Now for a real thought

OK so here goes my first thought on screen:

I don't think I ever want a real wedding.

My mom wouldn't like this thought, either would some of my friends, but most of all I don't think my own boyfriend, Todd, would like this thought.

Where does it come from? I'm not sure.

When I was younger I played "Let's get married" with my brother. We'd walk down the hallway with a veil and flowers in hand, arm in arm and it always made me feel good. It made me feel so good that sometimes we would get married 3-4 times in one day.

But now I am almost 30 and don't have that feeling anymore. I am excited for my friends who get married, love helping them with some of the planning, like thinking about the honeymoon. But the actual day....I usually do not like. I hate the pictures, the church service, the reception. When I was younger I used to sit with my family at weddings and pout. They just felt so fake and so forced. I was supposed to be having fun, but I never had fun on the actual day.

The only wedding I truly enjoyed from beginning to end was my friends' Kim and Brennan. There was something different about that wedding. I enjoyed the entire weekend from rehearsal to the morning after the wedding. Of course I don't remember a good chunk of the reception but what I do remember I liked. I'm not sure why their wedding was so different.

But this I do know.....as my best friend gets married in October, as one of my good old friends, and ex, also prepares to get married in the next year I have started to feel like this whole wedding thing isn't all for me.

So I think....what do I want for my future? I want to have children, I want a companion, I want to grow old with somebody. But I don't want the fancy wedding. So I think about eloping....and then I know I would disappoint way too many people. But I would disappoint anyways because I really don't want a big wedding.

What I see, if I were to get married, is a small wedding outdoors somewhere with a few family members and friends. A cozy dinner together that night, heading off for a honeymoon for the next week and then arriving back to celebrate with everybody in a big way.

I'm pretty sure people have done this before. I need to ask them how they felt about it. I need to get some kind of drive for the whole wedding thing. All I see is the times after the wedding, not the planning and the extravagance of that one day. It seems like too much work for such a simple, yet beautiful, gesture.

These are my thoughts for now. For now.