"Weddings are great... in the rear view mirror!"

Is it just me or are there a whole lot of weddings lately? I had two the last few weeks, and another very soon. In the town I work in, I'm hearing from caterers that the season has more weddings booked than last year. So much for the recession? Maybe it's because the world seems a little shaky right now, and it's secure and stable to be married? All three gals I've just mentioned have all lived with their fiances, one of them for ten years. She just figured it was 'time' I suppose...
My older daughter got married a year ago and I'm STILL tired from that! Don't get me wrong, it is still a once-in-a-lifetime experience with your marrying daughter to do all the fun things, especially to see her try on the wedding dresses... mmmm, that was the best part. For me personally, I found it very stressful due to the money. I'm not very good with money, and when she got engaged a year ahead, we set aside the budget and started making the commitments and deposits in the spring of '08. By fall '08, the economy collapsed and stimulus' started passing, and no one knew WHAT was going to happen. As you will recall, everyone was holding their collective breath, to see if we were going to repeat the stock market crash of 1929. And we were in the crazy wedding whirl with a December wedding! Talk about stress! Everyone's salary started diving, and it was scary. (It still is, with all that's going on lately...)
But, we survived, and the wedding and reception were beautiful and almost came off without a hitch. One 'hitch' was our VERY expensive florist, who kept coming up with surcharges and more surcharges. We were about to give her the boot days before the wedding. Then she double booked our wedding night (which she had promised not to do) and did OUR wedding flowers the day before and they were already dying on the wedding day! Another hitch was our DJ, whom I knew socially. My daughter had sent him her Play List (and even a No Play List) and not only did he not play any of her songs, but played some of her No Play List and others she detested. And then there's the videographer, who I added at the end, in addition to the previous budget so that we could keep it for eternity... He was this older man, whom I now realize was 'challenged,' and he had a camera from the 1950's(?) that was bigger than him (and he was tall.) Well, just after my just married daughter and husband were announced at their reception (see above photo), he dropped the gynormous camera, and there is no sound for the entire reception... ugh. So the father/daughter dance, father toasts, and well, actually everything is a silent movie. This guy decided to put Celine Dion music behind it, and she HATES Celine Dion. Go figure. To my knowledge, my daughter still hasn't watched the video, as it still gets her blood boiling. She wishes she had done a destination wedding now..
It's still an experience I recommend for every mom.. And I do love weddings, especially if I'm not the one having to help make the decisions. Unfortunately for Alex, I am no Martha Stewart. Au contrare... I'm a NON-girly girl with a girly-girl daughter and I'm afraid frustrated her more than helped her. None of these types of things are my forte. And my mother is gone and my sister is afar, and my best friend lives in California.
In my small German town, these German gals have German weddings down to a science. They have certain women they borrow all the decorations from, and they just keep rotating them. They have beer and barbeque blowouts, but I'm a city girl, and we just don't do it that way... although it might be something we should consider in the future?

We live and learn...