How you spend the time on your wedding day shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s fundamental to everything.
I was looking through one of my personal albums the other day and was reminded of a day trip we took to the High Atlas, Morocco.
Bundled into an ancient looking (and smelling) mini van, we set off into the morning sun. It was quite relaxing watching the landscape change besides you. From almond groves, disconnected settlements and eventually to the basin of the High Atlas, where we’d begin our ascent on foot. I say quite relaxing because it wasn’t some 10 minutes into the drive that a very loud American accent piped up from the front and said “Oh my gawd! Have you seen Breaking Bad!?”.
Sigh…
Sometimes it seems there is no escape, eh?
Learning some of the history & geography of the area from the guide was most interesting, but there was a particularly apt moment that I often find myself coming back to.
Stumbling back down the rocky pathway, I asked Helena for the time, thinking of daylight and the time we might return, as navigating the historical center of Marrakech at night had already caused enough stress (PTSD?).
The guide saw us looking at our watch and laughed:
“In London you have watches,
In Morocco we have time”.
And as amusing as this was, it made you think for a moment…
How often do we find ourselves chasing time and the importance of it?
It’s crucial that we get some genuine enjoyment out of how we spend our time otherwise, what’s the point?
It’s something that I come back to when ‘time is of the essence’.
Naturally, time has a particular hold on your wedding day.
You have to schedule all your suppliers, work out everything that will be happening across the day, and before long it can feel like time has an ever tightening grip on you.
Especially when there is the potential to feel (perfectly innocent) pressures from family and particularly wedding blogs and magazines about what to wear, what to do, where to be, what is in season…
You have to say “no”.
“This is my time.”
Assign your own value and meaning to it.
How do you wish to enjoy your time?
And don’t give yourself a generic answer.
Your valuable time doesn’t have to be spent as one long photo-shoot from hell, sweating from location to location in the burning sun. Or being taken away from your guests every 5 minutes for yet more photos. Or just enduring anything that isn’t genuinely ‘you’.
This is why it’s so important to find someone who gets you, as everything then just works the way it’s supposed to.
After all, the experience of your own wedding day (or life) shared with loved ones is going to be far more memorable and meaningful than anything else.
