LIBBY ROLFE’s diary of a don’t-worry-be-happy bride-to-be

IT’S about five weeks until our Big Day and it’s going to be exquisite – an elegant, intimate celebration of our love, shared with a small group of the people we care about most.

At least that’s how I feel during the day when I’m wandering around in a state of loved-up bliss.

The sentiment is not so romantic at 3am, when I’m awake in a cold sweat, panicking about how high the heel should be on my bridal shoes. Because this is THE Big Day.

Obviously, the height of my shoes has to be Absolutely Perfect because I will only get married once and I don’t want to look back in 10 years and regret my choice of footwear.

Wedding regrets are something I am particularly interested in. I’ve never met a married woman who wishes she did more, spent more, or invited more people to her wedding.

Mostly people reflect on their big day and say they wish they had kept it simple and didn’t stress so much about the details. With this in mind, my approach has been to ignore the details. Which is why I find myself with no confirmed music, flowers, photographer or rings. Not that I’m planning to go without these things, it’s just that in my efforts to avoid stressing about them, I accidentally forgot to think about them.

Many of my friends and family members are in a state of despair over my lack of organisation.

My soon-to-be mother-in-law felt the need to step in when just a couple of months out from the big day we admitted we had not decided on where to hold the ceremony or reception. Upon her suggestion that I “just get on with it” I booked a venue. Done. Good. I had ticked a box. Then the venue burnt down! Back to square one.

In the spirit of keeping it simple, there are things we have decided to do without. These include a wedding cake, those little RSVP cards in the invitations and a wet-weather back-up plan for our outdoor ceremony. Naturally, this makes the sensible people in our lives rather nervous. The other thing we’re doing without is guests – and lots of them. We are inviting only immediate family and a few friends.

We have plenty of dear friends who haven’t been invited to the wedding. This doesn’t mean we don’t adore them, it just means we want a very intimate wedding where we get to talk to each and every guest. And we had to draw the line somewhere.

Many of our guests are from interstate, so I was mindful of the need to get invitations in the post as early as possible. Eight weeks out I strolled into Pepe’s Paperie, chose a design and had a proof by the end of the week. As a former editor, it’s only natural that I’m particular about style and wording. Do I want full stops in between the letters RSVP? Where should the spaces be in the phone number? Satisfied I had these details sorted, I was impressed with my own efficiency until I realised the wedding date was wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, it was two months out. This was not the designer’s error either. I had given Pepe the wrong information about my own wedding. Luckily, I had picked up the boo-boo before I’d approved the design.

A week later, I walked out of the store with our beautiful invitations. It wasn’t until I started addressing the envelopes that I realised the RSVP address was wrong. This is my own address. I had given the designer the wrong information – again.

So we reprinted the invitations.

Not only did I spend too much money, I realised I had spent too much time worrying about the wrong things. No-one cares about invitation punctuation. What happened to not stressing about details?

I am reminded to focus on what the day is really about. My fiance and I. Celebrating our life together as a family with our nine-month-old baby girl, who will most certainly not have a nappy incident or tantrum of any kind on The Big Day!