Bride-to-be Blogger Carly: Getting Stressed Out By the Small Stuff

Hemera

Throughout wedding planning—at least so far—I’ve been pretty decisive. When I like something I tend to know it, and go with it. That’s all there is to it. So when it comes to the big stuff (venue, photographer, dress, bridesmaids dresses) I’ve been able to trust my gut and stick with it. But, the less significant details have not been so easy.

Getting caught up in the details isn’t new to me; I can look back and definitely see a pattern of this. From putting together the perfect theme gift to finding a bottle of wine that bares a name appropriate to an occasion (I bought a bottle of Rigatoni Red the last time I went out for Italian, because the name was so fitting!), I can spend hours worrying about getting the littlest (and probably to some—Sean included—inconsequential) details. (That one bottle of wine took me 15 minutes to choose in a very small store!) The problem is, while I’m busy trying to buy the perfect thing, I miss other fine things, and end up with nothing at all. I’m the person still shopping on Christmas Eve or scrambling to throw together my dish for a dinner party because I just couldn’t choose what to make! I am a planner, not a procrastinator, most of the time, but it wouldn’t appear that way because I seemingly do everything at the last minute. But the truth is, I’m spending too much time obsessing over how to find the perfect thing that I’m left with more or less the opposite.

My most recent example: choosing a return-address stamp for our save-the-dates. I decided months ago (after hand-writing our address on thank-you cards following our engagement party) that I wanted to buy a rubber stamp with our address, to make sending out our save-the-dates, thank-you notes and RSVP’s much easier. I Googled “return address stamp,” and found links to Etsy.com. So, to Esty I went.

Pages upon pages of options appeared on my screen. I began clicking through and knew, pretty quickly, that this wasn’t going to be easy. I knew I wanted a rubber stamp (versus self-inking) but other than that, I was totally unprepared! There were hundreds of choices of fonts and designs to pick from. At first I just causally browsed, but when I would go back later to look again, more stamps would appear, and I wouldn’t be able to find the one I was looking for. I soon figured out that Etsy allows you to mark favorites, so I began to mark ones I liked (at prices I deemed reasonable) to compare later.

Once morning, a few weeks ago, Sean asked when we should send out our save-the-dates. I mentioned that I was working on picking out a return-address stamp, and, once that arrived, we could begin sending. A few days later, he checked back in: “When’s that stamp getting here?”

“Oh, uh, I haven’t picked one, but I’ll have it ordered by tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came, more fonts appeared, and we still had no stamp. I decided to enlist Sean to look though my page of favorites and make the final pick, since I was obviously finding it impossible—but after he instantly chose one, I decided I hated them all and went back to the drawing board. (Do I sound absolutely nuts yet?) All in all (I am embarrassed to admit), it took me about a month to choose our return-address stamp.

It arrived last week (thank goodness!), and I am very pleased with it! So tomorrow, Sean and I will work on getting our save-the-dates ready to mail. This involves us figuring out how to get a printer to address the cards for us, which, I can promise is going to be a challenge in and of itself. But at least the return address will look great! (Which reminds me: I need to get an inkpad!)

Growing up, we had a book in our powder room called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. I’ve paged through it a few times and understand the message, but I can’t seem to live the message. I don’t think that I’ll ever completely let go of my perfectionist side, though I try to keep it to a minimum. But, I think it’s important that I know it about myself and try to manage it when I can, and laugh about it when I take it too far.

Or maybe I should just read that book.

Anyone else get caught up in details like fonts? How do you handle it? What do you find harder, the big or little stuff?

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