This wedding is becoming less and less what I wanted. Growing up I saw a ton terrible marriages that end in catastrophic divorce (literally only have 1 happy marriage between 3 generations) , that I never wanted to get married. I even expressed this to my partner but after talking with my therapist and him, I figured with the right prep, its really not all that scary and makes a lot of sense economically.
I have however always wanted a wedding (well.. commitment ceremony). When we started planning, thats what it was. Just a destination commitment ceremony & "honeymoon". Meaningful vows, pretty dress, beautiful location (a national forest) - just the two of us, our photographer and "officiant". Then it turned into commitment ceremony with parents and siblings, all of us staying at a big Air BNB so it was more mixed family weekend vacation and less wedding. Then I agreed to it being a legal thing- that didn't change much other than the paper our officiant has us sign was more legal than symbolic. I was fine with that and it was fun. Still small enough (11 people total) for the forest and we got to share it with our immediate family. We booked the photographer, videographer, flowers (just bouquet) and hair & makeup.
A few months later there was problems with the Air BNB and we couldn't find a replacement that size. My fiancé had been struggling with the whole "you're not invited" part when it came to friends and aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents. Since we had to get a new Air BnB anyways and we found one a bit bigger for close to the same price, we decided to extend the invite list to blood aunts/uncles (no spouses), grandparents, and a few of our closest friends (I only invited 1 friend but he's super close with 4 guys that he wanted to invite even though the chance of them coming was super low). Guest list is now at 36 invited 20-25 expected to come (including the original 11). Still small enough for our location of the forest but not the exact spot I was envisioning. Now almost everything is planned and done, dress purchased, save the dates have gone out, invites will be sent March 1st. Only thing left is narrow down the specific part of the forest location, purchase flights, and get my dress altered.
I also am running into the question of if I should do a destination now that its legal. The wedding is in Puerto Rico but we live in AZ. I am worried about our marriage license being Puerto Rico since its not technically a state but also not technically a different country. I would feel better if our license was an AZ certification but if our wedding is in Puerto Rico and our officiant is registered in Puerto Rico, I don't think I can have her sign an AZ license application. So now we are wondering if we should contact our vendors and push it back a week, do a legal courthouse marriage on our preferred date then do a ceremony/reception in Puerto Rico the following week. But that comes with technical problems of flying one of our witness (his brother) to AZ Friday-courthouse wedding Saturday- fly home Sunday then fly to PR Thursday, or have him take 10 days off work (vs the 2 he was going to take) and have him fly to PR out of AZ.
Canceling will cost us the $3k we put down in deposits plus having to pay my grandma back a thousand for the dress and $5k back to my grandpa that he gave us for flights, where as continuing on with it wont cost much more. I also think I will regret not doing the wedding more than I will just doing it they way its planned now.
The main problem is i'm just not excited anymore. I feel like it slowly snowballed into something so much bigger than what I wanted and now its possibly 2 weddings I have to think about (the AZ courthouse and the PR one). It's not that I don't want the wedding or that I want to un-invite anyone, its just not what I wanted to begin with. I feel like its that feeling where you commit to going to a concert with your friend but when its time to get ready you are regretting saying yes- then once you're there you're glad you went... or at least thats what i'm hoping.
Has anyone else felt like just pulling the plug but also not wanting to at the same time? Will it get better? IDK what to do.
