I let millions of strangers vote on every single detail of my wedding, and it made planning a lot less stressful
- After getting engaged, I felt overwhelmed by the wedding planning decision-making process. So, I let millions of strangers vote on every single one of the details instead.
- I set up a website and posted new polls each month. Pretty quickly we had a wedding date, location, and guest list number pinned down.
- We didn't always agree with the decisions people made, but went along with them anyway.
- Even though we ultimately had to start all over again due to the coronavirus pandemic, the process still let my fiancé and I enjoy our engagement without the stress of arguing over hundreds of decisions.
A couple of minutes after I got engaged, the chaos started. People around me started asking what kind of wedding I wanted, where I wanted it, and who would be invited.
When I checked my phone, I found friends and family members giving me unsolicited advice about what to do next. "Please elope," a friend from college texted me. "Tell me you're going to have a destination wedding! My bags are literally packed," a cousin said in a voicemail.
I didn't have answers. I still had wet, happy tears on my face from the beautiful proposal when I realized that planning my wedding would be filled with a lot of decisions, but even more opinions from the people in my life.
The days and weeks that followed my engagement were consumed with conversations that turned into fights with my fiancé. I felt pressure to set a date, book a venue, and get everything organized in an Excel spreadsheet so that I felt less like a Bridezilla and more like the prepared bride people expected me to be.
But that didn't happen.
We spent an entire week debating the wedding date and another week going back and forth on whether it would be worth it to splurge on a band over a DJ. At that pace, we would have had our wedding planned in five years, and neither of us wanted that to happen.
I was overwhelmbed by the decision-making process
One afternoon, after feeling overwhelmed by the decision-making process of planning a wedding juxtaposed with the influx of advice that every single person wants to give you when you get engaged, I decided enough was enough.
I sat down, opened my computer, and put up a website called Finallythebride.com.
I looked at more than 50 wedding decisions that I had to make ASAP (the foundation stuff like where, when, what kind of wedding, and who would be invited), and I made them into polls that people could anonymously vote on.
When I first pressed publish and showed my fiancé, his eyes bulged, and he asked me why in the world I would leave our precious wedding decisions to strangers.
However, after an hour of thinking it over once I explained, he agreed that it was a good idea and I started sharing the website.
I wanted our relationship back — wanted to talk about other things and get these decisions made fast.
I also thought it would make our wedding feel unique.
Tough decisions were settled quickly by our new 'board of directors'
Soon, hundreds of people had voted. Over the course of a few months, this turned into thousands, then millions.
Every month, I released new things to vote on and updated the voters on what decisions were made based on old polls.
The site has now been up for seven months.
Within the first month, strangers voted that we should have the wedding in October 2020 (not March, July, or December — those were the other options), that the wedding should be in Florida (not NYC, Portland, or LA) and that we should keep the guest list to under 150 people.
To my fiancé and I, those decisions were things we had wrestled with for a long time, so we were happy they were made for us.
We also found that letting strangers vote on our wedding helped resolve debates we had with each other. My fiancé wanted to do an open bar, but I was leaning towards either just beer and wine, or an open bar for half the time and a cash bar after that. I stressed the cost and how much we'd save. But after putting it up as a poll, 94% of people voted that we should absolutely have an open bar.
Letting people settle our discrepancies made wedding planning feel like we had our own board of directors, voting on what was best for us, in an organized way that didn't make us feel constantly overwhelmed by texts, emails, or in-person conversations with friends and family about the wedding.
Whenever we'd talk about the wedding with people (even strangers we'd meet out and about) and they wanted to give us wedding advice, we'd send them to the website. It was our way of separating wedding planning from taking over every aspect of our lives.
We didn't agree on everything they voted for, but we went along with it all
The tricky part was that there were some things people voted on that we didn't agree with.
While most of these things were minor — like having assigned seats, going with a traditional wedding cake over a dessert bar, tossing the bouquet, wearing a formal wedding dress, and having a first dance — it still made us occasionally question whether we'd be happy at our own wedding.
It took a few weeks for us to feel okay with incorporating these decisions into our wedding plans, but we ultimately decided to listen to the audience and do what was decided for us.
Whenever we felt nervous by decisions we didn't agree with, we remembered what we signed up for (or what I looped my fiancé into doing) and gave in to the fact that this wedding wouldn't be what we initially thought it would be, and that was okay. We had trouble agreeing on that vision in the first place.
Luckily, the strangers voted for a manageable budget
The poll that gave me the most anxiety was the one on how much money we should spend on the wedding. I put up a three options: $15,000-$30,000, $30,000-$55,000, or $55,000-$80,000.
We were paying for the full wedding ourselves and had both agreed that we'd like to spend as little as we could.
We didn't want to go into debt over the party and hoped to keep our budget under $20,000 (contributing $10,000 each from different savings accounts we each had), but I feared people would vote on a high-end budget that we wouldn't be able to afford.
If they picked option 3, we'd either have to save for a few years, find a way to make money with a side hustle, or ask our voters to reconsider the poll.
Lucky for us, 68% of people voted on the $15,000-30,000 option. I felt a wave of relief, as well as a bit of regret for letting people I didn't know vote on something so financially risky.
We eventually had to cancel the wedding and start over again
Over 75 wedding decisions were made, from the venue to the save the dates, when the coronavirus was starting to sweep the world in early March.
As March got worse and April found most of us altering our lives, we put up polls asking whether or not we should cancel the October wedding, and if people would feel comfortable going to a big social gathering in the fall or not.
By early May, most people said they wouldn't want to go to an October wedding and that yes, we should cancel, though they suggested we should do a virtual wedding instead.
We decided to cancel our original plans and start over again, carrying some decisions — like the food, cake, flowers, etc — over to our new wedding plans.
As far as what kind of wedding we should have, where it should take place, and a new date for 2021 or 2022, that's for the audience to decide.
It's not as stressful as it sounds
Planning a wedding the first time around is stressful enough, so having to cancel and re-plan it for an unknown date is extra frustrating.
As a Type A person who wrestles with anxiety and an inability to make fast decisions, having strangers by my side (virtually) to plan the wedding both the first and second time around has made it less stressful, though.
Wedding planning shouldn't be taken too seriously. It's one day of your life and, ultimately, it's a fun celebration.
So many weddings feel like copy-paste versions of the last one you went to.
When millions of people get involved and decide for you, your wedding is sure to be something nobody has ever experienced before.
Read more:
Stop rescheduling your wedding for spring 2021 — the pandemic still won't be over
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