Becoming a Bride

Brides out there, what was your wedding day like? Was it the romantic, intimate day filled with love and the support of friends and family as you have always dreamed it be?

Before becoming engaged, I thought weddings were cliche. I thought it was unrealistic to think an event so public and so contrived could also be warm and intimate. I was disgusted with gaudy wedding dresses, meretricious centerpieces, cheesy prom-like portraits, and the whole princessy-fairytale fakeness of it all. I didn’t think I was that kind of girl and could never imagine myself putting on such a flashy affair. I preferred a quiet, small wedding, a secluded beach with just a few close family and friends…After the engagement, however, my head was quickly filled with visions of a candlelit garden soiree, guests enjoying a cool mojito and summer evening breezes, and Martha Stewart-like table settings. I was determined to make MY wedding down-to-earth, genuine, heartfelt and reflect our personal style.

I spent a year researching, perusing tons of wedding blogs looking for unconventional wedding dresses, coming up with personal elements to infuse, and devising “down-to-earth” details like home made favors and flowers in vintage vases. “Vintage” and “DIY” were all the rage in every wedding blog and magazine and I was gobbling it all up.

We busted our asses to find the perfect garden venue that was within our small budget (we spent many of our week nights and weekends researching venues hoping to find a secret locale no one has discovered and we visited dozens of venues before finding the right one). We made program fans, designed our own invite suite, collected vintage bottles and vases, bought hundreds of candles, made our own centerpieces, personalized our own mint tin favors, gave out bubbles for guests to blow as we walked down the aisle, hung up lanterns on trees, spent late nights and weekends selecting the right music, and even created our own wedding website.

For months I was looking for the right dress, trying on dozens and bought and returned at least 7. I think I was literally obsessed. Why was it such an imperative? I don’t know…it was like I was filling my head with these imageries of perfect, candid-like moments that I saw on photographers’ websites, blogs, and magazines and they look so beautiful, so effortless and elegant that I desperately wanted to experience that. I didn’t realize until after the fact that all of that were, for the most part, staged.

I found out the hard way and admittedly, I was a little let down by the experience I had versus what I had imagined. As my bridesmaids observed, I seemed to have lost the moment. The irony was, my own preconceived notions of a “perfect wedding” became the very barrier to the natural experience I had hoped for. Please excuse the literary geekiness…I would liken the experience to Walker Percy’s essay, “Loss of the Creature,” which hypothesizes that the true moment is lost because of the comparison you make to the expectations you had of that moment.

However, this does not mean it’s impossible to truly enjoy your wedding. I believe it IS possible to enjoy the wedding, but in a way that is contrary to your instinct. The beauty of weddings is they are totally unpredictable. No matter how well you planned it, you are guaranteed to have mishaps of some kind. But it is precisely those mishaps which are the true, unique moments that make your wedding memorable. Admittedly, it is no easy feat to actually enjoy those accidental moments. I had a lot of fears leading up to the wedding and when some of those fears came true, naturally I freaked out. For example, I forgot to bring my traditional VN gown with me to the wedding site. Though I should have rejoiced at the miraculous coincidence that my friend’s dress fit me perfectly and I was able to borrow it, my all consuming thought at the time was, “My mom custom made my dress for me, she’d be so angry when she sees me walk down the aisle in a different dress!”

I couldn’t be in the moment because half the time I was worried about the moment being messed up.  I think I planned the wedding for others more so than for my fiance and me. If it was really for us, we probably would have had that small wedding on the beach . But we all worked too hard for me to regret it. Really, if you see the photos, you’d see my vision to the T. And from my guests’ point of view, I know most of them experienced the wedding as I had hoped it to be.

I’m sharing this so you’d know the truth behind the pretty pictures, the truth which I feel most people wouldn’t admit. Honestly, I almost didn’t want to put all of this down because overall it was a beautiful wedding and I’m not doing it justice. Still, I think there is something to learn from it, so I dwell a little longer on my mistakes to share this with you. My advice to future brides: Experience the wedding through your own eyes, not others’ eyes. Fight your instinct to control the unforeseeable, give in to the real moment, and take it for what it is, not for what it was planned to be. Don’t take things too seriously. Focus on what the day is truly about: you and your fiance. The union and promises between you and your fiance and support of your family and friends are the only necessary elements; the dress, the flowers, the food, the venue, etc…are only icing on the cake (albeit very expensive icing).