Funny. The decision to get married seemed so natural and right, but the decision to have a wedding... is a whole other thing.
Though I have had the good fortune to be a bridesmaid for some of my very good friends over the years, I was ill prepared for the different challenges. The most obvious is money. I had no idea that the average American wedding was somewhere between $19k and $22k these days. If you had asked me, I might have guessed that you could have a very nice wedding for about $6k. Ha ha ha ha. Oh sure, you /could/ still do that.
Interestingly, I figured that since some of my great gal pals had walked down this road before they would be chock full of ideas on how to save money and have a fabulous day. I was wrong. Well, it turns out that they have lots of ideas on ways to spend money that they hadn't considered before that they'd love to see me use.
And then there's family pressure. Even our wonderfully helpful parents have different styles and priorities and ideas about how to spend more and more money. Actual quote: "pretend that money is not a factor". I guess it's only from this side of the engagement that you can see why that is the case. It's soooo easy to have opinions about how other people are making decisions and so different to be making them yourself.
Alec and I are learning that we have different styles in making decisions as we go. I think that's probably one of the best lessons this engagement period has to teach us. We are getting a crash course in making big decisions (and lots of little ones), dealing with one another's family, and learning how we each respond to different stresses while we try to focus on the big picture... try to focus just past the wedding into our new real life as a married couple.
We can take that lesson from biking -- focus on where you want to be and not on the obstacles. And relax your shoulders. :-)