Orgenising your wedding

It doesn't matter what you've accomplished so far in life, you could be a professor of chemistry, marketing managers at high-tech company or an HR executive at a bank. Planning a wedding starts from scratch. You will stand on the starting line, with the glazed look of a fresh army recruit and your mind will switch off. Good luck.

What hasn't been written about planning a wedding? Words and sentences and magazines and heavyweight 900 page books. They can't really help you. Not in your state. What can? Like in anything else in life: experience. Because you have no experience planning a wedding, stick to something similar you've done in life.

The closest thing you may have done to planning a wedding, is planning the trip you took after the army. Planning a wedding is also a trip to another country. Prices are high, customs are strange, and you feel different.

So here are some things you may have come across on your travels, and may shed light on your new situation:

Language

Any fledgling tourist quickly learns a few catch phrases to help get along, and the first sentence you will learn in your trip to wedding land is "you only get married once". This has long been statistically disproven, but as you will see, can solve any problem.

Where are we going?

You know the Israeli sentence that is actually an oxymoron: "I went to a place where no Israelis go."

In fact, this will probably be Phuket or Machu Pichu, but it expresses our burning need to feel special and different in a place where everyone acts the same.

This need also springs up in the first stage of planning a wedding, where you imagine an intimate wedding with 80 guests on Manara Cliff or a party for 500 at a Tel Aviv nightclub with no food, but only alcohol and recreational drugs. But you quickly realize that the trodden paths can only go through a traditional 350 person wedding at Ganey Yakinton, and it is risky to embark on an adventure, especially when "you only get married once".

Who to go with

The most important question is "whom not to go with". When you planned your trip overseas, you didn't take your parents. They may have come, but only after you found yourself in the Indian jail or turned into a dolphin. Planning a wedding should be the same. Leave your parents at home. This trip will only bring out the worst in them. Call them only when in trouble (you need more money etc.)

Travel light

Keep things simple.
First of all, when choosing your trek, don't mark too many points on the map, or you will feel like "Europe and the Far East in 12 days.". Respect your time limits and make sure to see a maximum of 4 service providers in each category, or the wedding will wear you out before it even began.

Don't take too much on the road either. You pay more for extra baggage, especially when eventually you use the basics: underwear, toothbrush, and MP3 player.

Prices

It's expensive here, in Thailand it would have been cheaper.

One of the most annoying types of people you meet on your trip is the kind who delves into your pocket. He usually butts into a conversation you're having with someone else: "are you nuts? Flying there? That costs loads. Don't overdo it. There are freight ferries that leave once every two weeks for half the price." Or: "You spent $800 in a month in Vietnam? Are you nuts? I lived like a king there for $300."

You will find these types in wedding land too, usually at social encounters or in the various forums. They can't see why you would pay NIS 6000 for a DJ when their cousin knows someone who would play at your wedding for NIS 2100 and so on.

The bottom line: Do what is good for you. If you have money, spend it, and if you don't, don't fall into expensive pitfalls, but remember that there are no guarantees on what you buy in the stalls of Kawa San, and hey, you only get married once.

Enjoy (a bit of two-bit psychology to conclude)

There are many other similarities between the trip and the planning: your friends (single friends) who remain at home, the compulsive need to show photos when you return, the yawning emptiness that remains when it's all over, etc. But the most important similarity of all, should be pleasure.

You've already chosen your partner for the trip, but you've never embarked on such a journey before. You suddenly find out that their socks stink, they fart more than at home, they don't really listen to your requests, and they call their mother every day to hear recommendations as to what comes next. Annoying.

Add the emotional strain of the wedding, and you get the recipe for the dejected thought: "what am I doing with this person" and cancellation of the wedding. Try making more of an effort for each other, take things lightly, it's just a wedding, after which you are supposed to live together for dozens of years. Don't forget that. Do what you can to enjoy it, or you're better off staying at home.