Nice enough
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I've recently got engaged. From their reactions, this means different things to different people. For some, it inspires giddy excitement, including "squee" noises and hugging. For others it's indifference. At least one person laughed heartily. Thankfully only a couple have offered condolences. My own reaction thus far has been one of bafflement, not at the engagement, but at what comes afterwards. I seem to have made the mistake many men make. I planned for the engagement. I forgot about the wedding.
Within days of getting engaged, I was shown a colour scheme. At this point we hadn't told anyone else and I was still getting used to my change in status before it became public knowledge. 'What do you think of this?' asked my new fiancée as she shoved her iPhone under my nose. On the screen, a photograph of a room full of chairs and tables failed to stir an emotion. 'It's a room,' I replied. 'Yes, but what do you think of it?' she asked. I looked at it again. It remained a room full of chairs and tables. 'It's... nice?'
Similar conversations followed. On the second or third one, this time with her brandishing an iPad, it occurred to me that I wasn't just looking at a room. There were colours in it. 'Yes,' I said. 'It's nice.' Unfortunately by this time, that didn't work. The word 'nice' isn't... well... nice enough. 'Yes, but what do you think of it?' she said. I looked at the picture again. The tables had white table cloths. The chairs had white chair covers with an accent colour running down the back. For the briefest moment, a thought began to develop from the right side of my brain. 'It's nice,' I said. She sighed and took the iPad back.
As a web developer, I'm faced with colour on a daily basis. We have a designer, who sits next to me, who creates fabulous visuals in Photoshop, which I'll then cut up and write the code for. There are colours all over them. There needs to be. In my efforts to build a website, I'll do my best to replicate them as best I can to make a site that looks good. In my spare time, I also paint. This requires a certain understanding of colour theory in order to produce decent results. But show me a table and I'm out of my depth. I am aware of tables. I understand their purpose. I have several of them. What I can't seem to muster is a desire to decorate one.
The word 'wedding' seems to be a fancy term for 'decoration'. From people, to cars and furniture, everything needs decorating. For example, if we have people over for dinner, decorating a table involves a table cloth and some place mats. At a wedding, it involves table cloths, place mats, name cards, table centres, some kind of odd confetti-esque sprinkly stuff (for which I'm sure there is a better name but, like its purpose, that eludes me) and a gift box/bag for each person seated at it. Even the chairs need decorating, at the very least with chair covers (implying the chairs aren't nice enough) and maybe even a bow of some sort (implying the chair covers aren't very nice either).
I do understand that these things are important at weddings. I know we'll have them all. What I hope I'll be forgiven for is my lack of opinion on some of them. It's not that I don't want to be involved. I do. If I manage to formulate an opinion, I'll share it. But if I look at a table, I'll always see a table. Give it a cloth and some plates and I'm happy. I'll never agree that it needs more than that, but I won't object to having it so long as it looks nice. Nice is enough.