Alora Voss | How to Plan a Wedding

During the Covid19 Pandemic, I began to dream of weddings. 

I’m not getting married any time soon. In these dreams I picture my boyfriend of 3 years struggling through college with me, buying a house in the suburbs of Minneapolis, and throwing a small ceremony in our backyard. His family is much larger than mine, and I see them in an imaginary potluck, sharing the simple wedding cakes I made myself. (I would have to make at least two, one gluten free for his mom, and one vegan for his sister.) Despite being years ahead of me, these thoughts of togetherness, outsideness, get me through the retail days that bleed together in their sameness.  

When dreams aren’t enough of a distraction, I binge wedding drama content. There’s hundreds of thousands of Reddit posts and Tumblr blogs and clickbaity articles about nightmare mother-in-laws, terrible DJs who play the one song you asked them not to, drunk family members that get the cops called on them and shut the whole venue down. It’s the cheapest escapist fantasy I can think of, a guilty pleasure I don’t have the decency to feel guilty about. The days go like this: we are sitting on the $20 couch in our one bedroom apartment. According to unspoken rule, I always sit on the left side. I turn my phone to my boyfriend and say “can you imagine forcing all your bridesmaids to dye their hair the same color? I would refuse to attend!” Or something like that. He nods in a way where I can tell he’s not really listening, absorbed in a game on his phone. And that’s all I really want from him, as I lean back and feel superior to all the other 20 somethings who haven’t quite figured out how to say no.  

Lately I’ve moved on to looking up what it takes to actually plan a wedding. In between advice columns and checklists sit artsy stock photos of beautifully skinny brides in body contouring dresses, fake smiles splashed across the page to reassure me this is worth reading.  

I’m told over and over to stick to a budget. Make a spreadsheet. Leave a 10% buffer for unexpected costs. Hit up your family for generous contributions. I don’t anticipate or need anyone’s money. My boyfriend’s parents are such giving people they adopted his cousin, and that was after raising four of their own kids. His dad bought him a new $3000 beater when his Honda died after too many pizza deliveries, and added me to their family phone plan when my parents died, so I can’t ask them for anything else. My aunt and uncle are such giving people they let me live with them rent-free for a year while touring college campuses. Later, when I was evicted from my apartment due to a bad roommate, I couch surfed on the days I had school and took the city bus to their house on the days I didn’t, so I can’t ask them for anything else. A wedding is the ultimate trap of a capitalist society, a promise that if you spend more money you will be happier. I scroll past this section of the listicles and blog posts hastily. 

I’m told to consider my priorities- a certain date or season, a specific venue, a live band, a color scheme, the dress, flowers. Despite my obsession with the idea of weddings, I don’t have much of an opinion on the reality. In the midwest, it’s pretty typical to have potluck family events, like every family member bringing a dish to Thanksgiving or a bonfire on a summer night where everyone brings a side dish (or if they forgot, a grocery store package of cookies.) When I think of family I think of food, and I want to surround myself with proof that someone spent hours creating something out of love. Compared to that, I don’t care about aesthetics, decorations, or flowers. 

I’m told to pick a venue first, then a guest list once you know the capacity. Others insist you should figure out the guest list, then find a venue that will fit those people. This part is the easiest, and least fun to daydream about. On my side of the family I have: Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle, Sister, Childhood Best Friend. Six people in the world who love me. My boyfriend’s parents have tons of siblings, and they have kids. On holidays their house is bursting with aunts and uncles and cousins, so some of them will have to sit on my side of the aisle to fit everyone. I don’t really care if things are symmetrical, but I get the sense that I’m supposed to.  

I daydreamed about weddings before my parents died. During the “lockdown,” where I still had to venture outside my tiny apartment in the 4am December cold to unload “essential educational items” for an art supply store, I thought of warm spring days and tablecloths draped over plastic tables. I smiled at the image of the resigned looks I knew I would get when I told people I didn’t want to wear white. I think red is a more celebratory color, and looks better against my paper skin. I’m so pale that flash photography often airbrushes my features into a noseless white void. One of the things I love about my boyfriend is that he has never gotten upset with me over how often I spill drinks all over my hands and our carpets. He taught me to get a cup of water to dilute the spill and mop it up, but I don’t think that will work on an expensive dress. 

In quieter moments, when I was carefully placing each tube of paint in its slot on the shelf, I thought about uninviting my parents. Ever since moving out, our relationship had been deteriorating slowly, and somehow my media-addled brain knew that a wedding would be the make or break moment. Despite being raised to believe the contrary, I knew my parent’s love was conditional, and the only proof I needed was the fact that they liked me more than my sister. As a self absorbed teenager I had ignored it, but now, as an adult, I could make it up to my sister and prove that I had grown up. My wedding would be my hill. She would be my maid of honor. I would find her whatever dress she wanted, color schemes be damned, whatever made her feel feminine and pretty and alive. Anyone who wouldn’t call her by her new name or respect that decision would get a swift boot out of my life. Or they would finally snap out of it, and by my hand become better people, motivated by the power of love. It makes sense as a daydream. A clean break one way or the other. A single moment. 

But the lockdown didn’t work, I guess, and now I don’t have to think about it anymore.  

Instead I can look at recommendations for when to send out invitations, save the dates, make a wedding website, a registry. One of the last pieces of advice is to write the vows, which to me feels like writing a story before you know what the climax will be. My goal is to make my softhearted boyfriend cry with how moving and beautiful my words are, but I think, looking out at the people in attendance and seeing the empty chairs on my side, I will be the one who cries. 

I close the dozen tabs open on my computer about vendors and RSVPs and marriage licenses, and edit my daydream. I was never one for tradition, and I want a red dress. Above the sweetheart neckline I will wear my mother’s favorite necklace, a silver celtic cross for a religion I don’t believe in. It will sit just above my heart, and maybe I can ignore the ache.