The joys of wedding planning

Being mother-of-the-bride brings unique set of dilemmas to the fore

I was recently fortunate enough to travel with my family to Ireland where my daughter is planning her wedding. Her fiancé is an Irish ex-pat living in America, so part of our trip involved meeting his family, who turned out to be warm and welcoming people.

The remainder of our weeklong stay overseas was spent touring Ireland’s stunningly beautiful coast, exploring castles and tooling around charming towns. And, oh yeah, visiting wedding venues. Let’s not forget about that pesky wedding.

Why, you may wonder, would I refer to a wedding as “pesky”? Because it’s a destination wedding across the ocean? Because we haven’t even gotten to the guest list yet and we’ve already had some friendly disagreements over details? Or because this is my second daughter to get married and I know full well that I am the mother of the bride — not the bride — and therefore will have lots of opinions but not much choice?

All of the above. But mostly this: my daughter and I are not necessarily on the same page when it comes to traditional vs. non-traditional elements of the wedding. So far, the only marriage custom my daughter and I seem to agree upon is the longstanding practice of arguing over wedding details.

For example, last summer when my daughter got engaged, I foolishly assumed the wedding would be held near our home. Or at least in America. Because isn’t a wedding usually held in the bride’s hometown?

In fact, my daughter and her fiancé never even considered a wedding in America. Instead, they posed the idea of a “neutral destination.” That is, neither in America or Ireland, with their first choice being Italy. I was quick to note that an Italian wedding would inconvenience virtually every wedding guest.

When my daughter later announced that, due to cost considerations, they had abandoned the idea of an Italian wedding, I was momentarily relieved. Until she told me that they’d learned Croatia was a less costly and apparently upand-coming spot for a destination wedding.

I gently listed a number of reasons why I thought this was an imperfect idea: the language barrier, cultural unknowns, and the fact that Americans are bad at geography and many guests won’t even be able to find Croatia on a map. My daughter countered by inundating my inbox with remarkable internet photos of deep blue beaches, old world towns and castle ruins that could serve as wedding venues.

We kept this argument up for a while until one evening my daughter phoned me to say they’d decided to hold the wedding in Ireland after all. This was due to consideration for an ill family member on the groom’s side who wouldn’t be able to travel out of the country. I conceded that Ireland was preferable to other destinations. Although I still like that bride’s hometown tradition best. I mean, so much easier to plan, right? But hey, I’m good with Ireland.

Having survived the first wedding-related conflict I was quickly confronted with another. I barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief over the destination quandary when my daughter sent me a photo of her preferred wedding dress.

She’d opted for something plain, she’d informed me.

“Weddings are a scam,” she insisted. “I’m not spending thousands of dollars on a wedding dress.”

Fine, I get that. But I was quite dismayed by the photo she sent. It showed her dressed in a beautiful white blouse with a long silky skirt. And the skirt was yellow. Yellow!!

“Listen, people are traveling to Ireland for this wedding! You have to wear white!” I exclaimed.

I admit to being a little over-excited. But let’s face it. The white wedding dress is a pretty solid tradition. It’s fundamental. It is the building block upon which all of our modern wedding culture is founded. In fact, it may be the very fabric of tradition. You can’t change the color of the fabric of tradition! Am I right or am I right?

When it comes to modern weddings, being right doesn’t matter. Come to think about it, when it comes to marriage being right doesn’t matter. So maybe yellow is the best choice after all.

But the wedding won’t take place for a year, and I’m not done with my fight for the white yet. I have 12 months to come up with a more persuasive line of reasoning.

Considering that we haven’t even discussed the guest list yet, I think it will be a year filled with many compromises. But, hey, compromise is what marriage is all about, right?

Laura Catalano is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers. She is a frequent contributor to Digital First Media.