As much as I love romance, I must say that weddings are nothing but trouble.

I have to believe that our route to marriage was uncommon. Unlike many of my friends who fret over “the relationship” and usage of words like love, engagement, commitment, marriage, children; Austin and I knew quite early on that we wanted to settle down, get married, have kids.

But we’re both very logical people, and also equals in the professional world. We ran the numbers and found that it would cost us thousands of dollars a year in taxes once we got married.

So what did we do? Instead of a big wedding, we bought a house and set a very long engagement. Everyone treats us like we’re married, and we don’t have to deal with the negative tax situation until we have reason to. My fiancé and I have been engaged for more than five years. In order to not have things be too uncertain for our relatives, we set a date… in 2006.

So now it’s just about a year away, and we’ve started resurrecting our wedding plans. It’s not like we want something ridiculously expensive or lavish. The truth is, we’re not traditional. It almost seems like a traditional wedding would be easier to manage – you can get them as package deals and not worry about the details. But Austin and I cannot abide an empty ritual. If we’re going to do it, we want it to reflect us. Part of the problem is that we see it as just a big party and a bit of a family reunion, really. We just can’t justify spending tens of thousands of dollars to feed and entertain people, and have them judge us on our haphazard choices besides.

I suppose this is the danger of a long engagement. The farther along you are, the less you seem to care about the pomp and circumstance involved in a wedding ceremony; you begin to see things with a purely practical and economical eye. God, it makes me glad I was first born – for I’ve seen this same behavior with children. Parents who do everything with the first one – take a billion pictures and frame them and make scrapbooks. Any future children might get a slot-binder crammed full with packages of developed photos, unsorted and unlabeled.

tra•di•tion n.
A time-honored practice or set of such practices.

Weddings and funerals are a big business. They keep caterers, florists, religious groups, event planners, fashion designers, limo companies and such in business. Hallmark and company seems to have perpetuated the hype of the great American wedding. Unfortunately, my fiancé Austin and I are competitive people. The danger here is that if we decided on a traditional wedding, we’d want it to be a fantastic one. And frankly, the great American wedding would cost a great deal of American dollars nowadays – about $25,000 for a modest wedding. Bloody hell, we’d much rather install wood floors in the entire house, and renovate the master bathroom for that! How is a wedding to be a good investment?

Sadly, we are fretting because we feel pressure that people will be upset by our wanton disregard for tradition. But then whose traditions are we really following? Austin’s parents certainly haven’t been traditional in their marriages. The wedding of my parents was quite traditional, but they were also very young and it was mostly handled by their own parents. Austin and I are feeling the weight of the pressure for society’s expectations – catered bistro food, designer outfits, and expensive venues – not concerns of forgetting to perform some wedding ritual passed down through our family – we know of none of those.

So in for a penny, in for a pound. We have had an untraditional engagement, it makes sense we should just go and have the wedding ceremony that matches.

White dress? I think not. The white dress tradition actually isn’t very old. Throughout history, women have worn many colors for weddings. It was only about 160 years ago, when Queen Victoria married Albert that the white wedding gown fashion really became the standard. Don’t get me wrong, I want a really nice dress, but I think I’ll be going for a little color. Are people going to comment on it, and that other biting comment about white for purity and what other colors mean? Most likely, but then, hello, we’ve been living together in our house for five years now.

Food? Austin and I have not quite decided on the food selection, but we have decided that it will be made up of our favorite things, regardless of whether or not they fit together in a theme. Only three things are important to us here: that the food taste great, that the wine be from our favorite vineyard, and that there is a chocolate fondue fountain involved. The chocolate fountain idea caught on after we discovered several at a conference – set up just like a champagne fountain, only with chocolate flowing - with strawberries and other goodies. Austin is most excited about the fountain and I think it’s a splendid idea – likely to be a centerpiece around which the entire reception revolves.

Rings? Well, we’ve already got four engagement rings and it’s a bit of a disaster. Austin comes from a family of jewelers. When we first got engaged, we didn’t want to have anyone know in advance of anyone else, so we secretly got simple white gold bands for us both. Austin’s mother then went to work on designing an engagement ring which took about 2 years to come to fruition. Austin felt so guilty about it taking so long, that he got me a second engagement ring about a year into it. But then I went and got healthy and lost significant weight and now none of them fit! I don’t quite know what to do about the wedding rings, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out.

Ceremony? Austin’s stepfather is a ship captain and we’d like him to do the ceremony. Vows, though? We are a quiet pair, and not given to drama. I think coming up with vows is going to be a bit difficult for us both. I haven’t even mentioned it lately, because it will make us both groan. My biggest fear here is that we will offend someone by not involving any deities in the ceremony. We’ve got everyone from true pagans to devote Catholics in the family, but we can’t please everyone.

Reception? This part keeps changing. Originally we wanted to do it in Yosemite National Park, because it was important to us. However, the logistics really wore us down – it’s a five hour drive from home, with no readily available lodging at reasonable prices. How can we ask our elderly relatives to make such a trek? Some of the invitees would have trouble affording anything but camping, and can we live with that? Our guilt weighed us down and finally we decided we should just do it all in some conveniently situated location, like a grandmother’s backyard. Then those who would enjoy it could join us camping in Yosemite for a few days.

The wedding planning involved is tiresome. The only thing we really are looking forward to is seeing friends and family together, the honeymoon, and the chocolate fountain. I find it profoundly amusing that I should feel this way about weddings and yet enjoy reading romances so much – given they often involve weddings ceremonies.

Gretna Green has never been so tempting.