Our vow renewal being called off to do the venue vendor’s bankruptcy and subsequent theft of our deposit has made me think about things.
A lot of things.
Perhaps too many things.
Once we realized the facts of the situation, that we have lost our venue and deposit, and we’re not even back to square one, we’re down several thousand dollars, I went from trying to do anything to just secure our date to deciding we’re not going to rebook our venue.
In fact, we’re just not going to have a vow renewal at all.
After having to scrap all of our actual wedding plans in 2020 because of Covid, just to finally get settled and comfortable for the deposit on our vow renewal to be stolen, it’s hard to maintain the excitement.
But really, I have been planning my own wedding since I was first engaged in 2010. Then again in 2016 with my second engagement. Then again in 2019 for my third engagement, that culminated in me locking my husband down. But we always wanted to have a big celebration of our marriage, so I kicked into high gear yet again in 2024 to plan our vow renewal.
As much as I loved event planning, I eventually felt like I was having Pinterest deja vu. Was I planning my dream wedding or was I just spinning my wheels? So far, the latter!
What’s so wrong with wanting to have a wedding, anyway? I wondered. Lots of people have weddings. Popular venues have them every weekend. Some people have multiple weddings and/or renewals and that’s just what they do. So what was wrong with me?
Well, there are many things wrong with me. But one thing I realized was just how many milestone celebrations I never experienced after growing up in an abusive household and how, when they didn’t happen for me, I told myself that those are things that happened to other people. Celebrations were openly mocked when I grew up, so I had to tell myself something when they didn’t happen for me.
It also doesn’t help that as someone who lives with severe mental illness, I have had experiences the average person wouldn’t and missed out on experience the average person would have had. It was easy just to think when things went wrong I somehow deserved it because I’m not an average person who has normal experience.
When I thought about it, I realized: this is just the party, we’ve done the hard part already.
One thing that stands out to me about this situation is that even though we had a backyard Justice of the Peace wedding in July 2020, my husband and I are solid. In the time we’ve been together we have:
- Survived a pandemic
- Build two new construction houses together
- Moved halfway across the country
- Moved in and out of four different homes
- Learned how to live with and love each other so much
- Adopted adorable cats
We have been through ups, downs, and everything in between. The day we said our vows was only the start of our adventure. We’re not trying to figure out the hard parts of married life, we literally just want to have a big party. That’s it.
This isn’t where we intended to be, but where are we going from here?
Not sure. The museum that our venue is part of told me that they would have been happy to return our deposit, if they had it. But the venue management company had kept it. If we wanted to book with them, we would have to provide another deposit. I did, however, file a proof of claim through bankruptcy court to let it legally be known our original deposit was not a gift.
But I’m also still not interested in creating a new Pinterest board. The venue is the first step on your wedding journey and the idea of even attempting the first Google search just fills me with dread.
Maybe that will change one day. Probably. Maybe it will actually happen this time. Hopefully.