Keeping cool when best-laid plans backfire

• The Wedding Planner's Web log

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

So much for keeping my Zen attitude about the wedding. This week has turned ugly.

I thought everything was under control, but there's a major snag involving the Fort DeRussy Beach Park management's refusal to allow our caterer onto the property. Too bad our invitations are already out and we (along with my parents) already have paid most of the catering bill.

I know I shouldn't sweat the small stuff. Maybe no one will notice if we don't have any food, drinks, chairs or a tent.

Why didn't we elope?

Ah, it's not the end of the world, I know. We're still in love, and we're still getting married. I just thought the honeymoon part would come before all these little life tests and arguments.

My groom wanted to be more involved in the wedding planning, so this week, he got more than he ever wanted. He's a problem-solver. He said he'd figure out how to fix our location/caterer problem. And I love him for trying.

In real life, the bride doesn't get everything she wants, so I'll just have to live with it if the wedding doesn't turn out exactly the way I wanted. My fiancé has been a real trooper about putting up with my moments of madness.

I even dragged him to a painfully bride-y thing the other night. It was a dinner for Hawai'i newlyweds and brides-to-be who met on the Internet. The e-mail said four other guys would be there. My groom turned out to be the only one for about the first two hours. He politely sat through all the girl talk. He must really love me.

When you're planning a wedding, you start to feel like even your friends get sick of listening to you. I think that's how our dinner party came together. It included a military bride, an engineer who's marrying her college sweetheart, newlyweds new to Hawai'i and even the lone female member of an O'ahu truck club who met her beau over their mutual interest in roving the roads.

Before the dinner, their Internet interaction had been solely information-based, said Carrie Bunce, a 24-year-old Honolulu systems engineer, who will wed her college sweetheart in June on Kaua'i.

Her favorite advice from the Net was that she didn't need to give a photographer a 50 percent nonrefundable deposit, and she changed her mind about a prospective photographer after chatting with people who knew better.

Theresa Stephens, a 29-year-old student who moved to Kane'ohe after marrying an Air Force officer, said she got the most out of messages about ways to involve her son in her ceremony.

Brooke "Kahawai" Miller, the 31-year-old truck club member from Nanakuli, has as many girly wedding fantasies as the next bride and sought help on the Web from brides who are planning weddings at Turtle Bay Resort, where she will marry in December.

I may never see these dinner-party guests again, but I know if I posted a message about how to deal with my location/caterer problem, they would weigh in with suggestions.

Bunce is already dispensing some good advice.

"About marriage: The wedding is not the be-all and end-all of the relationship. Plan for your life together after the wedding as carefully as you have planned the event itself," she e-mailed. "About the wedding: Realize that everything about the wedding is not going to be perfect (i.e., as you envisioned it), but your guests likely won't know and will think it's lovely anyway."

I'll keep that in mind as I try to recapture my Zen.

Tanya Bricking writes about relationships for The Advertiser. Read a Web log chronicling the countdown to her November nuptials on the Wedding Planner link at www.honoluluadvertiser.com.

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