One of my best friends is getting married. We, The Fabulous Five as we like to call ourselves, are all extremely excited because she’s the first among us to get engaged, so it’s a huge deal. We’ve all been friends since high school, and we’ve been waiting for this moment. However, when we all got together for dinner this past weekend, she’s not excited at all because everything is not going to be the way she’d always dreamed of it being. In fact, she was downright surly.
Let’s give some background here. This girl has been wedding obsessed the whole time I’ve known her. I’m pretty sure she was the only 14 year old ever who bought bridal magazines on a regular basis. However, we all did it as giggling teenagers — spent hours on the phone talking about what our weddings would be like whilst not even having the prospect of a boyfriend. It’s ingrained in us as little girls that the most special day of our lives will be the day we get married. It’s, therefore, natural for us to fantasize and plan for that magical day. So to hear that my newly-engaged friend was upset about her impending day was especially disheartening for me.
Marriage has become about the wedding. What’s going to happen within the marriage itself is an afterthought. The first thing people think of when they become engaged is planning the wedding. And nowadays, if your wedding isn’t an extravagant affair, it seems that it’s not worthwhile at all. Between WE tv and TLC, there are enough wedding shows to last a few years, and they typically feature these huge extravaganzas that no one without a six-figure salary can even dream of replicating.
I want the world for my friend, but the reality is that the images we see in movies and on TV shows and read about in story books are not easy to come by. So when it comes time to actually planning our weddings, we feel less than. Wedding days should focus on the love. You’ve found someone who you want to spend the rest of your life with. Revel in it! Rejoice!
If having the big gala is that important to you, then maybe you can delay your plans. Get married in a small ceremony with an intimate dinner afterwards and then begin to save up for a bigger wedding for one of your anniversaries. No, it’s not exactly how you’d always imagined, but you’re still getting what you wanted in the long run. We have to allow our dreams to be malleable. Don’t despair when things aren’t perfect, because the perfect wedding truly doesn’t exist, no matter how many times David Tutera may try to convince you that it does. Focus on the more important fact that you’ve found a life partner and things will probably seem a whole lot brighter. I’m hoping my friend embraces this idea, because the most important thing is her relationship with her fiancé, and no wedding should get in the way of that.