Burbank: Refocusing your wedding to not care what others think

Together in holy matrimony. The bells mean one thing: Exactly one week from tomorrow, I am going to be a married man.

It has been a long road to get to this wedding and an expensive one to boot. Why is there so much societal pressure surrounding weddings? Everything having to do with a wedding is more expensive and more difficult. And every person you deal with during a wedding planning process is more difficult as well.

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I can’t tell you how many times my wife-to-be and I found ourselves saying, ‘How about we just forget the wedding and get eloped?’

That’s not an uncommon sentiment, from what we’ve heard. Feels like so much of wedding planning is not thinking about what will be fun for you, the ones actually getting married, and instead what’s going to be fun for our guests.

You begin to cater so much to what others will think of the event you forget to think about what you are going to enjoy during your wedding. So what do you enjoy about your own wedding? What’s the most important part?

I’m not talking about the obvious thing, the love surrounding the joining of two families, I’m talking about the material stuff. What makes a wedding fun?

As the youngest of seven siblings, I’ve been to countless weddings throughout my life. And what always stood out to me was the music, I always paid special attention to the music choices that each of my siblings made for their weddings.

What songs did they choose? What songs emit joy? What songs emit love? What songs really get the people going? I’ve been thinking about the music at my wedding for most of my life.

I’ve been compiling a playlist in my head for years, adding songs and deleting songs. But there’s one song that always made the cut for me.

Something about this one just fills up my heart with joy. You best believe when this song comes on at the wedding, I’m going to be on the dance floor with my beloved, forcing her to groove with me.

It’s going to be embarrassing, seeing as neither of us has much of a sense of rhythm, but I don’t care. It’s our wedding day, after all, and our guests can judge me if they want.

People say that your wedding day flies by too quickly to really enjoy it, but I do want to enjoy it.

So I want to hear from you. What do you remember most about your wedding day? Was it the setting? The food? The dancing? Let me know on our text line at (888) 973-5476.

Friday’s guest commentary is from KIRO Newsradio Producer David Burbank, filling in for Dave Ross.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.