Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tight-Lipped

Maybe I'm being too cautious; maybe it's paranoia; maybe it's the horror stories I've heard from other brides.  Whatever is the root cause, here's the result:  I don't talk about my wedding on Facebook.  Right after Mr. Goodlaff proposed I changed my status to "Engaged" and that was probably the first and last time that I will post anything wedding-related before we're married.  No status updates venting about wedding planning, no mentions of time, place, or date. My Facebook is a wedding-free zone.


Here's why: 



1. People

2. People

3. People

Seeing a theme here? Like a lot of other users, my Facebook is a place to keep in touch with people that I don't get to see very often. I have a lot of friends from college that, although I've "liked" a few status updates here and there, I haven't spoken to in years; high school friends that post awesome pictures from way back when; family members that I rarely get to see.  The simple fact is that while I have a lot of virtual "friends," we're just not close enough for me to invite them to the wedding. If we haven't talked in over a year (some family excepted), then I didn't put them on the guest list.

The last thing I want to do is hurt feelings or start feuds because we want(ed) to have a small ceremony with only our closest family and friends.  Most people are understanding and will get why they aren't invited.  It's not that we don't want them there, it's just that we can't afford to invite our entire friends list.  Feeding people costs money, and since we haven't won the lottery yet, we need to keep an eye on our expenses.  So, we prioritized and created a guest list that fits our budget and lets us include the people we are closest to, but sadly not our Farmville friends.

There are times that I wish I could share.  I want to post silly little things and comments and pictures, but I save it for my blog or for Twitter, neither of which are linked to my Facebook. Mama Goodlaff taught me that you don't talk about a party around people who aren't invited--it's just not nice.  Wedding talk is banned from my Facebook because I don't want to get into a situation where I have to deal with  "I can't wait to get my invite" and "I'm totally there" comments from people who won't be getting an invitation, and probably believe they should be.  Ultimately, it's an attempt to minimize drama. 

Is it right? Should I be this careful about what I say? Maybe, maybe not.  But it's working for me right now, so the Goodlaffs are going to roll with it.  In a few months, I'll get to change my relationship status to Married, and then I won't have to keep censoring my Facebook feed.  It will be a happy day for many reasons!

Are you talking about your wedding on social media sites like Facebook?  Do you have a policy about sharing your wedding, or are you just winging it?

5 comments:

  1. You can make it so that your status updates only show to certain people. I did that, because I wanted to post wedding things like, "bought my dress!", or "picked out the bridesmaids dresses!". It worked pretty well.

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  2. Love this post! I'm right there with you--I get so tired of reading friends' status updates about their plans and I don't want to offend any non-invited people. On the other hand, at times, I feel like my "blog friends" know more about what's going on with my wedding than my "real friends" do. It's a tough choice. I like Laura's suggestion...but there's no way to absolutely prevent it from appearing in others' feeds (e.g. so you censor it to only show to your Bridesmaids...but if they comment on the status, then their comment and your status will appear to all of their friends and so on and so forth). Stinkin facebook. :-)

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  3. I can see where you're coming from. I made a comment once about the wedding that was misinterpreted by my future mother in law and later made a big deal. Never again. I just pick and choose wisely what I share. =)

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  4. It's tricky the media world we live in, isn't it? I think you've made a smart decision.

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