How I Overcame My Obsession With Having The Perfect Bouquet?

How I Overcame My Obsession With Having The Perfect Bouquet?

I still look at pictures of wedding bouquets and marvel at them, but the way I see them is different now. I appreciate the individual message each one sends and I focus on appreciating that. Not only does this provide deeper meaning, but it makes you appreciate that sometimes a flaw or minor imperfection can be beautiful as well.

When I think of my wedding day it’s hard to not focus on my dress. It’s the centerpiece. If my wedding were the solar system I would look at my dress as being the sun and everything else being the planets and moons that orbit around it. My dress gives light to everything else and makes them look better in the process.

So then why don’t I feel the way I should regarding this? Why instead am I so obsessed with the wedding bouquet? It’s just a bunch of fancy flowers put together right? Well I just can’t help but to not think of it this way. It’s surely the second most critical accessory concerning the entire outfit right?

Due to this I intend to put a lot of thought into it, but I feel I’ve become too entrenched. Why you ask? Well I believe I’ve come to look at it for more than what it is. Luckily for me I overcame this obsession and I’m going to explain how, but first I want to focus on why I was so obsessed in the first place just to paint a clear picture. I’m sure some of what I’m about to state will resonate.

The over the top wedding bouquets of celebrities I watched

Celebrity weddings are more about the fancy factor than anything else. I focus more on the external then anything specific about the bride herself. The dress, yes, but the bouquet I really zeroed in on. I saw so many fancy bouquets that I begin to feel like if I didn’t have one it would send the wrong message.

My solution was to look for florists with a lot of social cache, celebrity florists. What I found was that not only did they feed my habit, but they convinced me that these bouquets were vastly superior to any original idea I had. Breaking away from this was the first step and an important one.

The countless hours I spent on Pinterest marveling at the selections

I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I spent on Pinterest. I’m not even really a social media kind of person.  But the countless images of wedding bouquets available on the site are hard to not get drawn into. You might as well call it a black hole for me, because it sucked me in and wouldn’t let me out. There are so many images of amazing bouquets that one can get lost down a rabbit hole that’s virtually impossible to escape from.

What’s worse is that more images are always being added and if you click on any one of the links, then you’ll be lead to websites that feature more of the same. Overcoming this for me took a lot, but it started with me understanding that these images aren’t going anywhere, will continue to grow and I can take them in anytime I want. I didn’t have to be consumed by them or feel like I was going to miss out on something.

I started to look at them the way I would a song I like. I can consume it anytime I’m ready. I’m in control.

How I saw other women compare their own wedding bouquets to those of others

A bouquet is a bouquet, but is it really? When I go to someone else’s wedding am I impressed by the idea that a lot of money was spent on them? The answer for me was yes. I saw countless brides who needed guests to believe their bouquet was extremely expensive.

From this I got kind of a spinoff habit though. I begin to like the idea of bouquets that looked super expensive, but were actually really inexpensive. I would think “how can I replicate that look for a fraction of the cost”? I would do this for virtually every expensive bouquet I came across online or in person.

And this was time consuming. Remember, these weren’t bouquets that I was going to use. I just got off on the idea of seeing if I could do it. It’s like seeing a guy on the street with certain clothes on and thinking to myself how could I give him a makeover to make him look more appealing, and on a budget. Just to reinforce the idea that I could do a lot with very little.

I thought I could do better than a florist could

Florists have a lot of industry experience and are extremely well versed in all things flowers right? Well my ego wouldn’t allow me to accept this. In fact, I got off on the idea that I could do better than florists and this is in part what fueled my obsession even more.

I even started to dismiss the idea that florists were truly critical at all, because I was so attached to the idea that my imagination could come up with something so spectacular that it would dazzle anyone who saw it. Too bad for me I wasn’t very good at getting what was in my head into reality.

Then, I came across sites that allowed you to assemble your bouquet in real time. This might as well been like an addictive drug to me, because boy did I experiment. And different sites offered different capabilities. I never felt a personal touch though. I still struggled with the idea that I had it truly right.

The truth is I wanted the perfect bouquet and I felt like no matter what there was always something better out there that I’d missed. Just when I’d happen upon something that looked beautiful I would ask myself “is this the best I can do”? For god sakes they’re just flowers right? Well, not to me they weren’t.

Overcoming this issue was something I needed to do. I didn’t need the perfect bouquet, but I wanted something that would be unforgettable for sure. Then one day I came to a realization.

“Yes, the various bouquets I look at and obsess over might look beautiful, but after seeing so many of them they all sort of start to look similar after a while”. I thought to myself. They start to lose the sentimental impact I want them to have, because I’m looking at them only through one lens.

It didn’t stop here. I begin to think about the real reason I was so concerned about having the perfect bouquet and was a junkie for taking in images of them so often. Think about what the bouquet means. My ego got involved to a certain degree.

At the end of my wedding reception I’ll be throwing it into the air for some lucky women to catch who is hoping it will lead to her being the next to get married. So the bouquet takes on even more of a special meaning to me and I need it to be aesthetically perfect.

I had to remove my ego from the equation and I had to look at the arrangement for what it is. They are more than just decorations, but symbols. They don’t need to be perfect and it doesn’t need to matter what anyone else thinks of them. I overcame my obsession by realizing that unless I plan on preserving these flowers, then they’re not going to last very long after the wedding. So why not just appreciate them in the moment and not get too hooked on some false notion of perfection?

I still look at pictures of wedding bouquets and marvel at them, but the way I see them is different now. I appreciate the individual message each one sends and I focus on appreciating that. Not only does this provide deeper meaning, but it makes you appreciate that sometimes a flaw or minor imperfection can be beautiful as well.