider a conversation about bridesmaid's frocks to be 'interesting'. However, the thought of spending a year of my life agonising over what stationer to employ does not have me flushed with girly excitement. Perhaps my idea of what a wedding is really about is pre-historic?

Maybe it is just me, but will anybody with any sense really still be considering the design of the name cards or the colour of the napkins two years down the track? Surely the band and the food will play more on the memory.

I want a simple wedding; I want only one bridesmaid, I want a dress that I can get dirty in and I want a really great band. I want people to stumble away from my wedding with their shoes slung over one shoulder and their children over the other.

...I still want that. Perhaps now that I am engaged and have a wedding on the horizon, conversations of dresses, venues and colour schemes hold my interest for longer. And rather than being the polite nodder on the edge of the group listening with a slight sensation of boredom, I am the instigator of all talk regarding weddings. But still, as I flick through Cosmo Bride and the multitude of other bridal magazines, I find myself stifling a yawn as I thumb past pages of wedding stationary and doll like models wearing layers of lace and frills, looking like a princess bride from a disney picture.

Advertisement after advertisement shouts ways to make me thinner, more toned...less imperfect. I can have my teeth whitened for the big day, my tummy tucked and have false hair attached to make me look more like a celebrity walking down the red carpet. Although part of me is entranced by the sparkling white teeth idea, the other part of me (the me part and not the commercially influenced part) asks: What happened to having fun and letting your hair down at a wedding?

Must we all be polished and groomed to look like a barbie doll? Obviously I want to look my best for my special day but I want to look like me and not some airbrushed doll. And I think, or perhaps I am miss lead, my groom is marrying me for me...not for some tarted up version of me.

On a lighter note, I hope you liked the photos. I think that they are priceless!