As I go over the pictures I snapped from the SIL's wedding and debating which one to share I'm reminded of a trend I've noticed that I kept meaning to bring up and then promptly forgetting (like the moon full of lost socks my brain contains half thoughts that are so numberous they're about to collapse in on themselves and form a black hole.)Everyone is all excited to share in your journey to becoming a bride, watching as you make decisions about what to do for your invitations. Urging you to share your dress choice, how you decided between the chicken or beef, and just what cool things you came up with for those candles you got a garage sale.
But once the wedding day is over, you've caught your breath from your whirlwind honeymoon and you can't wait to share all the pictures and details from your day everyone has abandoned you.
I can't even begin to count the number of blogs that will have a good 10-15 commenter's all wishing the bride luck as her big count goes from months to weeks and finally days. Then she comes back, flush with excitement to share all those plans everyone was so excited about and she'll get maybe a comment or two. And they're usually in the two word range of "That's nice."
Throw in the fact that it takes a good 2-3 months for pictures to roll in and the wedding hungry hordes have already moved onto the next doe eyed generation of letterpress and tulle debaters before the new wife has even gotten a post past her bridal portraits.
I picked up on this when I started my own wedding re-cap and I kept it crazy short (think of all the fun stories you may have missed out on). Those of you who could last through 30 or more posts about your wedding have my hat off to you. When all I got was the dark silence I crumbled and moved onto something else in my life (and never gained back the same popularity).
It is fascinating how we're driven to be curious about and help with the planning and getting ready, but when it comes time to view the fruits of the labor we vanish in a poof of smoke.
Maybe it's the stigma, the whole it's the Best Day of Your Life thought around weddings and that women can never let go. So if someone does drag their wedding recap out over a few months then more and more people approach it less with open minds and more with the thought at the back of their mind "Why won't she just move on?" "Does she not have a life to live?"
Or maybe when it comes down to it, while no matter how specific it may be, the planning details can apply to a wide audience while the wedding itself is such a personal experience it can never have the same impact as comparing ring bearer pillows from etsy stores.
What are your thoughts on it all? Did anyone else get the "Don't bother recapping your wedding, no one will care" feeling?
And this has been another random thought from Sabrina's brain. Check back next week when we compare the flavor and texture of various breads to their best spreads and how to achieve sandwich nirvana.
10 comments:
I'm not there yet, but I know how I feel about people's yard haunts when they post pictures after Halloween: "ooh, pretty!" but ... not a lot to say. Topical posts are so much easier to get behind.
Also, the transition from bride to wife (especially in the blogging world) seems like a difficult one for everybody. After all that wedding, people have to find themselves again. I think that's why I downgraded my blog to something... wedding-friendly, but not wedding-based.
Cheers, though - I still love your blog. It's your tone that I enjoy.
Interesting perspective and now that I think about it, how true!
I was lucky and got my pics back quickly. I did my recaps in 5 posts. I was done with my wedding when I got the pics. I mean done!
If I've been reading a blog for a while and then finally the gal gets married I'm excited to see the pics. I want to see what the result of planning was. Sometimes my comments are "ooh, pretty" cause it is pretty or it's not how I imagined it and I'm trying to be nice.
Blogger brides are a dime a dozen now. Once you are married, people leave to find the next bride to be. Sad but true.
I definitely noticed that there were less comments on other peoples' blogs after they got married. I noticed this several months ago.
The biggest thing that has surprised me - even though I get waaaay less comments, I have more followers. I think I was around 42 or something the day before I got married. I had a few people join while I was on my honeymoon. And a few more followers have just joined. I'm up to 51! It's very confusing.
I get what Carrie Mae is saying about the transition from bride to wife.
But it's not an issue for me. I don't identify with the women who's main goal in life is to get married & have babies. (I don't get it.) And it's not that I don't want those things - I do! - but it's not my only goal. I had educational goals, I now have career goals, I have personal goals relating to other things.
I am not just a wife, and since I'm not defined by being a wife, I don't find there's been any transition for me.
Anyway, enough rambling from me!
Krista - in the blogging sphere, for ladies who start blogs about their wedding planning, I think it becomes that. I'm not saying at all that women find it hard to transition - just women who started to blog as 'brides.' I mean really, where do you go from there? People start reading because they are interested in you as a 'bride planning her wedding,' usually because they are in the same boat or romanticize the whole ordeal. Once you've done that - you've satisfied their needs, and what does that mean for your blog?
Like I said: that's why I "downgraded." I realized that planning a wedding, even a Halloween wedding, was not what I wanted to be known for. Even on the web. It's been nice - I've met great people like Sabrina, but also just developed a small following of people who are interested in me more than my wedding.
Hell, I don't think the majority of my readers even realize I started the thing to keep me sanity during the rush-to-the-alter crazy days. It's soothing.
I guess I'm weird because I've always liked the recaps much more than the decision making.
When I did my recaps, I almost did it more for myself than other people. But as I said before, I'm weird. But it is kind of sad how quickly people move on and how the hordes of support for a bride dissipate once she's married. It's also interesting how people seem to magically appear once people become pregnant/mothers.
Yeah... I never really did recap. I don't think anyone that didn't go to our wedding even knows what the heck our wedding looked like. Well, unless you're on facebook and saw tagged pics of me, haha.
I'm a boring blogger as it is. Once the wedding was over, man... I got even more boring.
I get your perspective and agree with it. Nobody cares (even in "real life") much about you once you get married. It's like being pregnant. Everybody loves you when you're pregnant, and then once you birth the kid, your kid gets all the attention. No questions of, "How are you? Really?"
*shrug*
Hmmm, I actually really enjoy the recaps I read, especially on weddingbee. I actually get a bit miffed if the bride disappears after her wedding day and never dies a recap! But then, I think a lot of it is because I like looking at the pretty pictures. If they don't have good pics, I'm less interested. I've finally just about finished my own recaps, but I didn't care about the reception so I kind of forgot about it.
I think brides look to other planning blogs to find someone who is in the same boat as them. Once the wedding's over, there's no more need for solidarity.
I'm struggling to find things to put on my own blog now. Maybe that's why I hardly post.
I never did a recap. If that says anything.
I however really really enjoyed the recaps of my "class" of brides. I felt like we were all a graduating class: you, me, Linda and a handful of others and it was fun to see what came out of it for each of us.
ve your blog, I'm sorry I don't comment more. I just enjoy reading!
Anyway, this has definitely bee the case for me so far and I haven't even begun recaps. It gives me a better perspective to pay attention to the wives (not brides) and they recap their wonderful day.
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