Why My Wedding Isn’t About Me

I really hate planning events and always thought I wasn’t very good at it. When I started dancing in 2005, I began co-creating all sorts of events and then producing all sorts of dance-related competitions, recitals, battle jams and workshops. I was holding 2 events per month for my dance studio which gave me both stress and joy, anxiety and thrills – the before and after effects of a passionate effort to help grow the scene.

You have to be pretty organised and detail-oriented to run events smoothly; my natural aptitude is the complete opposite of these skills, however gaining practice on my weaknesses helped me immensely in all sorts of aspects of my professional and personal ambitions. For that, I am grateful.

I was driven by something more than my ego. I enjoyed seeing the dance community come together – grow, build and celebrate a shared passion of music, hip hop, movement and so on. I also had the most amazing and supportive group of artists and volunteers that shared my vision and believed in the positivity of what we were creating.

Then I quit my job and decided to take a break – from my career, from running a business – which I had poured so much of myself into for over a decade. It was time to reassess how I had changed and what I wanted for my life. Then I met my husband.

I was single for 3.5 years and I purposely stayed that way because I was constantly refining the sort of person I wanted to spend my life with and was very quick in filtering people out of my life romantically. I also don’t think I’ve ever envisioned any sort of wedding in my life, even though I was 90% sure I would get married some time in my 30s.

That, along with my minimalist approach to life, made me want to keep things simple and true to my self and my partner.

We eloped because we could keep things hassle-free and make our special day all about us. The only thing I had to organise was ordering the rings and booking the wedding celebrant. It was all about minimising stress, which would have otherwise taken the fun out of the actual event. It was perfect.

The Hawaiian is the extremely romantic one in our relationship and desperately wants a more formal ceremony with our family and close friends; my mother absolutely dreams about a Hawaiian wedding and so for them, it’s a big deal. I’m just going with it. It actually gives me a little bit of anxiety, with all that event planning that I’m just not keen on.

But it’s not about me; it’s about the people who want to celebrate with us, which is a beautiful thing.

I’m not going to think about how we could better allocate the money (extensive travelling through Europe, investing in real estate or using as business capital for example) or fuss about the effort involved. I guess I will just allow things to happen.

My wedding isn’t about me. It’s about allowing others to celebrate our love.

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