The Pinterest Syndrome (and how to avoid feeling inadequate about your DIY skills)

Pinterest is the most amazing website if you're engaged.

It's also the worst thing to ever happen to a bride.

Here's the thing. When you get engaged, you have absolutely no idea what it takes to plan a wedding. You say yes to the ring, call all your friends, and then you start planning. You don't think about chair covers and centerpieces and wedding welcome bags originally, but there gets to be a point when you have no idea what to do so you consult Pinterest.

And Pinterest is there to comfort you with a plethora of ideas.

And then next thing you know, you're sitting in your living room on a Friday night, cutting out letters from cardboard boxes and wondering if maybe you could make your own table numbers.

Buy table numbers.

Don't sit at home and think you have to make everything. And don't try. If you don't make everything, don't worry and don't feel inadequate.

Not every bride is making everything. I honestly don't know a single bride who made everything for her wedding. I mean, how many brides do you know who cooked the food, make her own cake, and DJ'd the entire affair?

There are companies out there (I've come across a few) who you hire to design your table settings, to create your color scheme, to craft your centerpieces. These companies do have Pinterest pages, as do the brides who hire them, as do the guests who attend the wedding. There's a good chance that someone will take a photo, post it online, and it will get pinned. It'll circle around the Internet and get back to you. And you will pin it and think, "Wow. Someone made that. I should make it for my wedding."

Yes, someone made it. But maybe it was made in a factory in China. Or maybe it was made by a professional.

It doesn't have to be made by you. And that's okay.

You don't have to make everything. You don't have to plan every detail. You don't even have to have a reception. The only thing that is required of you is that you promise to love your fiance for the rest of your life.

That's what's most important: that you and your fiance will be melded together (by God, the minister, the justice of the peace, whoever) and you both are promising to love and honor each other from that day forward. You are throwing a party in order to celebrate and thank your friends and family for coming to the ceremony where you took a vow to love one other person for all of eternity.

If you made or bought your centerpieces, that's not what's most important.

Remember that.

BRIDAL BABBLE: What's the one thing that you absolutely refuse to DIY, no matter what? (Mine is my vows. I do not want to and will not write them.)