I wasn’t excited for my own wedding.
Throughout wedding planning friends & family only seemed to ask me two things: “Are you excited?” or “Are you stressed?” Every conversation began that way for a while I thought there was something wrong with me. Why aren’t I excited? Why aren’t I stressed? Am I not doing something? Did I forget something? I really was just apathetic about the whole thing. I was ready for it to come as much as I was ready for it to be over.
I always thought I’d be excited about my wedding until the reality of it all kicked in. The financials, managing everyone else’s expectations and emotions, and staying true to what is really authentic to me was a challenge for the entire year planning the wedding. Over and over again I wanted to throw my hands up and just go to court to seal the deal. The truth is I wanted marry Jason but I no longer wanted a wedding. If I was able to get our venue deposit back I would have cancelled the whole thing…but I couldn’t. We were stuck. And I was going to have to learn how to push through.
And that’s exactly how it felt – like pushing through. As I write this I’m thinking of walking through knee deep mud wearing only sneakers and one sneaker gets stuck in the mud and you have to continue with one less shoe. That’s what pushing through felt like to me. It was hard, tough and I wanted to give up once a week.
The thing holding me together was knowing my brother would walk me down the aisle, and that my other brother would have the first dance with me. This was the only place I’d ever have that moment and that moment was worth holding on to and keep me going when the mud was thickest.
The wedding brought us to couples therapy. We weren’t struggling but we also weren’t happy. The fights were all over me doing to much and needing help, and him not following through. The couples therapy taught us about an S…my drawing below:
The S is our range of emotion. Jason happens to have a smaller range than I do so he feels stressed much faster than I do. He also takes much less to make him excited. I waiver on in the middle and only reach extremes when I’m really excited or really sad. Most of the time I go up a little or down a little but stay pretty medium.
When I stepped back and thought about my wedding S I realized that there wasn’t something wrong with me for not being excited or stressed. I just wasn’t as excited as other people. The stress and planning had weighed down the excitement, but the moment with my brothers was keeping me at the mid-line. I wasn’t either stressed or excited, I was apathetic, a bit content, and kind of just coasting along until the “big day.”
The morning of the wedding I still wasn’t excited. I got my hair done, Jason picked me up from the salon (see I told you I wasn’t traditional) and we picked up my best friend from the train station. It wasn’t until I saw my friend Nicole, who was also our photographer, that I really felt like oh crap…this is my wedding. Throughout the day the excitement stayed low but for me, that’s ok. It allowed me to really enjoy all the moments of the day and be surprised. It allowed me to feel real happiness when Jason’s friends came to show us a friend had FaceTime’d from Australia. I felt excited when it was time for the “first look” and I felt calm when taking family photos. The one time I felt nervous and wanted to be with my brother the bridal attendant told me to stay calm and wait. I replied “no! This is good for me. I’m feeling something I haven’t felt so far. I’m going downstairs.”
The wedding actually went slow for me because I had so many moments to look around in awe of the party and everyone smiling. I wasn’t worried when we were running late, I wasn’t concerned when the favors didn’t go out, I just didn’t care…the day was happening and I allowed myself to flow with it.
I think the moral of the story here is that we live in a world where people judge us off of their S – and their version of excited or stressed. When we really release the expectations and tap into what is true for us we can let go of what others think and know that we are okay and experiencing life just as we were meant to.
