Planning a wedding is like teaching first grade

Hear me out on this one.

All the wedding mags and websites like to point out the average person’s inability to plan a party as large as a wedding. Because most people don’t have experience planning and carrying out huge shindigs, they need to hire a wedding planner to do it for them. That way they can just say “yes” and “no” and leave the details to someone else. I see the point. Some people just don’t think of all the details, and there are a lot of details involved in a wedding. And many people just don’t want to. But there’s no way on earth that I will be hiring a wedding planner to do everything because a.) I don’t have the money for that and b.) I am a huge perfectionist and cannot relinquish that sort of control.

I really do think, however, that I have a huge advantage as a first grade teacher. As a teacher, I think about ridiculously trivial details every day. How am I going to distribute these papers? What will be most efficient? How can I keep them occupied? What will this group be doing while I am working with the other group? How do I make my directions simple and clear? How do I maximize space yet still allow space for traffic flow? How can I involve them in this lesson? What jobs can they perform?

My brain does not overlook much when in teacher mode. When I think about the wedding, I see so many of these details. My mind focuses on the guests’ needs and comfort more than getting my make-up done or posing for photos. In reality, I’ve spent the past year o.d.-ing on details. My sister told me “I don’t really have anything to share…you’ve already thought of everything.”

I’m not trying to bill myself as a professional wedding planner. Just sharing my thoughts. Hopefully my theory pans out and I won’t be thinking of the things I missed after the wedding.  Now if only we were having kids at our wedding (no little ones in either families) ... I would be able to plan a cute kids table!  Darn that generational gap.

Photo from ::here::