The Art of a Wedding: Reflections & Lessons from One Bride to Another

This post is part four of my four-part series on wedding planning, perfectionism, and what really happens when the big day finally arrives. My hope is that these posts serve as both a peek behind the curtain of our Pacific Northwest wedding and a source of honesty and guidance for other brides navigating the stress, beauty, and contradictions of wedding planning. Check out parts one, two, and three if you haven’t already.

In an homage to the imperfection of real life, I’ve opted to include only film photography in this post.

A Wedding as a Story, A Piece of Living Art 

When I think about our wedding now, what strikes me most is how much it truly was a performance; not in the artificial sense, but in the way an artist steps onto a stage to share their creation. 

Our set, the Columbia River Gorge

Our wedding was a creative act, the piece of living art we had spent a year carefully composing. Hood River and the Columbia River Gorge cliffs became our set, the Griffin House our stage; the vows and speeches became the script; the florals, the music, the food, the disco balls our set design…all of it together was a performance of our unique love story to bring our family & friends into the secret, intimate place of our sacred relationship. 

Our stage, The Griffin House

I'm so proud of the weekend we hosted. It was such a tender mix of all that makes Ty & I “us,” including: 

  • Moments of intention through group yoga, a moment of mindfulness in our ceremony, a unique question card for each of our guests when they sat down to dinner

  • So much FUN through laugh-out-loud storytelling, a party bus through wine country, fruit picking, and an epic DJ set with giant disco balls above our dance floor 

  • The magic of a PNW summer: Skamania Lodge, the Gorge, eating lunch in the shadow of Mt. Hood, local salmon & hazelnuts on the menu, local flowers & grapes on the tables

  • The heavy involvement of our family, from picking up & transporting the alcohol to various tasks throughout the weekend

I love what we put together. I love how it turned out. I truly planned the wedding weekend of my dreams. 

The script in action

Set design on point

The Cost of Creating Something Beautiful

But here’s what I'll say: It’s very hard to be present when you’re personally trying to ensure the detailed success of something like a 10-part weekend. I dealt with a fervent revival of anxiety I hadn't felt in years during the month leading up to the wedding, and I woke up every night of the wedding weekend around 3am, body aflame with anxiety that pricked every inch of my skin. I needed a small dose of Ambien every night just to fall back asleep. I felt the weight of the weekend on my shoulders. So much of my own time, money & expectation was on the line. We’d asked so much of our family in planning, so much of our friends in attending a three-night affair. And as with all things, I desperately wanted it to go exactly as I’d envisioned, exactly as I’d planned. I wanted control, so that I could have perfection. 

A little stage fright kicking in

A moment of support before the show

Of course, nothing EVER goes perfect during a wedding. This, besides “be present” was the top piece of advice I received in the weeks leading up: “nothing will be perfect, you have to let go.” So in theory, I knew this. And in practice, most things did go perfect! People I trust have told me it was one of the best planned, most fun weddings they’d been to, that I nailed the bridal look, that our venue/ceremony/food/speeches/first dance/dance party wowed. What incredible validation.

But the anxiety & nerves of them not going that way gripped me in the hours leading up to each portion of the weekend and in the wee hours of the night, making it hard for me to shed the layers of twitchy, skittery feelings in my body and relax into the flow & excitement of each moment. 

The Perfectionist Bride Paradox

Struggling at the center of attention

I also found myself uneasy in the vortex of bridal attention that comes with weddings. Which is so crazy. I tend to think of myself as someone who loves to be the center of attention. But there’s something about the attention you get at your wedding and surrounding events that feels “unearned.” I pondered the words “forced” or “fake,” but those aren't true. I know the people around me were so genuinely happy for me. And yet, the constant sense of being watched & catered to without my having done or said something noteworthy felt odd. I love being the center of attention when I have something to share or contribute. It was hard to let myself accept so much love, just for having found my own. 

The “wedding as performance” metaphor is a helpful way for me to think about it, because it explains why I felt both so anxious and a bit “out of body.” I was playing both the director and the lead role. My planner was the showrunner, but it was my story to tell, my audience to bring in. I took that responsibility so seriously. 

Redefining What Success Looks Like

At some point after the wedding, when the photos came back and the pressure was off, I remember thinking, with some amount of surprise: Oh… that wasn’t necessarily the happiest day of my life. And not in a regretful way. Just in an honest one.

Which is ironic, because I’ve studied happiness and written about it on this blog for nearly a decade. And to me, happiness often looks like a high degree of physical ease and nervous system regulation: great sleep, nourishing food, movement, slow, restorative activities like yoga, hiking, reading in the park. Long, connected, intimate conversations with people I love.

That’s not what a wedding day is, at least not for most people. It’s joyful, yes. Meaningful, yes. But also logistically intense and emotionally high-stakes. Maybe it was always a pipe dream for someone like me, who might secretly be more introverted and high-strung than she lets on, to expect that it could feel easeful, too.

On my wedding weekend, I was: proud, relieved, grateful… but also exhausted, overstimulated, and a little too aware of every moving part. It made me reflect on what I had actually been optimizing for. And the answer was… not joy, exactly. Not flow, or ease.

In hindsight, I’d been orienting the entire experience around something else:

  • That the wedding would reflect who Ty and I are.

  • That our guests would feel taken care of, connected, and wowed.

  • That it would be visually stunning and creatively fulfilling.

  • That I’d feel proud of the work I put in.

Those were my KPIs (my key performance indicators, if you’ll indulge the corporate lingo). My unconscious blueprint for what success looked like, even if I didn't name it at the time.

And when I held my experience up against those benchmarks, I realized something important: I got exactly what I wanted. Everything we were optimizing for, we got in our wedding weekend. Which helped me let go of the myth that it had to be the happiest day of my life in order to be a successful one. In fact, it made me feel more proud than ever in my ability to bring my personal vision & creative storytelling to life. 

What I’d Tell Future Brides: 7 Lessons I Learned

If I could distill everything I learned into advice for other brides, it would be this:

  1. Set realistic expectations for your planner. Planners are amazing, but they’re not mind readers. And for Type A brides, it’s likely that no one can ever fully meet your expectations. Most of my friends who are like me walked away a little disappointed in their planner. I recommend having early and regular conversations about your expectations of the planner, and calibrating that with what they believe they’re on deck to deliver. Sometimes, your expectations are reasonable and can be met, if only voiced. Sometimes, your expectations are not reasonable for the level of service you’ve hired, and it’s important to respect & plan for that boundary.

  2. Don’t belabor every choice. The paradox of choice is real. The more options you see, the harder it is to decide, and the more you second-guess yourself. At some point, you just have to choose. Existing in the space of indecision is painful, and despite your intuition, spending more time in the decision making process does not necessarily correlate with making a better decision (or rather, one that you are happier with). Make the best decision you can with the information you have in a reasonable timeframe, then stop looking back. Every time I made a decision, I suddenly loved it! It was only during the deciding that I felt so deeply torn. 

  3. Beware of scope creep. It starts innocently: “Let’s add a welcome party. Let’s throw in a yoga session. Let’s DIY and BYOB.” But every addition has a cost, whether financial, logistical, and/or emotional. I ended up managing much of it without my planner, and while the weekend was amazing, the cognitive overhead was real. Force yourself to let go of some things; we could have easily scaled down our welcome party and ceremony design. I’m glad we didn’t invest more than we did in decor; our venue was the “wow” factor itself. I could have even gone with a less amazing caterer; yes, people loved our food, but I tried to “wow” in too many categories, and that added up in terms of cost and mental load. 

  4. Stay close to your wedding party. Ty and I stayed in one of Skamania Lodge’s luxe treehouses, slightly apart from the main lodge. It was a great experience, other than making us feel quite removed from the rest of the wedding party. If I could do it again, I’d stay closer to my family and maids of honor, to make coordination & spending time together a tad easier.

  5. Pre-identify five “perfect moments” you’re looking for at your wedding. One of the most helpful things I took from therapy in the months leading up to the wedding was accepting that not everything would go to plan, but I could try very hard to make a few core moments happen. So with my therapist, i picked five sacred moments I wanted to be fully present for: 1) Yoga in the sun, surrounded by my people. 2) Standing with Ty at the altar, tears in our eyes. 3) Our epic dance party under the disco balls. 4) That dreamy Saturday lunch among the vines, eating pizza and sipping sparkling rosé 5) Seeing my friends experience the beauty of Hood River for the first time. And when those moments came, I knew them immediately, and I was fully there. They alone made everything worth it.

  6. Expect the mental load to spike at the end. In the final month before our wedding, the mental load crested into something borderline unmanageable. Not because I was behind, but because I was involved in every detail. Your guest count is solidified, and then everything has to happen ASAP. Finalize florals & catering. Create the seating chart & name tags. Pack for everything! Pay for everything!! I wish we’d pushed more things that we could into the months before, like our first dance, finalizing our weekend attire, and making all the music choices. 

  7. Trust your people. My mom sourcing 40 yoga mats from her Facebook network. My best friends leading yoga and sound healing. My dad picking up our rings. My brothers grabbing a sandwich midday for the videographer. Ty’s parents figuring out all the BYOB logistics. Those are the reminders that you’re not in it alone. Delegate tasks early (like at least one month out!), and let people show up for you. Seeing our friends and family rally around us in the way they did ended up being one of the most meaningful memories of the weekend; few things have made me feel so loved. 

  8. Allow yourself to lean in, guilt-free. There were many parts of the wedding planning process where I felt frustrated at my own self-involvement. I felt like a cliche, investing so much money and time into becoming the most beautiful version of myself, into throwing a party in my own honor. I scorned myself as an overly-American capitalist consumer, succumbing to the wedding-industrial complex. BUT ALSO. It was so fun! To learn about skincare and take up weight training and think deeply about how to express myself through my fashion choices at each event. To dabble in design theory and build creative briefs and see them come to life in vendor conversations. If this sounds like you, just let yourself lean in. You’re not going to change the industry with your indignance. But definitely don't forget to negotiate!  

  9. Your wedding doesn’t have to be the happiest day of your life. Release that expectation, and suddenly, the day has room to breathe. It can be joyful, messy, stressful, hilarious, sweaty, beautiful…sometimes all in the span of an hour. That’s what makes it real. If you expect bliss alone, you’ll be disappointed. If you embrace the duality, you’ll walk away embracing what is. 

Final Reflections: The Artist After the Curtain Falls

So what am I taking away from all of this…I loved our wedding & I'm so happy we did it. But there’s an emotional cost beyond the fiduciary that is taxing, and it’s ok if two things are true: it was one of the most stressful events of my life, but also one of the more special, memorable & love-filled. It was a joyful creative exercise & expression of love, almost more akin to a performance than anything else. But I felt like the artist & my patrons loved my work. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that. 

Was I the most present, most grounded, joyful & authentic version of myself? Probably not. That’s me when I’m unhurried, low stakes, unphotographed, nothing to prove. I used my wedding as a stage to perform the very true story of Ty & I’s love, and we got a standing ovation. There’s something there. 

If you’ve planned a wedding before, how did you process the experience afterwards? What lessons did you most want to pass on? Leave a comment with your thoughts, and don’t forget to subscribe for more mindful reflections like this.

Up Next: How to Communicate in a Relationship, Illustrated by One Good Convo

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Our Griffin House Wedding Story: Tears, Heat, and Joy on the Cliffs of Hood River