I was never a little girl who dreamt of my perfect wedding day. My childhood was spent surviving emotional abuse and neglect. I could never picture myself as an adult at all, let alone imagine myself walking down an aisle. The future was an encompassing gray haze to me. The only way to avoid getting lost in it was not to engage at all.

One thing I did know: I really wanted to get married. I wanted a partner in crime. I wanted someone I could rely on who could rely on me. I wanted to face the world as a team.

The whole wedding part got a bit lost in translation, even after I became an adult and those hazy milestones started to become closer realities. We all know my sordid history with weddings. After breaking off two engagements, I finally was planning a wedding with the man I would eventually marry. And then there was a pandemic.

We did get married, but it wasn’t anything like I could have ever anticipated. I figured there would be time to celebrate with a vow renewal when there was time. Eventually, we started planning. But then… I realized my priorities had shifted. And whether it’s the wisdom that comes with age or the cynicism of end-stage capitalism and the industrial wedding complex, I feel like weddings have become a many-headed monster that I can no longer convince myself I can control.

My husband and I set our vow renewal budget at $15,000. Which is a fraction of the average wedding budget in our area. But the more I thought about it and the more I saw brides-to-be posting on wedding groups, the more disillusioned I became with the idea of having a vow renewal like a traditional wedding.

Even with an estimated 40 guests, the vow renewal immediately exceeded the budget on paper. Which, I have planned enough events to know, that is the beginning of the end. I had already cut out a great deal of wedding “necessities” and chose vendors who were reasonably priced, but it didn’t seem to matter.

While I believe celebrating should be done as often as needed and there is nothing wrong with spending money on that celebration, I could only stare at my potential budget knowing I am growing my own disappointment. In the past, I would have pressed on, because it’s my wedding. And weddings live by different rules. But now, I had to ask myself, was this worth it?

I didn’t like the question or the answer.

When it all comes down to it, there are plenty of ways to have a wonderful time celebrating the love I share with my husband that doesn’t require extensive planning and so many thousands of dollars. Although it comes natural to me to overcomplicate everything, I really wanted something simple and fun. We have already done the hard part, which was to build a successful marriage. It didn’t make much sense to obsess over flower arrangements or swipe a credit card on a $5,000 dress I will be uncomfortable in for a day.

Not to mention, being on all those wedding groups, I have had a front row seat for how miserable wedding planning and wedding themselves can be. I’m sure plenty of people have breezed through it without so much as a wayward worry. But the groups are filled with brides panicking over the smallest details, nitpicking their own decisions as if it’s a matter of national importance, and all of this is set to the backdrop neverending debt. There’s only one chance to get a wedding right and unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it will go right. No matter how much money you spend.

I started planning my wedding in 2010. It’s 16 years later and somehow I am still reading posts about brides seeking photographers to shoot their entire 12-hour wedding day for $150 like it makes any sense. I think part of my disinterest is actually just boredom. How can weddings have changed so much yet so little in almost too decades?

It’s very weird to have chased something for so long, just to have grabbed hold of it, only to realize it’s not what I want anymore. Sometimes I would tell myself that having a wedding is a perfectly normal desire, why should I be excluded from this experience? But apparently paying Etsy witches to prevent rain on your wedding day is perfectly normal, so how am I going to defend that point?

There will be a celebration. There will be fun. There will be a wonderful time. I don’t know exactly what it will look like right now, but it’s not going to be the weird concoction of bridal musts I put into a blender and pureed into a fine paste. Whatever goes down on that big day, it’s going to be amazing.