Stop Trying to be Anti-Traditional & Just be YOU.

One of my daily must-reads in blogland is A Los Angeles Love. Becca, the ever-so-wise, totally honest, and just plain awesome bride who runs the site, offers up sane, wow-I-didn't-think-of-it-that-way, lifesaving advice on weddings and on life in general. I fo' sho' would have become A[Bride]in Sane on more than one occasion if I hadn't sought her advice. (Thank you, B!) This week on LA Love, Becca is passing the blogging duties over to her partner, Jason. We so often get to see the wedding world through the eyes of us brides, that it's fun (and super beneficial) to hear what our other halves have to say once and a while.

Jason spoke very candidly today about the concept of a traditional wedding vs. a non-traditional wedding . If any of you brides out there ever felt "pressured" to have your wedding be one or the other - traditional or non - then I urge you to check out his post. Jason's words really made me put this whole debate into perspective. Let me explain. Ever since Mike and I got engaged for the first time four years ago, I battled - like reeeeaaaallly struggled - with thinking I was being forced to adhere to the traditional rules of a traditional white wedding. I mean, the only weddings I had ever been to at that point in my life were traditional ones (and I had no idea indie bride blogland even existed), so I in turn thought that if you're going to get married, it's EXPECTED that your wedding follow the rules. Having *just* moved to California at the time of first getting engaged, I was still in process of breaking out of my "follow-the-rules" mentality that I too often lived by as an Arizona gal in my teens and early twenties. Once I fully blossomed into the "follow-MY-rules" kinda gal that I am today, I was able to look at this wedding in a different way. Which was great, but I found that my new attitude towards wedding planning was being fueled solely by negativity - not so great. My constant hating on the traditional white wedding was making me into this eff you, stick-it-to-the-man, bi-otch who was planning a wedding that had everything to do with being indie and non-traditional, but nothing to do with US. I was waaaay too focused on making our wedding Anti-traditional just to be contrary or to make a statement or to be defiant (defiance is both a strength and a weakness of BOTH Mike and I). Well thank our lucky ballz that we woke the f-ck up from that nightmare. Instead of our defiance being fueled by negativity, our defiance is now fueled by the simple desire to make our wedding represent us and our worldview in every aspect possible. Ever since then, the wedding has been an absolute joy to plan - because we KNOW that every decision we make and every ritual we decide to include in the affair will be chosen by us, for us. And who can blame us for doing what we know best - being ourselves!

So if the whole traditional white wedding debate has you buggin' out, then go read Jason's post on A Los Angeles Love and prepare for a possible epiphany. And Jason will be posting all week, so show him the love!

And lastly, if you ever feel like your head is gonna explode from all this talk of tradition vs. non, just relax, and repeat this phrase:

Stop Trying to be Anti-Traditional & Just be YOU.

Changed. My. Life.