My older sister, bless her heart, got engaged to her now fiance in November, and has set the wedding date to some time in 2015.

Don't get me wrong, I am super excited for my sister because she's about to embark on this huge journey in her life with her fiance, and it's an exciting time for everyone involved. However, in being an outsider, I can see certain problems.

My sister is 24 and still lives at home. She acknowledges that she can't afford to live on her own (and her Italian fiance is having a difficult time leaving his mother's house as well), but she believes that she and her future husband can afford a $20,000 wedding. Something is fundamentally wrong here. Maybe when she went to all the wedding expos and subscribed to the magazines she somehow got drugged or something, but if you can't afford to live on your own, how are you going to afford a $20,000 wedding?

Another problem I've noticed, which is probably pretty universal, is that the mother-in-law always creates a problem. I come a very small family, we have ten people on a good day, but my sister's fiance's family is rather large--part of the Italian heritage I think. My sister's mother-in-law did her the favor of putting together a list of people she wants at the wedding--100 people. More than half of these people my sister has never heard of or seen before, and certainly never will after the wedding. I don't know why, but it seems as though the mother-in-law is trying to take over my sister's wedding, and my sister is currently in the process of trying to respectfully tell her to butt out.

A very interesting problem came up the other day too. My sister is trying to make me and her college roommate the maid of honor. My mom doesn't agree with this split, she thinks it should be me, or if there will be a split, I get most of the honor. I don't know how this wedding stuff works, but I'd be more than happy to let my sister's roommate take over. I'm pretty sure they fight less.

Weddings are a different type of animal, and this is certainly special to the occasion. Welcome to the family!