Hi everyone.
Fiancé and I got engaged April 2021, and I dove into wedding planning right away. I was just so excited! And I say “I” not “we” because I did take the lead on many things. We booked and paid deposits on a venue, caterer, and photographer. We shared the news and all of our wedding details with anyone who asked.
It’s now October 2021. I hate almost all the choices we made and how I went about everything, and I want to “start over.” We are getting married August 2022.
If I could start over, I would have:
-Not pressured or rushed my boyfriend to propose.
-Saved up money before spending it. Neither of us come from money and we are paying for this wedding ourselves. We have college loans and credit card debt, and are saving up as we go. I wish we had saved up a sum before spending.
-Kept our engagement and wedding planning details to ourselves before sharing with everyone. Now we have a bunch of people we told we would invite, but we really can’t afford to have them there. Thankfully we have not yet sent them invites, but I feel we still should tell them out of respect.
-Really meditated on what type of wedding I/we wanted before making decisions and paying deposits. I don’t like the cheap engagement ring I chose, our wedding date, our wedding venue, the town we chose to get married in…. The list goes on.
-Involved my mom and best friends in more things, like the catering tasting and dress fitting (I did the at-home try-on from Vow’d), but they live 6 hours away so I never bothered.
A couple times I suggested to my fiancé that maybe we push back the date or make a new plan, but he squashed that idea right away. He doesn’t want to lose deposit money, and I also want to get married while certain loved ones are still alive. I wish I could go back in time and start all over. And I don’t want to throw it all away and elope. I want a wedding. I just want to do it the “right” way.
Has any one felt like this, and how did you cope? Did you have any mental exercises or mind tricks that helped?
I have tried the methods of “focus on the positive” and “remember that you get to marry the love of your life,” but frankly, they have not worked.