Ya know what? This is the first time in several decades that I have gone into a new year without making a single resolution. Resolutions, over the years, have been many and varied (giving up smoking, losing weight, exercising more, learn a new language, write more… blah, blah, blah!) and, unsurprisingly, I have failed at pretty much each and every one of them. So this year I’m taking a different tactic… Do whatever the f*** you want!
I mentioned, recently, how much I had learned about myself over the last year. More, possibly, than I’ve ever learned about myself in 35 years. And one of the things I have come to realise is this:
It’s not my job to please everybody. I only need to please myself.
Certainly, over the last 20 years or so, I have done so many things because I thought it would make others happy, or they would like and respect me more. And each time I’ve done something like that, I’ve chipped away at my own self-esteem and found myself less and less happy with the way I am. Towards the end of last year, I suddenly had an epiphany. I was done surrounding myself with negativity and comparing myself to others. It’s like I’ve finally found inner confidence and can proudly say, “Fuck that. This is me.”
And so I find myself, at the start of 2016, not wanting to turn over a new leaf exactly, but just holding up the leaf I’ve had all along, proudly waving it around for everyone to see. Here I am, here’s my leaf. Like it or leave it.
So, it more than grates on my nerves when I read through the mass of new year wedding posts I’ve been seeing this week listing the do’s and don’t’s of planning a wedding.
And it’s made me a bit cross.
Because, seriously, it’s your wedding.
Do whatever the fuck you want. If you want pink flamingos lined up down the aisle*, go for it. If you want to marry in a midnight woodland ceremony, then why the hell not? Want 28 bridesmaids all wearing a different shade of purple creating the ultimate ombre group shot? Knock yourself out! It really should be about what the two of you want – not your parents, or your grandparents, or your Aunt Sally’s cousin twice removed. If they want balloons or doves or pink champagne or fireworks or to walk down the aisle to Whitney then let them plan their own wedding!
Seriously, the sooner you realise that it’s ok not to please everyone else but just please yourselves, you’ll be far happier and I guarantee you’ll have the wedding you dreamed of. Go your own way, do what feels right for the two of you and the two of you alone. Because the likelihood is you’ll only marry each other the once (unless, of course, you’re Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) and you should have a lifetime of remembering that day happily and not wishing you had or hadn’t done one particular thing.
So yeah, that’s my do and don’t advice for your wedding planning (and anything else in your life really…)
Do whatever the fuck you want.**
*Damn, I would love to shoot that!
**Besides murder, obviously. Or anything else that might hurt someone 🙂