That friend of mine (the one from high school, my high school best friend, that is) who’s getting married soon has the most ridiculously elegant wedding invitations I’ve ever seen outside of a store or display catalog. I never understood the need for such extravagant wedding stationery. In general, the need for extravagance when it comes to a wedding at all. My parents had a barbecue at their wedding. And yeah, my mom had a nice dress, and everybody dressed up, and the food was good, but it wasn’t extravagant. I feel like the exciting part of a wedding should be that you’re getting married, not how nice your stuff is. Who’s going to remember your wedding invitations in a few years?

 

Maybe it’s just a romantic idea, but I haven’t let go of the thought that I’d like an extremely simple wedding (if I ever do get married). Something that doesn’t cost, not physically. Emotional cost, for emotional gain. A wedding on a mountain somewhere. Where you make wedding announcements by shouting them to the wind, not sending them out on embossed paper with bells and ribbons. And it doesn’t surprise me that this friend opted for the embossed paper with bells and ribbons. She’s the kind who was always concerned with the minutiae and the appearance of things. And if your dream is to get married like a queen, I guess there isn’t really anything wrong with that. Then again, people spend as much on a wedding as they might put as a down payment on their first house. Or more. Why not put the money where you really need it, and keep your wedding an event that’s about the marriage, not all the frills and trappings that go along with it?

 

I’d rather send out wedding announcements on construction paper in regular old envelopes if I could inject them with a bit more of my own personality, that of my partner, and the spirit of the wedding.