All in the Details

With all of the main wedding items booked (e.g. venue, DJ, florist, photographer, etc) and the wedding invitations under way, I began focusing my attention on the details.  You know, those little things that make an event personal and extra special.  I was excited to plan out the seating chart, create a theme for the decorations, select a unique guest book that we would actually enjoy and look at in the future and most importantly (or at least what I have most recently been fixated on), the party favors.

I was looking for that perfect gift that would make our guests smile and think how unique/perfect/special/so “Lisa and Martin” to perfectly summarize and end the evening.  I worried and fretted over this minor detail for at least a month.  I spent hours on Pintrest and Google looking for ideas.  Should we do flavored salts, personalized dice, dominoes, coasters, vintage keys, a donation in our guests names or a simple thank you? 

Martin and I liked the idea of flavored salts, but if salt, what recipe?  How would we tell our guests what to use it on and in?  Would people be able to take it home if they were travelling abroad?  Would I be able to make enough?  Am I living up to my nickname of Frank Jr. by giving flavored salts…eerily close to a salt-lick? – As a side note, my father has a habit of eating salt straight out of the shaker at home and at restaurants particularly after we are seated and before we are served our meals (that and of course with tequila).  And it has been suggested that I am so much like my dad that the ideal present for me would be a salt lick.

With us leaning towards the salt idea, I spent additional hours researching looking for flavored salt recipes and I even spent a Saturday at home trying some out…I was obsessed. I was turning into the person my sister had predicted that I would become.  An overplanner, overstresser and overthinker.

In the end, I had a moment of clarity.  While lying in bed one night I thought back to all of the other favors I had received over the years, looking for additional guidance or ideas…And while I could name a few, on the whole, I had no idea what other brides and grooms had given out at their weddings… Seriously no clue!   And yet I was fretting over what I (meaning “we”) would do…what a waste of time and energy.  How had I been so caught up in just this one thing?  Is this what people mean by “bridezillas?”   I should be more focused on more important things like doing the laundry, going to work and making Martin happy…because isn’t that what matters in the end?

So in the end, I have taken the lazy (or shall I say non-commercial) way out.  With the okay from Martin (because he never really cared to begin with , this being an American only tradition), we have opted to forgo the chaos of crafting, baking, wrapping, labeling and shopping and not do favors at all.  My apologies in advance if you were hoping otherwise.