(This post was co-written with my wonderful wife, Jenn Ramsdell)

Well, I got married a month a go. It feels like longer but after having a month to recover and catch up on the world, I am ready to look back on the lessons learned. It was a whirlwind of planning and preparing from the time we started until the day of. In the end, all the hard work and stress came together into a beautiful ceremony and amazing time with friends and family.

With that being said, as much as we tried to avoid it, it all got to be overwhelming at times with so many details to keep track of, things to buy, and pieces to coordinate. We had a smaller guest list (around 60 people altogether) but we were also planning the event from afar (we had to take trips at least once a month to New Jersey from Maryland, a 3.5 hour drive).

For those who may be planning their own nuptials, or for those who have been there, here is what our experience taught us:

It Can Easily Become Mostly Not About You...

Weddings often illicit a lot of opinions from different friends and family members. It is important to not let your dreams and needs get lost in the weeds. Make sure to stand your ground with your beliefs and values about your special day where you can (For example; don't want to exchange rings? Plenty of other rituals you can do like handfasting), since it can snowball into something you don't recognize and if you're going down a path you don't want to take, it can feel disingenuous and get costly really quick (see point #3).

Luckily though, our wedding brought many of our friends together in one room, and even though some had never met each other before, everyone had a blast dancing the night away. It was incredible to feel so much love and joy in one room despite anything disputes we had getting to the fun stuff.

The Power of Patience!

Planning a wedding (especially when long-distance planning) requires a lot of moving pieces. We had to coordinate with different vendors, families, friends, work schedules, to get the whole thing together. Jenn and I (but mostly Jenn, bless her) spent many weekends driving back and forth between Maryland and New Jersey to make sure that all the pieces came together. We also were slowly accumulating items for the wedding (we were DIYing hard), so it felt like we were just making small steps toward this bigger thing each day that felt like a lifetime away.

We originally wanted to elope with an even smaller ceremony sooner but we ended up conceded to our families (see point #1) to bring more people together later on. We're glad we were patient with it all since the final product was better than we could have dreamed.

It's Expensive...

There are lots of unexpected expenditures in addition to the standard costs like food, drinks, venue, and the dress. Stuff like gifts for your bridal party, new dress socks, favors, and markers for the guest frame all can sneak up on you or get lost in the shuffle. Thank goodness for helpful friends, family, Amazon, Costco, Michaels coupons and DIY wedding blogs. We were able to focus our budget on things that were important to us. Jenn got a limo, and it turned out to be extremely awesome (crossed that off my "bucket list")! We were also able to save money for our honeymoon in Puerto Rico and also end up breaking even with what we got in gifts and some other money that came in at the nick of time. The whole thing was super cost effective but still a great time, which we were really proud of.

You must set a budget, keep track of everything, and stick to it so you don't let things get out of hand. People will help you out with all this too, you just need to ask.

Have Fun!

Make sure to enjoy the day and have moments with everyone that you can. We're grateful that we were able to spend quality time before and after the big day with family and friends. During the reception, we also were appreciative of the fun we had sharing drinks, dancing, and catching up with everyone who came. The stresses of planning fell away and nothing else mattered.

A wedding can be one of the most stressful times in your life (seriously) with managing everything, but it is also an incredibly unique experience that you need to make sure you soak up so you can have the amazing memories and good vibes to coast off of for a while.

Afterwards, Just Relax

The Honeymoon at the end is awesome. For us, it was a well deserved respite as well as an awesome chance to get out of our comfort zones together. We spent about a week in Puerto Rico, eating good food, laying out on the beach, seeing cool history, and watching the sunset. We loved our time, and imagine going back in a few years for our 5 year anniversary. It was the perfect laid back journey to a new place that we won't soon forget.

Weddings can be stuffed to the brim with emotions, both good and bad. They're a lot to manage but can be an inspiring, magical day filled with loved ones. You just have to make sure to keep the dreaded wedding industrial complex at bay, keep it genuine, relax, and focus on what matters; celebrating your love with your partner.

Hopefully this is helpful to those looking forward to their day, and anyone who has been there, we'd love to hear of your experiences to maybe help normalize ours!

Thanks for stopping by!

For a long time I have considered myself a nerd; an avid reader and true academic from an early age. I embraced the term “nerd” more and more during the multiple summers I spent at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer programs, where I learned that it was cool to love learning, comic book characters, abstract television shows, and the unique brains of those around me. In my adult years, I have retained many of those endearing qualities that made me such an oddball little kid. This is an important piece of my origin story, because I believe this love of knowledge and asking hard questions led me to Women’s and Gender Studies, and then Higher Education, academic disciplines where I get to constantly question ideological structures and challenge people’s preconceived notions of identity and being. I had the opportunity to take a course in my Masters program titled “Men and Masculinities”, in which I explored the multiple masculinities that exist within our society. Since the course didn’t reference “nerd masculinity” within its material, I chose to write my final research paper on the topic, and uncovered some insightful information. So all of this (and my relationship with the one and only Higher Ed Geek, who eagerly pushed me to write about this topic) is what has brought me to this blog post.

I’ll preface this by saying that I recognize there is a difference between nerds and geeks, however there are enough similarities between the stereotypes of the two that for the purposes of this blog I will be referring to “nerds” and a generalized “nerd masculinity” for some simplification.

I started with analyzing some research of school-aged children, since those formative years shape who we become as adults (I suggest checking out NERDS; American Nerd; and The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth if you are interested in children’s perceptions of nerd identity). Stereotypically, “nerds” in elementary and high school are social outcasts, these tend to be the students who have a high intellect, a touch of social awkwardness, and those who find comfort in rational thought. What struck me was that high intellect and rational thought are coveted traits in hegemonic masculinity (the traditional norms and standards society has constructed and expects men to act within); however, nerds are assumed to lack desirable physical traits or social or athletic skills which enable them to fit in with hegemonic standards. These traits may carry on into adulthood, and can become defining characteristics of men’s personalities.

Nerd masculinity is confusing; you might be thinking, “If nerds don’t fit into hegemonic standards of masculinity, how could things like Gamergate or hypersexualized comic book characters happen?” What I’ve learned is that specifically because nerds are ostracized by society (women and other men), they have to perform in a hypermasculine way to attempt to be accepted. This of course, is a generalization, but many nerdy men often feel marginalized within our society’s hierarchical structure, and thus feel the need to marginalize others in order to gain back some sense of power. Every social group (think: religion, ethnicity, national status, sexual orientation) has a hierarchal system in which someone gets oppressed.

Dr. NerdLove has a great article about these toxic notions of masculinity that enable this system of domination and oppression to work in our society. He defines it as a specific narrative about the ways men should act: “emotionally repressed, thuggishly violent, sexually aggressive”. Because toxic masculinity has seeped into every crevice of society, including popular culture and the media, even men who aren’t seen as highly masculine still subconsciously engage in hypermasculine behavior. This is cyclical—nerds are inherently oppressed within the hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity, so they seek out alternative spaces and create their own hierarchy by attempting to emulate behavior that will hopefully gain them more privilege within the hegemonic power structure.

As in all other masculinities, nerd masculinity cannot be understood as a simple blanket identity. There are definitely subtle variations of nerd masculinity that either embrace, or push away from, specific practices of hegemonic masculinity. While nerd culture is not the perfect alternative to hegemonic masculinity, it is certainly becoming absorbed and more accepted by popular culture (read: Marvel and DC movies are dominating the box office, board game sales are steadily increasing, and did anyone see how much Star Wars advertising there was?). Nerd culture is revolutionizing this technological age we live in, and the once ridiculed interests and hobbies of nerds and geeks are becoming popular and in high demand.

While there are still some downsides to nerd culture, including the sexual objectification of women (like women being groped and photographed without their consent at Comic Con, and the few women who are even represented in comics often have ridiculous body shapes and are in in ridiculous poses), as more men begin speaking out against this behavior, and as more women continue joining the nerd ranks, this behavior can and will readily change. Nerd culture has the potential to be a diverse and inclusive environment; just think of all the different characters, superpowers, magical lands, and origin stories that exist across its many different genres. Nerd culture also creates a space for imagination, fun, and creativity, which people of all ages deserve to have access to. Those who embrace nerd masculinity has the ability to subvert hegemonic masculinity and fight the good fight, they just first have to become conscious about what they are standing against.

Jennifer Osolinski is a New Jersey native completing her last semester in the University of Maine’s Student Development in Higher Education Masters program. Jenn’s passions are academic advising, feminism, and social justice. She spends her free time looking at puppies on the internet, trying new recipes, and watching a myriad of TV shows and movies. You can follow her on Twitter: @Jenn_Oso