![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Hard Part
Nov. 7th, 2004 11:47 amThere are stacks and heaps and entire library shelves full of books and magazines and kits to help one plan a wedding. They tell you how to find a florist, and what questions to ask when you're booking a DJ, and what to expect when you're putting together a rehearsal dinner. They even have useful checklists and schedules of when to do what, and they warn you how difficult some things will be, and how easy to forget certain details are.
None of them, however, bother to explain to you how to survive the first month of married life.
I love my sweetie, and we're still deliriously happy together. I can't imagine anything in this world or out of it that could ever change that. However, there is no helpful, cheery, pink book that tells you how to handle the sudden realization that the world did not stop turning for the past two months, and that several major holidays are right around the corner for which you are entirely unprepared. There are no checklists for where to put the several dozen boxes of cool stuff that you have no storage space for, or how to remember where you put the gourmet chocolates before you left on your honeymoon, or what to do with 85 absolutely beautiful cards which are too nice to throw away but too many in number to display on any surface.
Worst of all, they don't tell you how to make it through the thank-you card series without feeling like an insincere, greedy pod-person. The utter generosity of our friends and family still leaves me feeling vaguely dizzy and overwhelmed, and I adore and appreciate everything we were given, but... somehow when I try to sum that up on a tiny card, it comes out trite and repetitive and much less enthusiastic than I actually feel.
I'll survive. I'm a big girl, and I don't need a how-to manual for everything I do. But I still think it's rather unfair of the wedding-industrial complex to leave us poor brides half-prepared....
None of them, however, bother to explain to you how to survive the first month of married life.
I love my sweetie, and we're still deliriously happy together. I can't imagine anything in this world or out of it that could ever change that. However, there is no helpful, cheery, pink book that tells you how to handle the sudden realization that the world did not stop turning for the past two months, and that several major holidays are right around the corner for which you are entirely unprepared. There are no checklists for where to put the several dozen boxes of cool stuff that you have no storage space for, or how to remember where you put the gourmet chocolates before you left on your honeymoon, or what to do with 85 absolutely beautiful cards which are too nice to throw away but too many in number to display on any surface.
Worst of all, they don't tell you how to make it through the thank-you card series without feeling like an insincere, greedy pod-person. The utter generosity of our friends and family still leaves me feeling vaguely dizzy and overwhelmed, and I adore and appreciate everything we were given, but... somehow when I try to sum that up on a tiny card, it comes out trite and repetitive and much less enthusiastic than I actually feel.
I'll survive. I'm a big girl, and I don't need a how-to manual for everything I do. But I still think it's rather unfair of the wedding-industrial complex to leave us poor brides half-prepared....
