When I first meet my fiancé, I thought he would be the last person in the entire world I would ever want to date, much less marry. It’s not that we fought in class, but we weren’t exactly on speaking terms. After a few weeks, I swallowed my pride and apologized and Kraig, my fiancé, did the same. Bitter enemies turned into best friends.

Now, a little more than a year later, we’re planning a wedding. When Kraig and I were dating and started talking about getting hitched, I didn’t see how it could be so much work. Pinterest made a wedding seem like all dresses, flowers and diamond rings. What could be so hard about that?

Now that I’m in the thick of planning the shindig, I can see why so many couples choose to get married during the summer. Planning a wedding mid-semester is not for the faint of heart!

To begin with, weddings are insanely expensive. I don’t want to go into particulars, but let’s just say that for my wedding, and most others, the cost would pay for a very nice and newer used car. I crunched the numbers and I think eloping would’ve been a heck of a lot cheaper and easier. Booking hotels and flights to Hawaii for my family and my in-laws would’ve been cheaper and easier than going through with the whole wedding-planning process.

I sincerely hope I don’t, but if I ever do the wedding thing again, I would definitely go for a small, destination wedding. It seems to me that it would be much less stress to have a very low-key, personal ceremony in paradise than planning a massive, hometown soiree.

The wedding is supposed to be all about what the bride wants. The thing they don’t tell you is making all those decisions can be really hard and stressful.  I’ve loved planning my wedding, don’t get me wrong, but I’m getting so sick of making decisions.

For the longest time, one of my big concerns was the decorations for the reception. When I came to the point where I thought I was going to explode because of the anxiety of it all, my mom found a wedding decorator.

Hiring our decorator was the best decision that could have possibly been made. It took a lot of the decisions off of me, relieving a lot of my stress. It also took a lot of the shopping and penny-pinching out of the wedding too. While it did take up a sizable part of the budget, the relief from knowing that I didn’t need to worry about the decorations for the reception was worth every penny paid.

There’s no way I could have planned this wedding without the help of many heaven-sent family members and friends, especially my angelic mother. My mother has been with me every step of planning the wedding, often working longer and harder on it than I have time to. While I work hard at school, she’s doing her best to keep up with her own responsibilities and do her best to make everything as easy as possible for me.

While I make it sound like all big, hard and expensive decisions and no fun, I could not be more excited to be marrying my best friend. Kraig has come to my rescue so many times in so many different ways. When I get stressed about something not working out or frustrated because there are more things to do than there are hours in the day, getting a big hug and kiss from my love makes it all seem a little more manageable. To be honest, despite the stress of it all, I can’t wait to marry the man of my dreams, my prince charming, my best friend.

Like one of my favorite movies says, marriage should be a “dream within a dream.” Most couples aren’t crazy enough to start that dream mid-semester, compounding several different stresses together. Even though it hasn’t been the easiest road, hopefully, “Love, true love, will follow (us) forever.”