u/fiionabee

Just looking for a bit of advice here. I'm hoping to start trying for a baby in the next 6 months, but I'm also working with a few others to propose a special issue in a journal and possibly organise a workshop/symposium at a conference next year. The timing is such that I'd likely be on maternity leave when the conference is on and during the editing phase of the special issue (as long as we don't have difficulties conceiving). Would you take this into consideration when committing to something like that, or should I just carry on as is and not talk to anyone about it until I'm actually pregnant? For context I'm a postdoc and the others are all senior researchers.

We're getting married in 1.5 weeks and after all the stress and a couple of disappointments I'm struggling to really feel excited. Nothing about my fiancé - we have a lovely life together already and I'm looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him, but there are a few things about the wedding itself that have been getting me down. The main things are:

1. The wedding is SO expensive, about $90k AUD all up. A lot of this is going to our venue because we have quite a lot of guests, but everything else kept adding up too and it was hard to find significant ways to cut back. I honestly feel ashamed of how much it cost, especially after seeing a lot of discourse around weddings being a waste of money.

2. Out of about 180 people at the wedding, only 22 are my guests. Most of my extended family and quite a few of my friends are overseas and couldn't make it, and I don't have a large family or lots of friends to begin with. My fiancé though is very social, and has a large extended family that all live in the same city as us. He also comes from a culture where the whole family (including various in-laws and second cousins) get invited to weddings. I know and like his immediate family and closest friends, but I'm also quite shy and pretty apprehensive of having so few of my people at my wedding.

I think I'm also nervous that the day will be a bit overwhelming and won't be what I always envisioned for my wedding. It feels like there's a lot of pressure to get this one day right.

Was anyone else apprehensive before their own wedding but ended up enjoying it more than you'd expect?