When Your Celebration Becomes Everyone Else's

When Your Celebration Becomes Everyone Else's

There’s a strange alchemy that happens the moment you decide to get married. Suddenly, what was a deeply personal commitment morphs into something that seemingly belongs to everyone. Your mum has opinions on flowers, your best mate is adamant about the playlist, and your cousin has already mentally picked out her outfit.

I’ve stood with thousands of couples as they’ve navigated these waters. Some sail through smoothly; others arrive at their ceremony looking like they’ve just survived a storm. And in many ways, they have.

Your Day, Your Rules (Sort Of)

Here’s the truth: a wedding is fundamentally an event that you and your partner are hosting. You’re inviting people to witness your marriage and celebrate with you. This isn’t some medieval ceremony where you’re being “presented to society” – you’re grown adults making a life-changing commitment.

But weddings don’t exist in a vacuum. They happen within relationships, family structures, and financial realities. The modern wedding involves a complex dance of expectations, traditions (both kept and broken), and compromises.

The Great Expectation Game

Every wedding carries its own unique set of expectations. Some come from within – the vision you’ve been nurturing since you first typed “wedding ideas” into Pinterest. Others come from without – cultural traditions, family expectations, and the endless scroll of perfectly curated Instagram celebrations.

The task before you isn’t eliminating these expectations but rather deciding which ones matter to you and your partner. Because at the end of the day, the people who experience the consequences should make the decisions.

You’ll live with the memories of your wedding forever. If your mum insists on inviting her entire book club, you’re the one who’ll spend your celebration making small talk with strangers instead of celebrating with people you love.

The Magic Formula (That Doesn’t Exist)

I wish I could offer a perfect formula for creating a wedding that pleases everyone while remaining true to yourselves. After fifteen years of marrying couples, I can confidently say that such a formula doesn’t exist.

What does exist is the opportunity to approach your planning with intention, clarity, and kindness – both to yourselves and to those who care about your celebration.

The couples who find the most joy in their wedding day are rarely those with the biggest budgets or the most elaborate details. They’re the ones who remained anchored in their ‘why’ – the reason they’re getting married in the first place.

The Beginning Sets the Tone

How you navigate wedding planning establishes patterns for your married life. The boundaries you set (or don’t), the compromises you make (or refuse), and the communication styles you adopt will likely follow you into your marriage.

This isn’t about rebellion for its own sake. It’s about thoughtfully establishing that your marriage is its own sovereign entity while maintaining loving connections with family and community.

A Way Forward

Here’s my advice, distilled from watching thousands of couples navigate these waters:

  1. Decide what you want to achieve with your wedding celebration.
  2. Try different approaches to achieving it until you find what works.
  3. Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
  4. Don’t abandon your vision until it genuinely stops working for you.

It really is both this simple and this hard.

The most beautiful weddings I’ve been part of weren’t necessarily the most expensive or Pinterest-perfect. They were celebrations where everyone – couple, guests, vendors – felt their role in a ceremony that remained true to the couple’s story.

Your wedding marks the beginning of your marriage. That’s the prize worth keeping your eyes on. Not the perfect lighting or the ideal cake flavour, but the relationship you’re committing to and celebrating.

A wedding lasts a day. A marriage, if we’re lucky, lasts a lifetime. Plan accordingly.