Feeling the Same After Getting Married? That’s a Good Thing
Over 3 years after our wedding, we finally ordered our wedding photo book.
For most people, this would have been a priority project that gets done shortly after the wedding—after all, it was the big day.
For my wife and me, it was such a back-burner project that we put it off for over 3 years and even made a photo book of our first trip together before we finally submitted the print files for the wedding photo book just a few days ago.
This got me thinking about how differently we feel about marriage and weddings than most other couples do.
Marriage and the wedding always seem to be a huge milestone for couples who are committed to spending their lives together, but such “big-deal-ness” is lost on my wife and me, despite our lifelong commitment to each other.
We think it’s probably because, by the time we got married, we had already known each other for 8 years, been best friends for 6 and been living together for a year, so our lives were completely the same before and after getting married—and we both feel that’s certainly a good thing.
Even before we got engaged, we both loved the idea of a small, intimate wedding—probably because we are both introverts. We are those people who celebrate when outdoor plans get cancelled because we get to just stay home.
Party? Don’t count us in.
The amount of stuff you’d have to do to prep for a wedding, like hiring a wedding planner, booking a venue months (or even a year) in advance, figuring out all the logistics—it’s our worst nightmare.
But also, the idea of blowing a ton of money on a one-time event just sounded terrible, when the money could be used on things with way bigger return-on-investment, like a home or index funds.
But because she’s Portuguese and I’m Chinese—both cultures expect big, lavish weddings—we accepted that our families probably wouldn’t do without a big wedding.
Then COVID saved us.
Large gatherings were highly advised against, and so we thought, let’s do it now when we can blame COVID for keeping it small, and got married at the city hall with less than 10 guests, and got did our wedding photos on a separate day with our wonderful photographer.
We had a great time. It was intimate, low-stress, low-cost, and fun. We didn’t have to entertain people we didn’t know or barely knew; we didn’t have to impress some distant relatives who traversed the sea just for us; we didn’t have many things to take care of the next days; and our bank accounts didn’t take a hit.
Instead, we just spent quality time with close family and friend (yes, a close friend showed up!), and ate a beautiful, delicious cake made by one of my former high school teachers whom I stayed in touch with.
It’s been over 3 years since. Every now and then, we would hear about other people’s big weddings and how much they cost, and we would say to each other—
So glad we didn’t do that!
Anyways, we’re excited to see how our wedding photo book turns out!
P.S. If you are reading this and you are pro–small weddings, I would love to hear your thoughts (leave a comment below or in the guestbook, or email me)!
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