Marriage vs. Wedding

I have been so over-whelmed lately; over-whelmed with all these sudden pourings of important stuff to decide and focus on. Crit session is in 2 weeks, research proposal submission in 5 days, and a sudden serious planning of marriage. Hold your horses,  it's not gonna happen to me anytime soon (considering how one would define the "soon") but I must say, just planning a wedding takes up so much energy. Kudos to those who have had gone through a wonderful wedding (bff just got hitched last Saturday! much love, Kak Ely <3).

A serious planning about this have never kicked in for me, before it was always "we'd have that on our wedding" and "this'll be our colour theme" or "we'll go here for our honeymoon" and stuff like that. Just alot of hopeful imaginary things that one would dream on their wedding day without really being realistic. I am talking on behalf of myself here, because in our (my bf and I) case, he'd be the only one who would have the savings to achieve such "dream wedding" - the downside of furthering studies at an age where I should have had my own savings and get married and do my parents proud by tying myself with a man they'd like. 

Distance has never been any help. Planning all this is tad more difficult while I'm at the other side of the world. Misunderstandings occur, and we can't really 'be there' for each other when everything gets a bit tough to get through. It's not that I'm being ungrateful, far from that. Just something I'd have at the back of my brain every night while I'm about to sleep after a hurtful argument and there's nothing you could do but to sleep it off. 

googled "simple weddings" and this is what I found.
<3

Really though, guys. What is it with this expensive wedding trends? If it were all up to me, I would want a simple romantic wedding, all done in one day. A wedding should be simple, right? It's tough, for both my boyfriend and I, when we think of how we need to meet other people's expectations when we plan all this. "wow anak balik oversea kahwin macam ni je?" is the most disgusting part of our society, isn't it? I know I shouldn't let this effect me but face it, there would be such bad-mouthing if the wedding were to be as grand as a celebrity's, let alone a simple one. This is a trend young couples nowadays face, which is scaring the crap out of  me. With the increase in living costs these days, you can't just save 20k in a fortnight, even if the man i am about to  marry has a decent stable job at this rate. Marriage starts after the wedding. A wedding lasts only a day. Marriage lasts a lifetime, so why are people focusing on the day-span event, rather than the life-span?

No matter how we (my bf and I) try to not listen to these expectations, it does effect us, deep down. I'll never know what'll happen in the future, or how I'd change throughout, but I'm so much frustrated that I'd have to express it somewhere. I'm blessed with supportive parents, I love them so much for that. But it kills me inside to not have met their expectation, whatever that might be. They might say they wouldn't care of what I decide, but we'll never know, you know? 

This is getting a bit too emotional for me so I guess I'll end it here. Time to dive in to this research proposal I have yet to complete. a thousand more words to go! (die)

bye!