ADHD and Me: The perfectionistic insanity associated with DIY’ing my wedding!

Visit my photographer, John Dukes on Facebook for his beautiful landscape and city photos!

Oh you read that right. I GOT MARRIED! And I did a lot of the decor and little extras all bymyself. I am SO over ambitious. Thanks Bipolar for the hypomanic episodes where I was able to work and get stuff done. Thanks depression for all the missed opportunities to get stuff done, but give me time to relax and get my head straight. But no thanks to my ADHD and Perfectionism for making the whole process much harder and scarier than it had to be.

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read full privacy policy here.“

So a bit of some background. I got married on Father’s Day in 2021. It was supposed to be in 2020, but thanks COVID. So, I had a full year to get done all of the pretty things I wanted to do. In reality, I got majority of the work done in just 2 short months. I was working on things the day before the wedding, specifically when I realized I hadn’t made my groom his boutonnière. Nor one for my soon to be step father in law. So, in a panic rush I had to hot glue my fingers… and ribbon around silk roses and shove pins into my fingers, and through said ribbon to make those damn things. Yes, I hot glued my fingers sixteen hours before my wedding. I hand painted my welcome sign two days prior. I remade my bouquet four days prior. My jewelry was finished five days prior. All of this should have been done weeks and weeks before. But, my ADHD superpower- hyperfocus came in handy and pushed me to be my most creative and vigilant at the last minute.

ADHD has a habit of making the sufferer avoid any task they feel is boring, or will not turn out the way they expect. Oh that was me to a fault. I was avoiding starting things because I was afraid I’d fail at making them, or they would look cheap and crappy. And the time investment I needed was giving me a sense of dread and avoidance. I am my own worst critic. Luckily I was able to get a handle on my pervasive perfectionism and everything eventually came down to me saying “Good enough for Government work”. It was better than that, but it was hard to put things down. That’s why I redid my bouquet fours days prior. I’d done it three months prior, but at the last minute that government work just wasn’t good enough for me. ADHD’s perfectionism had hit me like a train and I just HAD to change it. I’m glad I did, it turned out much better the second time and I was very happy with it.

So why didn’t my groom do anything… which is what he said to me, thinking you the reader would assume he was a deadbeat or not wishing to help. It’s because I wouldn’t let him. Nor would I let anyone else help me. That’s the other crap side of perfectionism, I have no tolerance for other’s work. I don’t have an issue with other’s work, and in some cases (such as live flower arranging) I am happy to let someone else do the work. But for so much of my wedding, I just had to do things myself and by myself. And I’m sure I made my mom upset by not including her, but I can’t help it. It’s a compulsion. And I’m a mean, rude, cynical person when someone else tries to help. I can hear me being a royal bitch- yet I can’t stop it. So, I just keep people back so I don’t cause them mental and emotional harm. This is especially true of the other human I share a living space with. I did not want to be super critical of him for putting some glue in the wrong spot or not seeing how that one flower is just not in the exactly right spot in the arrangement. Speaking of arrangements- he did forget to bring the one I’d ordered for the In Memorium table for our dads. Luckily it was the only thing forgotten.

Is perfection something you deal with? I find saying the phrase “Good enough for Government work” to be so helpful when trying to finish a project. It reminds me that I don’t need it to be prefect, I need it to be done. Now.. if only I could stop fussing over this blog post. Agh!

Please do not forget to hit me up with your email address! Thanks for reading!