My dream wedding…on the beach in Maryland where I spent every summer of my youth. Walking down the aisle barefoot while my family and friends watch. My beachy-wedding dress blowing in the wind as we say “I do” followed by a beach reception that would be carefree and wonderful.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
First problem: my husband’s family decided that they couldn’t afford to drive/fly to MD from NC and stay in a hotel. I would have offered to pay, but he has FIVE brothers and sisters.
Second problem: while planning the wedding, the doctor gave my husband and me some tough news. We were facing infertility due to a condition I had inherited and if we wanted children, we couldn’t wait until next year after the wedding. So, I was 5 months pregnant with our daughter on our wedding day. See you beautiful beachy-wedding dress! Hello, mu mu style gown!
Third problem (and final straw): as soon as I saw that my dream wedding was becoming more and more impossible, I lost my mind (pregnancy hormones didn’t help, either). I became a bridezilla, telling people that it was MY day, and nothing I wanted was going right!
Cue the meltdown, tissues, and hugs from my extremely patient fiancé, who was probably questioning his decision to marry such a high maintenance female!
One day, I woke up, rubbed my ever-growing belly and realized that it didn’t matter where, when, or how I married my fiancé. The whole point of the wedding was simply to marry him. That day, I brought my cute, fitted gown back to the bridal store and exchanged it for something 4 sizes too big in the belly (I kept swearing I wouldn’t fill it out by the time the wedding day got here..yeah, right!) and started looking at local venues.
Of course, our wedding day couldn’t have gone better. Sure, the cake melted in the fluke 90-degree heat on that May Saturday and we ran out of beer within an hour of the reception because of a severe underestimation of just how much our friends and family could drink. But, by the end of the night, people were saying…no, slurring…that it was the best wedding they had ever been to.
Bottom line: You can’t control everything about your big day. If you have extremely high expectations that everything will be perfect, you’re probably setting yourself up for disappointment.
My advice is to control the things that ARE in your control (not the weather, pimples, or just how inappropriately intoxicated your new sister in law gets). Let other people worry about the things you can’t control and have back up plans. Honestly, most of your guests won’t notice if your cake topper is turned 10 degrees too far to the left.
Some of the things you can control: Your dress: Your bouquet: The songs your DJ plays (*hint hint*).
In the words of the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.” All you need is the man you love and the mentality that this is the best day of your life.
Two years later, we laugh about the melting cake and empty kegs. And people still tell us it was the best wedding they’ve ever been to.
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