Wedding Priorities

Today, Mark and I sat at Peet's for some coffee and we generated a spreadsheet to prioritize our expectations for our wedding. A "high" means we think it is important to have high quality for that particular aspect of the wedding. A "low" indicates we have no expectations, and wouldn't be crushed if it didn't even happen. This exercise was inspired by our friend, Coco, who recently got married. Her advice for how to live through wedding planning: have low expectations for everything but the few truly important things. This exercise was to find out what those truly important things are.



Fortunately, we have very similar views. For example, neither of us care about wedding cakes, or wedding photographers. So we probably won't buy or hire either. Neither of us care about having a bachelor/bachelorette party either, so we won't be crushed if these don't happen for us either. Actually, the only thing we both care a lot about was having the wedding at the Descanso Beach Club.

Where there was a difference in priority, the person who cared more was placed in charge for that particular thing. For example, I care more about having an engagement photographer, and wedding invitations than Mark, so I have ended up "owning" these particular items. Mark cares more for food and the wedding registry than I do, so he's been placed in charge of these things. My feeling on the wedding registry is that people can buy us fun scuba diving gear (such as a nice underwater camera setup), but that didn't fly with Mark, who thinks that appears selfish. So I put him in charge of that.

As you can see below, neither of us care about the actual wedding ceremony itself, meaning the sharing of vows etc..., so I'm not sure what we will do there.