It’s just as I feared: Sonia wants a ‘rustic’ wedding. I was hoping against hope that it wouldn’t come to this, but here I am, faced with the task of telling her that I don’t want to wear suspenders and grow a manicured lumberjack beard. I don’t want our friend’s dog to be the ringbearer, I don’t want boutique gin served in jam jars and I don’t want to dance to a semi-ironic washboard duo. More than anything, I don’t want any bunting.
It’s not that I’m a cantankerous spoilsport. What puts me off is that this ‘rustic’ business is so superficial. It’s carefully designed to give an air of simplicity and homeliness, while actually being just as fiddly and expensive as any other wedding theme. When all is said and done, it’s just that: a theme. I mean, sure, you could hold a wedding that was genuinely rustic, but I know that’s not what Sonia wants.
At least with a so-called conventional wedding, there’s no pretence. It’s a big look-at-me deal that cost way more than you originally intended, and it’s making no bones about it. And it’s actually easier to organise! There’s the wedding marquee to hire, Melbourne airport transfers to arrange, appetisers to taste test… isn’t that enough with having to then go and ‘personalise’ everything? And when I say ‘personalise’, I mean follow a formula that results in your wedding looking exactly like all your friends’ weddings.
I’m going to have to explain my position to Sonia soon, before we start looking at marquees for hire. Melbourne has quite a selection of hire companies, and Sonia’s going to want to go for one that has ‘festival-style’ fabric tents. Those are completely impractical, in my view – what if it rains? No, we need to get this sorted asap.
Maybe we can meet in the middle. Like, if she lets me have a waterproof marquee with no bunting, I’ll let her have an elixir bar. And maybe one llama.