Planning a wedding with AS?

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Hi,

Me and my other half are getting married this time next year and we're at the stage now where we can start booking things and making bits and pieces that we're doing ourselves.

I'm just wondering if anyone else here has dealt with planning a wedding whilst having AS. From colleagues at work, I believe it isn't an easy task even if you're good at dealing with people...

In order to cut out some of the "having to deal with people" stuff, we're doing a lot ourselves (invites, music, clothes) and trusted family and close friends are helping us out with food, decorations and stuff.

But that doesn't change the fact that I'll have to deal with about 90 people for a full day and be expected to smile and be sociable and nice whenever one of them wants to talk to me - even dealing with about 10 of my close family over Christmas is exhausting!

My partner and my family are incredibly supportive and we've cut the time of the reception to a minimum (afternoon, for a few hours - I can be home and in bed by 9pm if need be )
I know I've got a year to try and convince myself to deal with it, I just can't help worrying about having to deal with so many people at once...

Any thoughts, suggestions or stories would be appreciated

My mom did most of the planning like buying the dresses, the flowers, found a catering company for me, a minister. My aunt also knew of a place that worked on wedding dresses so I brought my dress there to have it worked on.

I looked online for places to have the wedding at and found a bakery that did wedding cakes, and invitations.

It was very stressful and it increased my anxiety and was more violent. To this day my husband still jokes about me throwing a cell phone at him.

The day we got married, I was very surprised I didn't hide upstairs with the laptop watching Benny & Joon and getting overwhelmed from too much touch. Four hours was plenty because by the time it was over, pretty much everyone had left. Only ones who remained were my family and relatives.

You guys are much, much better than me at social interaction and enduring the weight of social conventions then.
I agreed to get married only in case there is no wedding per se and it's only me and my partner present. Nobody else was invited and people knew about what happened roughly an year afterwards. Even my parents. But then I knew what will happen if I told them I am getting married, considering the fiasko of my prom night (I didn't want to go there either but they made me and as a result I had the worst night of my life).
And even with this I had a huge meltdown the evening before (and I did throw a lot of things, cell phones included ) and presented in the mayor's office with not one, but two cold sores - one on the upper, one on the lower lip - which happens when I am under severe stress. Had the ceremony over and in about 5 minutes, and then me and my husband had a drink and a pizza, if I remember correctly, in a nearby Italian restaurant. And there was no kissing the bride whatsoever as my mouth was a mess.
I do envy your courage, both of you.
Good luck with your wedding, black_swan100. You are brave enough to face it all, while I , was a coward, plain and simple as I assumed I could not face it and I never tried to.

Do THIS!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIvfDTtK-RI[/youtube]

Women are worth next to nothing.

My husband and has just over 100 people at our wedding, but almost all of them were people I knew well and cared about. (Don't let anyone force you to invite someone you don't want there -- my mother has a good friend whom I neither like nor respect; I told my mother I refused to invite an adulteress to my wedding and my mother understood.) Rather than have a receiving line where I would have to hug people over and over and make annoying small talk, my husband and I chose to go from table to table and thank people for attending during the sit-down luncheon following the ceremony. I recommend this; people are less likely to want to touch or engage you in long, pointless conversations if they have food in front of them. My husband and I had a sweetheart table (table for two) so that we only had to interact with each other after we said hello to everyone. Also, if you choose a reception that is mostly sit-down, it reduces the amount of circulating you have to do. We also had a string quarter playing for most of the time, so there was soothing background noise (that really helped me). Controlling my own circulation and including soothing touches made the whole reception far less stressful. Another option is to pick a guest who you will know will want to talk/listen to you for a long time -- people are unlikely to interrupt the bride except to say goodbye!

I also found that the vendors -- the director of the chapel where we got married, the employees at the hotel where we had the formal luncheon reception and casual buffet dinner, the DJ, the string quartet, the caterer, the florist, the company that provided our linens, the women at the dress store, the photographer, the bakery, the place we rented tuxedoes, the hair and makeup stylists, etc. -- were used to dealing with stressed-out brides. I planned my very formal wedding myself, with a little help from my mother. My husband could not be very involved; he had to be out of state for work during the months leading up to the wedding, and was only home on occasional weekends. Luckily, his attitude toward many things was that he trusted my judgement.

It was difficult and stressful at times; I remember at one point calling my then-fiance nearly in tears, saying that I understood why my brother and sister came within hours of eloping! I was undiagnosed at the time of the wedding, but I knew myself well enough to know what parts of the wedding would stress me out (a receiving line, nowhere to retreat between the ceremoney and reception -- make SURE you have a seperate room where you can go to be alone and relax if you start to stress). I actually had a lot of fun overall, and I think that if I liked people at all, I'd be a good wedding planner. What matters (I promise) is that at the end of the day, you'll be married. It a cliche, but it's true -- the wedding doesn't matter nearly as much as the marriage!

All women do is destroy men who are too weak to stop the madness.

We were able to restrict the wedding to my wife's family's living room, catered by her niece, with her father officiating as clergy. Available family [a lot of them children at the time] and a FEW carefully selected and invited friends.

We left almost immediately afterward and got out of town. It was STILL stressful and too social, but bearable.

If you choose to medicate, pick something that does not affect your mood or dull your understanding. Me, I would recommend some of the antistress Bach Flower Remedies [#1son the musician finds they hdelp before a gig, we use them before a party].

Thankyou for all the responses!

Severus - That is pretty much what I have wanted to do since we got engaged, I wouldn't says it's being a coward at all. Unfortunatley my fiances family would definatley fall out with us if we went and got married without telling anyone and I don't think that'd be the best start to a marriage

I tend to panic more in formal situations so we're thankfully keeping it informal. We're trying to have things to do at the reception (games and things) rather than the typical music and dancing which might make it a bit easier.

A laugh is good every now and then, even if it is at my expense. I'm definitely not the most likable person you'd ever meet but everyone lives their lives somewhat differently.

You think I can't get laid? This is probably true but it only interested me until somewhat recently.

Why, thanks for the support, black_swan100, I still feel a little ashamed of what I did but I knew I couldn't face all the turmoil.
You are right, families can get offended if they don't get a wedding invitation (and you might explain your head off that there wasn't a wedding to be invited to, they seem not to get it) but in my case all we had were my parents (of which only my mother mattered and she has always been very understanding) and my husband's father, who was practically an invalid and couldn't come out of the house anyway. Were there extended families, I might have tried, but the way it was, there was no problem.
I see a lot of great advice on this thread and I am sure that you'll manage the wedding beautifully.

I believe it is considered socially acceptable to sneak away somewhere with one's spouse (or nearly spouse) periodically during the wedding. Just not during the actual ceremony. Most people would not be offended if they figured you were off kissing somewhere. Just put in regular appearances, and you should be OK. Scout out some private places where you can re-group when you get too overloaded, and plan to spend the first few days of your honeymoon primarily relaxing.

I did this 3 years ago. My advice is to always, always remember that it is YOUR wedding and it should be what you want. Make it your own. If there is a tradition that you don't like, throw it out and do something that you do like. I couldn't bear the thought of the bit where everyone comes into the reception and the wedding party line up and greet everyone one by one as they come in. So we didn't have it. I also couldn't bear the thought of sitting at the top table in a row with our parents where everyone could see us. So we didn't have it. We had round tables and and my husband and I sat with our closest friends and our parents were sat at tables with their closest friends/relatives.