Welcome to Prologs. My name is Mary, and when I get overwhelmed and start feeling behind, I find it helpful to zoom out and remind myself that I am still in the beginning of my story. I'm sharing all of my life's chapters, mental health, relationships, wellness, beauty, the chaos of being in my 20s, and all of life's unexpected turns. Prologs is the best way to start

your week, so join me every Monday morning for a new entry into my digital journal.

Hi, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Prologs podcast. My name is Mary, and I'm talking

about wedding planning today. You know what? I should probably put on my wedding rings for this

episode. I took it off this morning to touch up the fake tin on my hands.

I forgot to put them back on. Okay, there we go. Because I feel like if you're watching the video, it's weird for me to talk about wedding planning without the wedding ring on. So I got engaged in fall of 2021 and my wedding was spring of 2023. So I had over a year to plan along with my husband Matthew, who you guys know from the podcast. And I feel

like my experience wedding planning was hard. At the time, I also just didn't know very many people

who were engaged at that time or who had already gotten married. Now, I feel like so many of my

friends are married. They're planning weddings right now, which is so exciting. I love going to weddings. I'm so excited. There's more weddings than my future to go to.

But at the time, I really didn't know anyone. And I experienced a lot of anxiety wedding planning,

and I felt very ashamed of it. And I felt like I couldn't talk about it and couldn't verbalize it.

I felt ashamed because I thought that if I talked about

being anxious while wedding planning or if I talked about all the parts of it that I didn't like,

people would interpret that as me not wanting to get married or getting pressured into getting

married, not wanting to be in my relationship, et cetera. And I didn't want anybody to think that

because that's not true. I was so excited to get

married. I just wasn't excited about wedding planning. I tried to be. And in some some eras of that time,

I was, but I also just had so much anxiety that I felt ashamed of. I wanted to sit down today to talk

to you about things that I wish I knew while wedding planning. The wedding industry is

absolutely massive. There's so much pressure to have a picture perfect Instagram worthy wedding.

I feel like you go on social media and people are posting their cost breakdowns or 10

unique things they did at their wedding or their insanely gorgeous wedding photos and wedding videos. And it just,

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