It's Friday, and you know what that means: Alyssa's Ask Team Practical Friday. Today's post is about feeling isolated and alone while wedding planning, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is more common than not. No matter how much you read about best girlfriends and bridal brigades, modern wedding planning is a long (longer than it should be, if you ask me, but that's a different post) endeavor, and it's an individual one. And for all the moments of joy - the amazing book shower, the crazy fantastic shooting range bachelorette, there are long slogs of loneliness. I fear that what we've gained in personalized wedding style, we've lost in a community of women, grandmas and moms and mothers in law and sisters and girlfriends, pulling us through. So thank God for the virtual sisterhood, right? And with that, I give you Alyssa:
Today's post is not only a great title for a country song, but a very common issue. How can you be in the midst of planning an event that bonds you to someone for forever, but feel completely alone? Here's Kim.
Planning your wedding is supposed to be such a happy time when you're surrounded by friends and family who will do anything to help you and support you. I've felt theoretically supported by everyone but I've also felt terribly lonely. My fiance has a million friends who will, and have already, bend over backwards for him. I have my small group of best friends, 6-7 of them, but many aren't local, can't offer their time to me, and are busy with other things. Don't get me wrong, they are great friends I just can't expect a lot from them for various reasons.
I know I made the right choices with my bridal party. These are people who have known me basically my whole life. I want them there by my side on my wedding day. And I've made peace with the fact that this group will probably only do just that. I'm alright not asking them to go above and beyond, delineating between wedding party duties and helping me with the wedding duties. I know these tasks don't have to be done by the same group of people.
My mom called me this past weekend to talk about my bridal shower and at the end of our conversation I just sat and cried. I wish she didn't have to plan the whole thing, I wish I had the typical bridal party of like 6 best friends who still see each other every week and have girl's nights, who were there for me to do wedding stuff whenever I needed them. But I don't. I love my bridal party but they just aren't typical in that way. The reality is that we've all grown up and moved apart and moved on. Maybe I'm mourning that. I worry that all of my acquaintances and lady-friends-through-my-fiance who I invite to the showers and bachelorette party won't show up. That it will be lame, unattended, and it will make me feel awful.
I guess I'm feeling lonely because I have been, and am going to continue to do a lot of the bridey things by myself. I'm planning my own bachelorette, my own showers (in MA and NJ), and just pray that everyone I invite shows up. I've always been a person who does things by myself because then they are done correctly and by my own terms. But, to my own fault, it does make me feel alienated and alone a lot of the time. I'm ok with this in my everyday life and my work life, but I don't want to be a bridal island. I need support and encouragement and enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, my fiance is my biggest cheerleader. He's my best friend and best thing in my life. But I feel even lonelier when he says he'll take care of everything. Like I'm even sadder and more pathetic for it somehow. That I'll get married and only have him in my life, no friends left, and I would have done that to myself.
I know this is heavy. You and the whole APW community tackles issues that actually matter, like this one, so I hope to not burden you but just reach out for advice. Thanks for listening.
You know, Kim, what's funny is that you're definitely not alone in feeling like a lonely bride. Lauren mentioned this, and several readers made remarks about how being The Bride turned into a more sad and solitary role than they expected. I want to get to that, but first, do something for me. We're gonna have to stop with these "supposed to's." They are examples of people's experiences, but none of them are how it's "supposed" to be. Do not let your expectation of your wedding experience ruin the actual experience, okay sweetie? Okay. Now. It may seem that other brides are surrounded by lovely friends who, like Snow White's little woodland creatures, would help them string garlands and make favors as you all sing happy songs and get ready to celebrate your joyous day. This is NOT the case. In a realistic perfect world, you'd have friends and wedding party members who'd help you with every (or most...or ANY) aspect of your wedding and would be there for you when you needed them. But, unfortunately, that's not the case for you. And I am really sorry it's not, because I can tell it hurts.
But I can also tell you that those seemingly wonderful brides who have helpy-helperton friends who are there for them in every way, even those brides don't have the perfect situation. With very present friends come very present problems. There are personality clashes, strong opinions on details that should be your decision, friends who fall down on the job even though they PROMISE it'll be ready in time for your wedding... For every advantage these brides have, they also have problems that you don't at the moment. This isn't to make you feel bad or shame you about your feelings, it's just to remind you to be careful romanticizing their experience - they wouldn't mind being in your shoes sometimes, too.
I'm really proud of you because you are definitely looking on the bright side. You know you have great friends, a wonderful fiance and a fabulous mother who are all there for you in different ways. And you are right to mourn your loss of what you thought the wedding experience might be. It's one of those little deaths that you are completely allowed to experience and to grieve. Feel it, but do not let it overtake any other happiness that you might feel right now. Yes, your bridesmaids should be the ones who are throwing you a bridal shower. But they are not. And you have a mom who loves you so much she's doing it for you, and she will probably give you something even better than they may have done. Which is better, a shower thrown by people who are busy, far away and/or flighty, or a shower thrown by your mom who's there, mentally present and wants to help?
And don't think I didn't notice this little gem. "I've always been a person who does things by myself because then they are done correctly and by my own terms."
Oooo, busted.
If you don't want to be a bridal island, then you have to not sit under the coconut tree and stare at the sand. You have to ASK for help, honey! Reach out to those people who are part of your bridal brigade. Ask them for support, encouragement and enthusiasm. Just because they are far away doesn't mean that your bestie can't squee over a cute pair of shoes for your honeymoon or that your sister won't listen to you rant about the caterer. They are going to be the ones who can alleviate your fears about the bachelorette guest list and then plot ways to make the people who don't show up pay for their insolence. Honestly, your friends probably know you very well and they know that you like to do things yourself, so they might not even think to offer help. They might be thinking, "Well, Kim has always been so put-together, I'm sure she'll come to me if she needs help." How are they going to know this is the one time that you need their assistance if you don't TELL them? And don't just reach out to your bridal party, talk to friends or family in the area who might be able to lend a hand or just some support with the planning process. You'd be amazed at the amount of people who'll be there for you if you just ask.
And if they're not? Well, then you're back where you started.
But let's talk about where you started. Being lonely doesn't necessarily mean that you are ALONE. There are so many brides here on APW that feel the same thing. Hell, Meg's response to your email was, "Can we talk about this asap? Because I think it's so normal and so secret. I went through this...." That doesn't help you when you're planning your own bachelorette party, but knowing it's normal and common can ease the pain overall.
And maybe it's time to revel in this a little, shall we? Celebrate that your bachelorette party is being thrown by the person who knows you best...YOU. Enjoy not having to mediate fights between bridesmaids on who's known you longest and therefore should be the one to throw you your shower. And bask in the knowledge that you are lonely right now because you are special. You're the only one right now who is planning a wedding to this amazing partner you have. You're not alone, you're having an experience that - while other people can help you celebrate and commiserate (*AHEM* APW....) - you are the only one going through.
As much as you feel alone? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're normal. As imperfect and crazyface as this wedding planning, life-building, marriage-making business makes us, try to enjoy it. Feel, mourn and move on from the bad parts, but really feel and enjoy the good ones. We only do this once, tears and laughter and joy and raging included.
I had 2 bridesmaids. One was great; the other was, well, useless. I hate to use that word because she’s a very dear friend of mine, but her lack of enthusiasm was draining. I realize that not everyone cares as much about your wedding as you do, but it was so gut-wrenching to realize this woman really didn’t care much at all. Or, if she did, she didn’t care enough to go out of her own way to be there for me in the ways I needed her.
I even went so far as to ask a mutual friend for advice on how to handle it, and she gave me a lecture about how no one cares as much about Your Day as you do, and I needed to accept it, and blah blah blah. Yet, only a few months before, she specifically told me she didn’t ask this woman to be in her wedding because she knew she would be this way.
I knew it wasn’t personal, but it felt personal to me. I had loads of other people who were enthusiastic about my wedding, but I felt so raw about this. I still haven’t talked to her about it, because I don’t know what to say without sounding petty, and the more time that passes, the worse it gets – resentment continues to fester, yet the longer it goes the more petty I think it will sound.
In other words, don’t make my mistake. If you need their emotional support, speak up. It’s OK to want them to be committed to your day and help out with the wedding; you’re not a “bridezilla” for wanting that. If it is truly an imposition physically, emotionally, or financially for them to be there as much as you might like, that’s one thing, but it is OK to ask, and it IS OK to reiterate how much it would mean to you.
December 3, 2010 5:13 am
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lady, i had bridesmaids straight bail on responsibilities. (i’m anti-”bridal party responsibility” but let’s be honest. planning the shower is part of the deal. agreeing to pay for it, and then leaving my 17 year-old sister to foot the bill is no bueno) bridesmaids who not only didn’t come to the bachelorette party, but didn’t come to the reception dinner. and didn’t let me know til they were walking out the door of the ceremony. (don’t get me started on the bachelorette party ending at NINE PM as i sobbed into my hot chocolate)
i think weddings really highlight the way things are versus the way things used to be, or the way you wish things were. i asked certain girls to be in the bridal party not because i was still close with them, but because i wanted to be closer. and the wedding- it doesn’t always close that gap or heal those wounds. it sometimes just more pronouncedly emphasizes the real status of relationships. which can suck.
alyssa is so right on about being able to revel in the good while allowing ourselves a little bit of mourning for the reality of the bad. awesome post.
December 3, 2010 5:17 am
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Your comment, “i asked certain girls to be in the bridal party not because i was still close with them, but because i wanted to be closer,” is so interesting Liz. My reasons are the opposite – I asked my oldest friends because it was the right choice for me. I wanted to ask new friends but felt so self conscious about weirding them out doing that. I felt that my loyalties were with my oldest buds over anything else. Interesting take!
December 3, 2010 6:39 am
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oh, kim! that’s sort of what i meant- old friends that i had drifted from. the ones that had always been there since the beginning, but that weren’t so close any more. and the wedding just… didn’t make us any closer.
December 3, 2010 7:38 am
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I was thinking about doing that very same thing – asking an old friend I’ve kind of drifted apart from to be a bridesmaid – but have recently been wondering if it’s such a good idea after all. Thanks for sharing your experience. Maybe what we really need is a heart-to-heart before I try to fix it with the wedding.
December 3, 2010 6:38 pm
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i found it tricky because i felt like NOT asking signaled the nail in the coffin of our friendship somehow.
December 3, 2010 8:51 pm
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Violet,
I have a great friend who I had drifted from when I moved. I chose not to invite her to be a bridesmaid because I felt a bit uncomfortable as I thought there was a chance she would not want to “deal” with being a bridesmaid for someone she has not seen in years. After spending a year planning and too much money, the only regret I have is not inviting her to be a bridesmaid. She was so wonderful to me throughout the process and we rekindled our once very close relationship. She was unable to make it to the wedding, but was sure to visit me for my birthday just 2 weeks before the big day. My sisters did not even make it to my wedding and they WERE bridesmaids, nor did they come an visit me or show any interest in the process. Goes to show that the people you are “supposed” to have in your wedding party are not necessarily the people you “should” include. Being a bridesmaid is a great honor and I find that the woman you love and respect feel lucky to even be a part of such a great event if you give them the opportunity.
“I’d rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven’t .”
December 21, 2010 5:27 pm
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This.
After reading blogs and magazines and articles everywhere, I was excited for how the wedding was going to bring me closer to my friends. But you know, I think it’s like people hoping that having a baby will save a failing marriage – why do we think that a stressful, hugely emotional, life changing occasion is actually going to improve a relationship? If the cracks are there, all of those things may just help to expand them, and shine a huge light on to them. Your friend who’s always been a bit flaky, or the one who has always chosen other things to prioritise over you? They will not miraculously morph into a reliable, there-for-you friend, just because the W word comes into play.
I experienced this on a much lesser scale, but it still hurt. I live in a different country to my bridesmaids, and from where the wedding took place, so I did need to rely on the two of them to help me out sometimes. The one who has no interest in weddings AT ALL and in fact has stated severla times that she can’t understand why people want to get married, and who I was expecting to drag her feet and not want to do anything wedding related, really stepped up to the mark and helped me more than I’d expected. The friend who I thought I was closer to, and is way more interested in pretty and weddings and the like, was distant, not reliable, and always making promises to do things, and not keeping them. Which hurt for the whole time up until the wedding. But now looking back (at the grand old age of a one month wedding graduate), with non bridal brain, I can see that, actually, that’s just what that friend is like in general, and the wedding just amplified it. It actually doesn’t mean we’re not as close, or that I don’t mean that much to her, it’s just being a little bit unreliable, is one of her faults, and I have several way worse faults than that, so I am not complaining.
So after all that rambling, I think what I was trying to say is – god yes I felt lonely throughout the wedding planning, and wondered whether I’d chosen the right bridesmaids, or whether my friends just didn’t care, or whether we’d grown apart wthout me really realising, but looking back I can see that it was just them, being them, and how could I blame them for that.
Thank you for coming out and saying it’s ok to be lonely, because you really can start to doubt yourself and your popularity, particularly if you have low confidence on that front already…
December 3, 2010 6:48 am
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Well done for recognising your own faults, evaluating your friend honestly and still loving her. I like that.
December 3, 2010 7:28 am
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Liz, I am so sorry you cried into your hot cocoa. I cried at my shower/party the night before the wedding too, right in the middle of opening gifts in front of everyone. Oops.
December 3, 2010 8:15 am
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Yeah, I cried at my first “bachelorette” party. I was with some folk I didn’t really know, had been told the incorrect dress code and then tried to find something to wear in my sister’s wardrobe. Problem being that my sister could pass for a model, and I, well, can’t. Love those appearance insecurities!
December 3, 2010 1:17 pm
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weddings “more pronouncedly emphasize the real status of relationships.”
well said! i was just talking to a friend about what a strange experience it is to label all the people in your life when you’re engaged – bridal party, maid of honor, invited/not invited, etc. i hate all the comparison and competition and categorization. for better or worse, wedding planning has helped (forced?) me to assess my relationships honestly; not just with friends, but also parents and extended family members and the like.
this is not what i signed up for! i just want to be married. hehe.
December 3, 2010 9:08 am
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Yes yes yes yes yes yes. I felt EXACTLY the same way through my own wedding planning, from knowing that I’m a perfectionist to having the best friends who live everywhere but local to the supportive fiance whose friends seem to be so supportive…I feel like I could have written these words too. Thank you for expressing this. It is the dirty secret of the wedding planning biz, which makes it even more difficult to deal with. There are two things around this that really stand out for me when thinking about my own isolation: first, when I read the wedding magazines who told me that this would be the best time of my life with fun parties thrown in my honor left, right, and center (HA – like that ever happened)…and then second, after the reality set in and I found myself depressed, when I found this website and found people who dared to speak otherwise. I dont’ think I’ve ever felt more alone than during some of my wedding planning, and I wish I had found this community earlier on so that I could have found everyone here and screamed “I am alone!” with a bunch of others. Even now, two months after the fact, hearing your words has made me feel so much less alone, and I hope you get the feedback from this forum that supports you in feeling less alone as well.
December 3, 2010 5:17 am
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Thanks Jenna. All of these comments, and the secret being OUT, has already started to make me feel better!
December 3, 2010 6:40 am
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Jenna, I really like this phrase:
“…and I wish I had found this community earlier on so that I could have found everyone here and screamed “I am alone!” with a bunch of others.”
The perception of in-person isolation driving women towards a real, healing, and empowering online community… I think this is true for many people (myself included) and now I gotta think about this some more.
December 3, 2010 8:03 am
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Wow, Kim. I thought I was reading some of my own thoughts!
I live 1500 miles away from all of my old friends and family, and I have no female friends down here in Florida. All of the ladies I’ve met (S.O.’s of fiance’s co-workers) are younger than me, and act like it. And that green head of envy comes up when they find out I’m a stay-at-home woman and my fiance is just fine with it that way (mind you, this is not by choice. I went to Culinary school, and the restaurant entertainment industry down here took a major blow when the recession happened, as the economy down here relies heavily on tourism). This has led me to be isolated and doing all of the planning myself. I wish my mom would help, but when I asked for $500 for my dress, I was met with dead silence for two (2) days, and then no straight answer from her or my father. So, I’m done asking them for anything, and we’ll just pay for it ourselves. When she asked what we wanted for Christmas, I told her to make a donation in our names to the ASPCA.
And while my sister, a.k.a. best friend evar, is my maid of honor, she works full-time with varying hours, so all I expected her to do was her part, and nothing more. But, I do ask her opinion on things when I can’t decide (my fiance- “Whichever honey, I trust your judgment”-couldn’t be less helpful). There are days where I have to shut the office door and just cry because, between wedding planning and the Holidays, things have been slow in progressing.
Okay, I’m done griping. Take care of yourself Kim and keep your sanity.
December 3, 2010 5:18 am
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You’re not in the Orlando area, are you? I’m in the market for some friends…all of mine live far away as well. :)
December 3, 2010 6:07 am
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I’m actually in Ocoee.
December 3, 2010 12:59 pm
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That’s not too far–I’m in Altamonte.
December 12, 2010 5:52 pm
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This is so similar to my story! I’m in grad school, also 1500 miles from my friends, family and fiance (and they’re not all in the same place, they’re just all really far away from me). I won’t be moving back to where my fiance and I will live together (and where a lot of our friends are) until 4 weeks before the wedding. Which means I probably won’t be having a shower or bachelorette party at all – the logistics are too complicated. Most of the time I feel totally cool about it and recognize that it is the result of my situation, which I chose to put myself in (no one forced me to move across the country to go to grad school – although I didn’t realize then that I would be planning a wedding while here). But sometimes I just feel really sad that I’m “missing out” on this stuff.
It’s nice to know everyone feels this way a little sometimes.
December 3, 2010 6:08 am
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Don’t give up on some sort of special girl time with your closest friends before the wedding! All my (two) bridesmaids lived far away from where I was living while wedding planning, and then I moved to another country just six weeks before our wedding, so I felt rather alone especially those last few weeks. But what we did was have girl time the night before the wedding, after the rehearsal. It was a small shower with about 8 girl friends who were in town for the wedding and it was so nice to have that time hour or two together. Maybe you can work some sort of brunch/shower/pizza night/something into the wedding weekend plans?
December 3, 2010 8:12 am
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I did this, too. All of my friends and family lived far away from me, but not consolidated in one place to make doing a shower or a bachelorette party in another city logical. The night before the wedding we had a gathering of all the gals who had arrived in town. It was great to have old and new friends of mine meet one another. Also, a group of ten of us from college have kind of made a routine of gathering for breakfast the day of the wedding. We visit, laugh, share what has been going on in our lives since the last time we were all together, and usually end with prayer. That was one of the most special moments of the wedding weekend for me.
December 4, 2010 9:10 am
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Thanks Megan. We aren’t alone. And I do feel better reading Alyssa’s advice that even if you still feel alone or are far away from loved ones and friends, that the person who is doing all the planning and knows you best is doing the most work – you!
December 3, 2010 6:42 am
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I’m at work, so I can’t give a lengthy response right now, but YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I am a lonely bride, too. I don’t have very many female friends, and the ones I have are either not into the whole wedding/girl time thing or else they are in other state. My family is in another state as well.
I’m not having a bachelorette or showers, though. It’s cool of you that have taken it upon yourself to give yourself the “full bridal experience” – I am sure people will show up!
December 3, 2010 5:19 am
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Me too, lonely bride. We just moved to a new city a few months ago, so i literally know almost no one. My fiance, who was initially really excited about wedding stuff, is so completely busy with his MBA classes that I tend to hear things like, “Tell me which one you want me to like, so that I can get back to my homework.” For better or worse, one of my two best friends is getting married two months before me, and she, I, and our 3rd bestie are all in both of the weddings, which splits the focus a bit. And I’m unemployed right now, so there’s *no escape* from the wedding stuff. So, yeah, I’m with you. Planning a wedding without a community is tough, and it’s sad, and it’s lonely, and it can even be a source of shame (shouldn’t I be able to just handle this, dammit?).
But there are others out here! You are not actually alone! You can do it! And at the end of the day, you’ll be married to a fantastic guy who loves you – and that’s what you’ll remember.
Also, Alyssa, killing me with the Snow White references. I almost had a coffee spit-take. :)
December 3, 2010 6:02 am
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Yes Kereina! Splitting the focus is a HUGE part of it that I didn’t exactly articulate in my email to APW. I just feel like I SHOULD be the center of attention here. I don’t necessarily want that, being the center of attention terrifies me, but I guess I’m just surprised and disappointed at the lack of OMGYAYWOWYOU! from all of my family and friends. There’s just so much going on with everyone else that I know that I feel like the only person truly focused on how much of a big deal getting married is is ME. I guess it’s my own unrealistic expectations that lead me to feel let down. Thank you for commenting and making me admit to this.
December 3, 2010 6:46 am
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Yeahhhh… thats the expectations hitting reality thing that sucks so much. People are super excited for you getting married about twice – when you announce it, and on your wedding day. The rest of the time? Not so much. So it’s tough to reconcile with what you’ve been taught to expect (but good practice for the rest of it… people are not constantly excited through pregnancies eaither even thought it’s a HUGE transition for you.)
December 3, 2010 10:11 am
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This is so true… I’ve now been to 3 weddings since we got married – 1 of which was a really close friend who had been my main buddy during our co-wedding planning time. and what I noticed more than anything else at these 3 weddings was how completely mellow I felt, after my own wedding where I’d felt this enormous fever pitch of emotion to just show up and be a guest at other peoples’ weddings was so calm. I was thrilled for them and of course shed a few (not-so) subtle tears during the ceremonies but realised right away how different it felt to be even a quite active participant at someone else’s wedding rather than the main event at your own.
December 3, 2010 11:59 am
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Does that apply to parents too? I have an otherwise good relationship with mine, but they just don’t seem to care. It’s been the hardest part of all of this for me. They never call. Haven’t offered to help in any way. When I call them looking for even moral support, they aren’t interested. My mom just called to cancel wedding dress shopping for when I’m home visiting for Christmas. She’s too busy planning my sibling’s birthday party. Ouch. I cried a lot after that call. My friends are fine, and I don’t expect my getting married to mean as much to them as it does to me, but I’d love to see a post on coping emotionally when your family could care less.
December 3, 2010 12:29 pm
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Ara — One of the APW wedding grads had a line that really stuck with me (even though it didn’t really apply in my case, it was that good, that I still think about it) about having the revelation that while she thought of the wedding planning as the first endeavor of her new baby family, her mother thought of it as the last endeavor of their mother-daughter unit. I wonder if possibly you’re experiencing the reverse?
December 3, 2010 12:46 pm
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Jennifer- I remember that one, too :) I’ll have to give it a little more thought. I don’t think my expectation was that it would be a big thing we did together since we live a thousand miles apart. I guess I just figured that my otherwise close and loving family would have some small degree of interest in this big life event. They are a very family-first kind of family, so I’m just a little baffled (and hurt) that it doesn’t seem to matter to them.
December 3, 2010 1:28 pm
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Ara-
In my experance, that applies to parents too. None of ours were over the moon about the wedding planning. They were over the moon about us finding a good partner, but the rest… not a huge huge deal to them. Which was kind of a blessing (and kind of not).
December 3, 2010 1:45 pm
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ARA, I understand. My parents were actually very supportive during the planning process, though admittedly I only went to them when I knew they would feel as though it was an area of interest. But at the wedding my dad left before it was over. And we were out of there by 9:00PM (wedding was at 5:00). Ouch.
December 3, 2010 1:53 pm
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Exactly, exactly, exactly. I read this post a few days ago and have just been letting it percolate in my brain. With the time to think, I’ve realized that the what-we’re-taught-to-expect thing is really pretty prevalent in our society. It’s probably how the most things get sold, right? Here we are in the holiday season and it’s the same thing–I’m Jewish, and I’m quietly celebrating Hanukah with my fiance while watching these crazy Christmas ads–kids’ faces all aglow, women opening gorgeous diamond pendants from their gorgeous men, etc. etc. It’s always been something to marvel at for me–and I thought I was immune–that is, until I got engaged and started feeling lonely myself. The ideal out there of the bridesmaids dropping everything to throw you the perfect bachelorette party, to help with everything hard, and to be there every minute–well, it’s just like the Christmas ads, I think.
Part of the loneliness for me is that my mom isn’t here to help me (I’ve posted before about how she died 5 years ago), but it’s also that my bridesmaids either live far away or live locally but have brand new babies. Fortunately my fiance is lovely and interested in being involved in wedding-related decisions. The only way he’s been annoying so far is in his lack of motivation to collect addresses so we can send out STDs! Anyway, I agree completely about the idea that we have this community so that we don’t have to feel lonely–or AS lonely. Thanks for posting this.
December 6, 2010 10:08 am
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When this came up the other day, I knew it was going to come back and get its own post. Which is awesome, because as Meg wisely pointed out…it does feel a bit secret. Like everyone is sitting in their hears feeling the same, but that to admit it would be acknowledging everything isn’t perfect. Time to get out the shame blasters!
I have been struggling with this a bit recently too, and again crystalized by bridesmaid drama, or perhaps not drama but simply apathy. All of my friends are completey lovely, but I jsut wonder if there will even be a bachelorette sometimes. But again, like Kim said…most of the time I am doing things my own way, to get them done right. So part of it, I’m sure, is my own doing. And part of it could be that I have been engaged a long time, and the wedding is still 9 months away, so who really cares but me right now? I feel like maybe I should be more patient sometimes.
But at least now I have a place to talk about it, so no more secrets.
December 3, 2010 5:27 am
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I’m glad to hear this Jenn. I take full ownership for my high expectations and propensity to just do things myself and not ask for help. That’s all on me, for sure. It makes me wonder though, if I wasn’t anal or a perfectionist like that, would my experience be totally different? Would I feel lonely? Would I even care?
December 3, 2010 6:47 am
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Completely. I feel the same way about surprise birthday parties – I somehow feel like my personality has prevented me from ever being on the surprise end of a surprise party (although that may be ridiculous.) and I have always wondered if perhaps I was just a little less strong in my opinions…but then I wouldn’t be me. So at a certain level, I guess I shouldn’t waste time worrying about it :) Although I really would love a surprise party one of these days.
December 3, 2010 7:55 am
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Yes, you would. It would be a little different, but you’d still probably feel lonley. I’m not really anal and perfectionist, and I did ask for lots of help… and I still cried buckets. That doesn’t let you off the hook for asking for help, but maybe is helpful to know.
December 3, 2010 10:13 am
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Jenn, I’m right there with you. I live far away from everyone, and, though they complain very regularly about how I don’t include them, almost no one seems to take the initiative to get involved (no responses to my emails, etc.). When I read about these amazing weddings on here (and elsewhere), where everyone magically pitches in and the community builds a beautiful wedding, it’s discouraging when I can’t even get people to respond to happy, isn’t-this-pretty emails (case in point: my bridal shower this winter that’s just turned into an un-wedding-related holiday party). You’re not alone in your loneliness or frustration, and, you’re right, talking about it does make it better.
December 3, 2010 6:51 am
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Oh I just had to respond and say I’m so sorry your party is being taken over and I totally hear you on the lack of response when you try to get people involved. I tried to include my friends that are far away through occasional emails (not massive group things, just simple emails to a couple of friends) and didn’t get much in replies so I stopped. People are busy, I get that, but it’s disheartening.
December 3, 2010 9:12 am
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Hey Katy-
So it’s still possible to have a love and community filled wedding, I swear to it. I, like everyone, had a lot of people not wanting to help, and not responding to emails. But when it came down to it, people mostly pulled together in the ways we really needed. So. It happens, more or less. It’s just sometimes a 9th hour thing. People can’t sustain wedding excitement is the thing.
December 3, 2010 10:14 am
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Meg speaks the truth here. The lonely-planning followed by surprise community pulling together was so exactly my experience that my entire grad post became about that.
December 3, 2010 10:52 am
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I think you’ll find yourself really surprised by people later. I was in another country from my 3 bridesmaids and got nary a response to several ‘hey would you like to wear this’ type emails, let alone helping with the many hours of crafting etc. And believe me, I was feeling pretty crappy and sad about it for months… But in the 2 days before the wedding these ladies were so unbelievably fabulous and fun and supportive, so they weren’t sewing bunting with me but they still did a great job of making sure I was well hydrated in between margaritas and wasn’t running around like a total lunatic. Everyone has their moments, I promise.
December 3, 2010 12:10 pm
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YES YES! Now, get out of my head, Kim!
I’m one of the last of my friends to marry. I’ve relocated to DC while most of the college friends are in New England and my two high school friends are in NY and OR and my sister is in Toronto and my parents go between Florida and NY. I have friends in DC, but they are not quite my best of all friends. They are friends that I’ve had for six years, who have seen this part of my life, but know little about the “Me before DC”. And it’s hard to think of relying on them during the planning process for some reason.
I realize, often, how much different this experience would be if it was happening closer to my friends and/or family. If it was happening at a point in time when most of my friends were getting married…I remember the gushing and oohing and ahhing that took place for all of them, but I feel, in a way, we’ve all moved on. There is no more gushing for weddings, it’s now a gushing for babies or newer, bigger houses, or huge promotions at work.
It’s a different dynamic. It’s taken a lot of time and energy to take the gobs of thoughts that are rushing through my brain about all of this and come out with the conclusion that it’s our wedding. It’s our engagement. And it will be what I make of it. (Duh! Right?!) It might not be what I imagined, but when it all comes down to it, what I imagined my life at 30 would be is no where NEAR what my life at 30 is.
And, when it all boils down, my life right now is fantastic. And probably exactly as it should be…for better or worse.
December 3, 2010 5:36 am
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I think what it boils down to, as this sinks in and I read all these comments, is that the only people who can fully appreciate and celebrate and make as big a deal as you’d hoped for throughout your whole engagement and wedding planning process is you and your fiance. And we do so I’m ok with that.
December 3, 2010 6:51 am
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Exactly!
And there are many times that I look at my fiance and say “Yay us! We’re engaged and we’re going to get married and we’re planning our wedding!!” and I literally jump up and down with joy. He gets it, though he laughs at me (and sometimes tells me to settle down).
But he’s the only one on Earth who knows what it feels like to be engaged to me, and I’m the only one who knows what it feels like to be engaged to him. No one else, not even my best of friends, could celebrate this experience with me the way he can.
December 3, 2010 7:15 am
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Wow, Adria, I could have written this. Even down to the relocating to DC with the high school and college friends back up in New England and being one of the last to get married. Maybe we should be friends? I, too, didn’t feel right asking my DC friends of 5 years to be bridesmaids or relying on them for the planning process, because even though they’re the ones who are here for me (literally and emotionally) on a day to day basis, they still feel new and like they don’t know me as well as my long-term friends from back home. Also, I feel like there’s a lot of the “it’s not cool to care about your wedding” social pressure with this group.
And my New England friends and bridesmaids (who cared about and for the most part enjoyed planning their weddings) have moved on from weddings…several of them are having babies this year, everyone’s buying houses, getting new jobs, getting promotions, finishing residency…and of course, we’ve all had that summer by now where we went to 10 different weddings and it was stressful and we were broke and we felt like we saw it all. It’s just hard to have the same enthusiasm that we did when we were 25 and it was the very first wedding. Even I’ve had trouble finding that enthusiasm, and it’s MY wedding!
Still, I’m lucky. I have a planner, so I don’t need much other than emotional support from my friends, and my sister (MOH), who I’ve kind of had an up and down relationship with, has stepped up in a huge way and we’ve actually gotten a lot closer. And my mom hosted bridal showers for 3 of my bridesmaids, so their moms are taking that on in a huge way. And I’ve had a lot of wonderful moments of sharing the excitement from expected and unexpected sources.
I think part of the loneliness comes from the fact that no matter where you and your friends are in the marriage process, there are barriers to sustained excitement about each other’s weddings. Single friends often either just not that into weddings yet or dying to have their own wedding and happy/sad for you because they’re not there yet and they want to be. Married friends are often over the wedding thing and onto the house buying or baby thing. Engaged friends are often preoccupied with their own weddings. The use of often instead of always is intentional.
December 3, 2010 11:25 am
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Ex.Act.Ly.
And yes, we should be friends :)
December 3, 2010 1:41 pm
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I’m sorry you’re dealing with this honey, but you are so not alone! My feelings of aloneness keep creeping up on me and sneak out in unexpected ways. It’s been a rough time and I’ve got many months to go… One of the things that’s helped me is to read The Conscious Bride by Sherly Nissinen, it’s really helped me see how common all the feelings other than pure bliss really are!
Good luck with it all!
December 3, 2010 5:39 am
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I will look that book up Sarah, thank you!
December 3, 2010 6:51 am
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Just chiming in with more praise for Sheryl (now/nee Sheryl Paul… the book cover says one thing; Amazon’s author link says another). One thing that she, and others, really drive home is that sometimes it’s the expecting a certain thing that makes us so sad that it isn’t there.
So we have all of these expectations coming from the media, from the WIC, from the rose-colored-glasses version of events that we get from even our best friends sometimes. That makes us expect some perfect, blissful engagement and planning process (because we know we’re not the *other* kind of bride, the kind known for their angry, selfish outbursts on reality TV, and clearly there are only the two kinds of brides in the world). And when it’s not perfect and blissful we feel disappointed. And then we feel ashamed about it, like it’s our own fault that we’re not happy.
Well, it’s not our fault. But we do have the power to change how we feel about it all. First, we have the knowledge (now at least, thanks to this amazing community on APW and to women like Sheryl) that it’s totally normal to feel lonely, for any number of reasons. And then, we also have all these amazing things in our lives. It really helps (and this is suggested in the book, I think) to take some time every day to think about the wonderful things we do have. We have those friends who, despite being busy, and far away, are still our friends. We have our mothers helping us with all of this planning. We have our health. We have our wonderful fiances who we’re going to commit to in marriage, and that’s huge! We have our futures! We have APW! We have our health! OMG I feel better already (I’m still practicing this whole ‘think about what I do have thing’ myself).
Even the friggin Buddha teaches that it’s desire that makes us unhappy. Focus on what you have and are grateful for. And don’t feel guilty of being ungrateful! Just let yourself feel what you feel, and try to do this work to help yourself feel better.
December 3, 2010 9:36 am
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She’s also an APW sponsor ladies, and offers a e-course for emotional wedding prep (see the ad on the sidebar and the link the the directory). That might REALLY be worth looking into.
December 3, 2010 10:16 am
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I’m lucky enough to have some very helpful local relatives, but none of them are my wedding party. The wedding party is all so far-flung, needing at least one plane ticket to even come to the wedding. I’ve been feeling like I’ve had to import or hire my closest friends and family.
It’s nice to have help, but it’s lonely to not have the helpers you always dreamed you’d have.
December 3, 2010 5:47 am
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Reading this really helped today :) You are definitely not alone. I live in a different part of the country from most of my friends and family and while they are happy to help it just isn’t that easy when they aren’t near by. To top that I am working crazy hours and travelling all over the place for work so getting time to work out what I need people to do is really hard too. I love reading the wedding blogs about how everyone helped out and women who would put wonder woman to shame. That just isn’t my reality and sometime it makes me feel like a bit of a f*** up. I’ve spent half of the week worrying about getting everything done and the other half (thanks to all the sensible advice on here :) ) telling myself that it doesn’t matter – what matters is that we will be married whether everything is perfect or not and that has to matter more.
Hope things get better for you soon.
December 3, 2010 5:58 am
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Thank you for this post! I felt very similarly to Kim, and had not read a whole bunch about these kinds of feelings on the wedding-o-sphere.
My husband did not have a shortage of close friends that he would have wanted to have as groomsmen. In the past few years, he has been the best man or man of honor (for a female friend) in THREE weddings. Not even just one of the groomsmen, but the freaking best man! On the other hand, I did not have a whole bunch of close friends that I felt comfortable asking to be bridesmaids. I only had one friend that I wanted to ask to be a bridesmaid, and I knew it would make me hella self-conscious to have one person standing up for me if he had 3+. I thought it would just highlight the fact that I did not have as many close close friends as I wished I did. So we ended up just having one best man and one maid of honor each, and I made sure to tell his friends who would have otherwise been groomsmen that they could blame me….or thank me for not having to rent a tux!
I did most of my weddingy things alone, like buying a dress and going to fittings. My family lives a few hours away, and my maid of honor a) is not the kind of person who is into weddings at all, and b) lives two timezones away. I also felt kind of bad at first about not getting to do all of the traditional girly weddingy events, like showers and bachelorette parties, but you know what? In the moment it ended up not mattering nearly as much as I thought it would.
Also, one of my friends who lives closer to me (not my MOH) threw me a small bachelorette party, which was awesome and unexpected and touching. I also invited a bunch of female friends to get ready with me, which was also great. I was happy to see some of my friends step up and help me the weekend of the wedding, when I had not asked them to (because, like you, I hate asking people to help and tend to do things myself before asking).
Kim, I hope that you will have the same experience in the end of being touched by someone who helps or acknowledges you in an unexpected way—because even if you don’t think it will happen, it just might.
December 3, 2010 5:59 am
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I was in the same boat on the fiance having more people ready to be in the wedding party than me. He initially told me “I need at least four on my side” and I said “uh….I can think of four people, max, for my side.” Which would have worked out perfectly except then my two best friends from college couldn’t make it, and I felt very uncomfortable thinking of other people to stand up with me…I felt like they’d just be fillers. So we decided to have a small bridal party of two each (I told him to tell his friends to blame me if they were insulted for not being in it), which is fine, but it sometimes makes me feel terrible that I won’t have a group of best friends with me on the day. Like everyone is going to look at our wedding party and think “geez, doesn’t she have any friends? What a lame-o.” Which is, of course, completely ridiculous, but it gets into my head sometimes…..its bad.
I’ve got to get rid of those “supposed to’s” in my head-stop thinking “but I’m supposed to have so many girl friends I can’t limit by bridal party, not the other way around!” This post came at a great time…thanks APW!
December 3, 2010 6:46 am
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Yep, he is the social butterfly of the two of us, and I’m kind of a homebody sometimes. I’m very good friends with many of his friends, though, so it helps my social circle, but not my potential bridesmaid list.
Not having the typical number or type of friends (aka female) is one of those issues with me that runs deep and really hurts sometimes. I know logically, I’m not a girly-girl and I have interests that tend to skew more masculine (video games, movies, math). But then I see Sex and the City and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and my female coworkers bonding so easily, and it’s really tough to not feel the shame.
December 3, 2010 7:21 am
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I’ve seen a bunch of comments about not having the same number of close friends as your future spouse. I totally get why this is shame-inducing (though, it really shouldn’t be).
After being a maid of honor three times, I really only wanted my one sister to stand up with me at our wedding. Husband has three brothers and the first thing he said was, please don’t make be choose between my brothers. So we didn’t. I had one bridesmaid and he had 3 groomsmen. It felt right for us.
Here’s my suggestions on getting past the feeling that you are less loved than your partner – One, remember that every relationship is different and your one bff probably has a deeper relationship with you than your partner’s 5 must-have pals have with him. Two, “filler” friends will just be extra people to wrangle and won’t add to the joy of your day (and they’ll probably know they’re fillers and be less into the whole experience). Three, if the visual upsets you, upset the visual. Have your 2 and his 6 stand in a semi-circle behind you, all mixed up. Put everyone on one side and your celebrant on the other with you two in the middle. Have his top two and your two stand in the traditional formation and put two extras on each side a little behind.
Just work it out – if your support group works for you in your regular life, don’t hate yourself because they don’t seem to fit the wedding mold.
December 3, 2010 8:15 am
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Good ideas on the visual aspects! :)
December 3, 2010 8:25 am
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Thanks Jess. I hear that. It’s like everything right down to the number of people up on that altar (or whatever space) determines your self worth and awesomeness in front of all of your guests somehow. I’ve spent so much wasted time fretting over his endless friends and my shortage of people to ask too. And for what? Who the hell will notice that kind of thing during the ceremony? And will they really judge me for it?
Thank you for reminding me that unexpected things happen every day and not to overlook the joy in those.
December 3, 2010 6:56 am
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My husband basically told me that he was asking (or had already asked) his nine best friends to be in our wedding as soon as he proposed. I had three girls in mind that I knew I wanted to be in my wedding. Then it seemed so unbalanced, that I asked my four best girl friends from my current city/life. Then we were up to seven. The week before the wedding my best friend from grad school surprised me by saying she was able to come all the way from overseas and I thought, “what the heck!” and made her a bridesmaid too. I still had one less than my husband, but I felt sort of like I had to defend myself for having TOO many bridesmaids. I wanted to say “I’m not the kind of girl that needs eight bridesmaids, I swear!” I did everything I could to appear low-maintenance, letting them wear different dresses of their choosing, letting them get their hair done or do it themselves, letting them wear their own shoes, etc. Too bad that I had to feel shame about that. I guess we feel judged no matter what huh?
December 3, 2010 1:18 pm
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I understand where a lot of this post is coming from. Our closest friends all live out of town, and so does most of our family (including our bridal party of 2 people). So wedding planning was definitely a solitary affair for the most part. But I would e-mail and have phone conversations with my MOH, and even had a trip out to see her. I just thought that many modern traditions like showers & bachelorette parties would not be in my future.
But when the wedding weekend came everyone came out in full force. They threw me a surprise shower with a nice group going out afterwards for a semi-bachelorette. People baked cookies & cupcakes, helped with the setup, packed & moved my fiance, and did so many other wonderful things to make the wedding go off swimmingly. The aloneness (I don’t want to say loneliness) was nonexistent, it disappeared. And the wedding was totally worth it.
December 3, 2010 6:02 am
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Kim, I definitely feel you – and have to second Alyssa’s advice to vocalize the things that you want from your bridesmaids. During the planning process I kept pretending that I was SUPER-BRIDE and that I didn’t need any support, but it left me feeling so alone. My friends weren’t NOT encouraging, but they definitely didn’t have any idea about when I was stressed or needed help because I never shared.
Do yourself a favor and be a little vulnerable. And the other thing I learned is that if you open up to them about your needs, you might discover that your friends need you too, and even though you are far apart, even though you are planning for a huge event, I’m sure that you can support them too.
December 3, 2010 6:05 am
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Overall I think I feel that way in life – SUPER GIRL, not letting anyone in to my insecurities and weaknesses until it’s way to late. It’s not so tough to admit you need help but to not be able to accept not doing it all yourself. I need a huge lesson in vulnerability in all aspects of life. Thank you for the reminder.
December 3, 2010 6:58 am
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I recently learned that insecurities and weaknesses are what makes us human. Ask around, seriously, I think you’ll find that no one actually expects you to perfect. If only I had know that during wedding planning :)
December 3, 2010 7:32 am
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“We’re gonna have to stop with these “supposed to’s.” They are examples of people’s experiences, but none of them are how it’s “supposed” to be.”
Okay, that’s as far as I got and I had to comment that I was thinking this SAME thing all week, Alissa. I’m 100% for the elimination of the phrase.
Okay, back to reading!
December 3, 2010 6:09 am
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And I’m sorry for spelling your name wrong…I think I typed too fast. I’m a dummy.
ALYSSA!
December 3, 2010 6:14 am
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It is OK to have a small bridal brigrade/party/whathaveyou. I had two of my besties from high school and one v. close friend from college. (I spent a lot of time feeling bad that I didn’t have a college “group” of friends. Instead, there are the people I was close with freshman year, the people I was close with sophomore year, and the people I was close with jr and senior years.) I know that makes me sound like a flake, but people leave, graduate, and really, I was very much finding myself.
So anyway, I felt bad that I didn’t have this huge group of girls who all knew each other. But I had three freaking amazing women. Since there’s no ‘group,’ I felt awkward having a shower, so it was mostly family + these three. Bachelorette was super low key, but it involved ALL of my favorite things and lots of giggling.
On the weekend and day of the wedding, they were the most supportive, loving rockstars I could have ever, EVER dreamed of or asked for and I hope I can do the same for them some day, whether at their weddings, or some other life event. There were multiple times when I looked around, and felt so overwhelmed by their generosity and fun and thought “these are the best people in the world and they are my people.”
It’s like all these other aspects of wedding planning (I had a Sunday afternoon wedding, not a Saturday blowout that I was supposed to have. I had a bluegrass band, so there was no rocking dance party that I was supposed to have. etc etc etc but it was MINE) I think the difference is that when it comes to friends, it’s the ultimate reflection on who we are.This is all to say that I hear this frusteration. And that I felt bad for about 5 seconds that I didn’t have what I thought I was supposed to have. But what I had, I wouldn’t change for the world.
December 3, 2010 6:12 am
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This comment rocks Zoe, thank you. I need to take my 5 seconds, waste it on feeling bad, and MOVE ON.
December 3, 2010 6:59 am
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Meg made a great point about not trying to do everything by yourself, and asking for help when you need it.
While I did have one “super-bridesmaid” as my husband dubbed her, a lot of the other girls I asked were busy, or simply unable to help in the ways I expected them too. And that was ok in the end, because on the day of they were super amazing and exactly what I needed. One of the greatest gifts those otherwise busy bridesmaids gave me was the weekly check-in phone call where I told them all about cute shoes/family drama/etc. and we just caught up. On occasions I just sobbed on the phone about how the wedding was a disaster. And they talked me off the ledge and calmed me down. Granted, this would have been nicer to do in person with a bucket of wine, but don’t discount the value of those types of conversations to help you feel connected to your bridal party.
And what is up with the bridal magazines telling us that you need to take your entire bridal posse to like every.single.vendor.meeting? It was bad enough just having to deal with my mom sometimes.
December 3, 2010 6:19 am
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So true, thank you Amy! :)
December 3, 2010 7:00 am
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Kim,
I blog-stalked you and saw that you live in Boston. According to this post, http://apracticalwedding.com/2010/10/apw-book-club-november/#comments Boston APW ladies meet up regularly. So, you have an instant group of sane, been-there-done-that, I-get-it!!!, ladies that I am almost certain you can relate to. And I say that because I’ve met up with the DC APW ladies and they just rock (and are sassy to boot).
December 3, 2010 6:28 am
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Jem – you are awesome! And you got me thinking … are there any APW ladies in the Southern California Inland Empire area – Riverside and San Bernardino counties (achem – Meg’s hometown!)? I know there is a group that has done the book club meet-ups in LA, but I’d love to meet some fabulous APWers closer to home. Or even – what about Orange County?
December 3, 2010 6:44 am
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Best thing to do is check out http://www.facebook.com/apracticalwedding and find your area’s discussion group! Doooo it! You’ll have a blast, promise!
December 3, 2010 8:26 am
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You know Jem, you’re so right. I need to get out of my comfort zone and do something like this. Thanks for kicking me in the butt where I needed it :)
December 3, 2010 7:01 am
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Whoo!
December 3, 2010 8:26 am
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oh kim, i know exactly what you’re dealing with. i’m lonely too.
like you, i’ve got my “closest” friends (a small group) in the wedding party, and since i’m a very independent and practical-minded kinda chick (and very anti-bridezilla), i’ve been doing my best to prevent the wedding from taking over anyone’s lives. i know everyone’s busy – the last thing i’d want to do is hurt a friendship over the demands of wedding planning. so instead, it’s been made to be kinda insignificant to everyone except my fam and fiance. i know it’s my own fault (i know alyssa, i know) and then comes the shame factor of “hey, i’m the lowest maintenance bride ever, so why can’t anyone appreciate it and at least pretend to care?” – and then i feel guilty for feeling that way. bad cycle.
as the first of my group of friends to get engaged and start wedding planning, i’ve tried to be extremely sensitive to the fact that friends can have mixed emotions when it comes to a friend’s wedding – and it does hurt that the whole planning process has been met with hesitation on a few of my friends’ parts, like when my sister and mom and 1 bridesmaid out of the whole wedding party came to look at dresses, but i’ve been trying not to take it personally.
thanks alyssa for the awesome advice for girls like me – asking is step 1. i’m telling myself that i’m going to work on it as we get thicker into the prep part.
December 3, 2010 6:28 am
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ha, exactly this! I tried so very hard to be anti-bridezilla, but that just created a cycle of hurt and then guilt!
December 3, 2010 7:25 am
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This is a very good point – helping with your wedding may bring up deeper issues for some of your friends (like how they feel about where their own relationships are going, their own worries or insecurities about weddings, etc). It’s easy to take it personally when people behave weirdly around your wedding-planning, so it’s important to remember that it’s quite likely it has NOTHING to do with how much they care about you.
December 3, 2010 8:18 am
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This post and the comments really struck a raw nerve with me. I too felt very alone during the wedding planning. My mom lives on a different continent and isn’t super excited about weddings, my closest friends live really far away, and even the ones who don’t are super busy. I was the first to get married so they didn’t really understand how overwhelming it can be. But I’m not sure any of this was the real problem, I think I was the problem.
Like someone mentioned earlier in the comments, I think it comes down to cultural chatter again: the cultural chatter about bridesmaids is always one of an undercurrent of resentment. Every stereotype paints bridesmaids as the victims of ugly dresses, too many demands and expenses, and inane bridal chatter. So it only made sense that like with the rest of wedding planning, I took it upon myself to be the absolute OPPOSITE of the typical bride. This meant I didn’t ask for much of anything and I felt alone. I realize now I was essentially shamed out of asking for help.
December 3, 2010 9:56 am
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I did this. In order to not take over anyone’s lives with my own Big Event, I down played my wedding planning. My married girlfriends were waaaaay past weddings (and waaaaay into babies) and my single girlfriends were, well, single. I couldn’t get the married ones excited if I tried, and I didn’t want to brag/wave it in the face of my single girls (who very much wanted to be in my place, especially those who had been dating their SO longer than I had been mine). So what did I do? “Oh, planning is no biggie, I’ve got everything under control. Now, tell me about YOUR life.” I wish I had have embraced my special engagement time more. Don’t get me wrong – in the comfort of our own home, my fiance & I were celebrating like mad. But out in public? I down played it. And I was lonely at times.
December 3, 2010 2:52 pm
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Thanks for posting this Alyssa and that you for your advice. I’m so lucky to have this wonderful community to help me through this time, to confirm that I’m not crazy, and to not be afraid to say those things I need to hear. You’re so right that my friends and family expect me to come to them. And I’m trying. I’m slowly allowing myself to ask for that kind of help. It’s a control thing, I know it. But it’s getting better. Thanks for giving me the confidence and the reality check!
December 3, 2010 6:32 am
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for what it’s worth, I don’t buy into the idea that being a bridesmaid is a job with major pretedermined responsibilities and expectations. The people standing up for us in our wedding are doing exactly that–standing up for us. If they want to do anything else, great! But I just spent like 9 months writing resumes and job-hunting, and I ain’t starting over again! haha. I mean, everyone has to do what’s right for them, and for me, I’ve found that this is the most effective way to go about it. Plus, at least with the people in my life, they’re much more inclined to help out when I’m not telling them that they HAVE to. :P
But I’m ending up fighting loneliness in other ways. The big thing is that everyone I know who has gotten married in the past few years has either eloped or had a tiny wedding or had their big wedding paid for by their parents. We are doing none of those things, and it makes it really hard to talk about because a lot of my friends just can’t relate–I’ll be talking about decorating and they’ll immediately suggest that I do X, Y and Z, except that costs 2 grand and I’ve got $500 for decorations. And my best friend/maid of honor isn’t married but desperately wants to be, so every time I talk about wedding stuff with her, I feel like a complete jerk (not at ALL her fault) because she’s still waiting for her dude to get himself together after five years. So sometimes even trying to TALK about this stuff is hard.
December 3, 2010 6:46 am
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Right, I’ve totally accepted the separation of those duties, for sure.
December 3, 2010 7:09 am
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Don’t worry about talking to your friend about wedding stuff. If she’s like me, she will still want you to be excited and enthusiastic about your wedding, even if she is a teeny bit jealous. Because she’s not jealous of you, just the experience.
However, then if she is jealous and it shows, I guess then yes, it would be hard to talk to her.
Hmmm… not very good advice but the best I can do! Just for me personally, any time I hear about other people’s weddings/marriages, I think, how exciting! And when’s it my turn?
December 3, 2010 7:17 am
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Dude. Duuuuuuude. Back up 12 hours and there I am, bawling my eyes out on the bed next to my finace, telling him that I’m not sure anyone will “show up” for me. I mean, I know they will. But sometimes it is very hard (and scary!) to trust that other people are as excited about your wedding as you are.
So many people have offered to help, but I’m not really sure what to tell them. I don’t want a herd of people at the dress shopping experience… is it too much to ask someone to figure out how to make the chairs look good? I feel like I’m not so great at dissecting the tasks at hand!
December 3, 2010 6:47 am
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Aww, I’m sorry! Right, but what can you do? You can just hope and pray and that’s it!
December 3, 2010 7:10 am
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When I get asked to help with wedding stuff, it helps to ask for “ideas”. So if you need chair dressings, ask someone to research a few options. Giving entire responsibility isn’t just harder for you to handle, it’s also harder on the person. But if they do a lot of the legwork and you can choose something they suggest, you’ve cut out 85% of the work while still involving people.
December 3, 2010 8:32 am
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Katelyn, GREAT feedback. In light of this thread, I emailed a couple close friends to get a coffee on Sunday and chat about wedding stuff… I am definitely going to be asking them for ideas. Thanks for YOUR good idea. :)
December 3, 2010 8:37 am
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The night before my wedding, when I was bawling my eyes out due to exhaustion, emotions and excitement, after asking for the umpteenth time what she could do for me, my (very wise) MIL said to me “It’s more work to delegate than it is to just do it yourself, right? We’re out of here.” I pulled myself together and completed the last few wedding tasks.
What’s with us Type A Overachievers that we can’t just let go? Trust someone else will do it just as well – if not better! – than we can do it? I really wish I had just let go in those hours before the wedding, because they haunt me. I cried instead of laughing, and I regret that.
December 3, 2010 2:59 pm
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So not alone in feeling this way. I’m struggling with this too.
December 3, 2010 6:48 am
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Hmm. I sympathize with the pain and hurt but I have to say I think a lot of these expectations are entirely unrealistic. Reasonable because that’s what we see in the magazines and tv and blogs but not reality.
You have 6-7 best friends! Geez… who has that many? I’ve had two once in my life and my life felt full to bursting. That’s no small thing. At my wedding I had a maid of honor, my sister. Period. And it was perfect. My husband had a best man, who was amazing.
I didn’t have a shower and I’m not rare or an exception.
Look, the only people who throw showers and bachelorette parties are people who a. know about all this stuff – I am 100% sure my mom still doesn’t know what a shower is, b. like this stuff and let’s be honest probably are into the WIC and c. have time. And if you are surrounded by these people hurrah! enjoy! (though many will complain instead)
I know APW stresses the community aspect of wedding and there definitely is one. But. It’s not really a community event, it’s your event. Your party to celebrate you marrying your man. No one else necessarily has a big part in that.
And if having the wedding is going to make you feel lonely – have you thought about eloping/city halling? That is explicitly only about you and the marriage and a lot simpler. I wish we had done that.
December 3, 2010 6:54 am
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Thank you for this reality check. It’s just that these wacky ideas get in our heads and we can’t shake them until someone calls us out for acting totally out of line. I appreciate your honesty in this comment. I’m trying to bring my expectations back down to earth.
December 3, 2010 7:11 am
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*Hugs* (If wanted).
I appreciate you took that comment in the spirit it is intended. In no way do I mean that you’re somehow a bad person for having these expectations or that you are at fault in this. It’s not a matter of fault. It’s a matter of tv life =! real life. But damn does tv get everywhere. It’s a structural problem not an individual one. Most people do not have all those things we are taught to expect, they just don’t.
They are many people who just don’t have friends. That is a real problem IMO that needs to be solved by proactive seeking out of friendships (I’m working on it myself) but is not really connected to weddings. If you are happy with your life in the general course of things have the wedding that fits your life instead of trying to make your life fit someone else’s idea of wedding. Ask your family members, especially elder generations about what their weddings were like, I bet you’ll see a wide variety of experiences.
But I think you’re going to be just fine, juuust fine because you’re thinking about it and trying.
But I wish we didn’t do this to women in our society.
December 3, 2010 8:55 am
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Can I put in a comment from the other side? I’ve been a bridesmaid three times, and before that started happening, I’d hardly been to any weddings–like maybe one or two. The first time someone asked me to be a bridesmaid, I was completely ignorant of what the WIC-imposed bridal party “responsibilities” were, or that I had to do stuff other than show up in a prearranged dress and be supportive in general. I didn’t even know what a bridal shower was, and I had no idea that planning a wedding could involve so many vendor meetings, crafty projects, research, decisions about necklines and flower placement, etc. If you don’t watch a lot of TV or romantic comedies and don’t go to a lot of weddings, these issues and “responsibilities” are not intuitive–at all. Reading wedding magazines might make it seem like this stuff is common cultural knowledge, but it often isn’t–and most people have no idea how much work it is to plan a wedding until they’re actually doing it.
My first two times as a bridesmaid, I was long-distance from the bride. These girls had a mom and a sister, respectively, who were spearheading most of the girly planning, and I was almost completely absent from it. I helped a lot during the wedding weekends themselves, and I’d have been happy to do more if I’d been asked–but I wasn’t. Everyone seemed to assume that because I was far away and busy, I didn’t want to be bothered. And (the first time especially) I didn’t know to volunteer help, because, as I’ve said, I had no idea how much work was going on behind the scenes or the kinds of things I could help with.
The third time was still mostly long distance, but by then I had a better understanding of how involved wedding planning could get, so I was able to offer targeted and specific suggestions of how I could help. I ended up making the bride’s dress, singing in the ceremony and at the reception, coming to a vendor meeting when I happened to be in town, and helping throw a shower. The help I offered was gratefully accepted (especially the dress part!), but I’m sure I would have ended up doing less if I hadn’t volunteered. I only knew what to volunteer because I’d already done it twice before and finally started to understand how difficult the planning process is, and where my specific skills would be appreciated.
That said, I didn’t have the kind of relationship with any of these three bride friends where we would talk about weddings, gush over pictures of shoes or dresses, have Actively Girly Bonding Time Complete With Cosmos, or any of the other stuff that I’ve now learned is the cultural assumption about bridal parties. I had strong, loving relationships with them as individuals, and I honored them as I best knew how–by being generally supportive and, later, by offering specific help appropriate to my own talents. It would have felt strange and untrue to the dynamic of the relationship to have become a lot more squealy and girl-bondy than ever before as soon as the Wedding word appeared–and, for a long time, I honestly had no idea that I could have been doing more.
I don’t mean for this to devalue the feeling of isolation, which I’m sure is very real. The wedding industry can be an undermining beast, and planning a wedding is WAY more work than it appears. But I wouldn’t assume that the feeling of isolation means that the people around you don’t love you enough or are letting you down–sometimes they just need to be asked for help, and other times you need to try to separate your true relationship with them from what the world tells you the relationship should be. Maybe those first two brides still secretly resent me for not rising to the Girly Challenge, but if so, I’ll never know–they both ended up happily married and the dynamic of our relationship is much the same as it ever was.
December 3, 2010 2:18 pm
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I totally agree with this. I have gotten way better at being a supportive friend to people planning a wedding because I realized how hard it is as I have gotten older and seen more friends get married, and they have talked with me about their process. And now that I have been through it myself first-hand, I feel like I actually know how to be helpful, instead of just making wild guesses.
December 4, 2010 10:48 am
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This is a great perspective. Kim, why not ditch the showers? It’s awkward throwing a party that’s about yourself getting presents anyway. There doesn’t have to be a traditional shower/bachelorette to have fun girly time pre-wedding . . . maybe you could visit a friend who lives in another city for a spa day, or have some female coworkers over for drinks and movies. The plus is that traditionally, you can’t invite people to showers who aren’t getting invited to the wedding, but there’s no such rule for low-key bachelorette type events. My friend has no close girls in her city anymore so when she was getting married, she came to my city and we went dancing with some of my female friends, who fussed over her. Wishing you the best, it’s tough to feel things aren’t what you hoped for.
December 3, 2010 9:55 am
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Dude. I had two showers. One was casual and fun and unexpected and awesome, the other? Well, I wouldn’t do it if I was givena do-over. And my shooting party bachlorette? I asked a awesome friend who was NOT in the wedding, but was local and a go-getter if she’d like to throw it, and then told her exactly what I wanted. She was honored and rocked it. BUT. I got what I wanted because A) I didn’t depend on my wedding party to do it (it never would have happened then) B) I was super pro-active and C) I told them exactly what I wanted, and then let them do it on their own.
So yeah. Those things are things you can skip, or things you can basically plan yourself, if needed.
December 3, 2010 10:34 am
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*nods*
Say what you want. I haven’t had my bachelorette yet (coming up in January) but I have been super clear about what I want – my guy friends to be invited for part of it (they are my friends too!), beer, nachos, karaoke. Otherwise, I said, go nuts! Whatever you like! But these are the things that were really important to me. That way they can plan some surprise parts (like dressing me in god knows what if they want to) and I can relax about it.
December 3, 2010 2:02 pm
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I had 2 showers and a bachelorette as well. I was going to do no showers (because C and I didn’t want to register for a ton of stuff, and because I didn’t want to impose that on my ‘maids), but I soon realized the shower was not about me and more about my MIL and her sisters who were dyyyyyying to throw a shower. My mom, then, thought it would be a good idea to throw one in her town (they’re 4.5 hours apart), and it got taken over almost completely by her two best friends (who did a PHENOMENAL job, by the way). I ended up having a wonderful time at both.
For my bachelorette, I told my Good BM I wanted to do a casual dinner with some of my girlfriends at my fave Mexican restaurant, and I wanted to drink margaritas and not worry about driving. She took that and my requested guest list and ran with it. It was such a fantastic night. However, note of advice: after Mexican and tequila, we went to the local biergarten (which I also love). Beer and tequila are a baaaaad combo. Bad bad bad. All of us were really in rough shape the next day …
December 4, 2010 11:09 am
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exactly what I was thinking. The shower/bachelorette stuff is NOT required to have a wedding, and if your circumstances don’t permit and you’re gonna stress out about people not being excited or showing up, just don’t do it. Instead of planning your own shower and bachelorette party, why not have a bunch of people over for mimosas and 80s music, or meet up at a bar, or something low-key just to get your peeps together? If people want to bring you gifts, then that’s great, but it’s just a lot less stress on you.
December 3, 2010 10:49 am
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I felt this way, too, while I was planning my wedding. I was the first of my friends to get married and planning the wedding made me feel very isolated from everyone else. Even though I knew I should just ask for help, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because even hinting to my friends that I wished they were more involved felt accusatory.
I think, in general, it’s difficult for women to ask for what they want (because they’re taught to sacrifice and not “impose” on others), so asking your friends to step up in any situation can feel impossible. And particularly *because* they’re your friends and you’re mindful of their time, you don’t want to bother them.
This all seems to be compounded by the wedding culture. Women are taught to be terrified of being the dreaded bridezilla and it seems like any request or decision a bride makes (no matter how reasonable) puts her in that category. And any request for someone else’s time and input seems to be the biggest of bridezilla impositions–how *dare* she demand my time! And energy! And money! Doesn’t she know that the world doesn’t revolve around her? That this day will never be as important to anyone else as it is to her?!
Of course, real friends should be happy to give you their time and energy, but even if they do, the cultural conversation seems to say that they’ll secretly resent you for it. It’s all really frustrating and it helps encourage brides to keep quiet about their experiences—especially when they’re lonely. That’s why it’s really great that there are spaces like APW where women can share their experiences and have conversations society discourages.
December 3, 2010 7:01 am
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Kim, I could exactly your whole comment! And add in a long distance fiance. I got engaged while in law school, but ended up asking high school and college friends to be in my bridal party. With my bridal party scattered around the country, my family on an opposite coast, and my fiance four hours away, I did much of our wedding planning alone, or via email. While I had a very large and great group of law school girlfriends surrounding me, I felt bad asking them for help since they weren’t necessarily in the bridal party. My loneliest point was when I was planning my own bachelorette party, and only two bridesmaids could come (the rest, for very good reasons, couldn’t make the trek). I wished, too, that I my closest group of girlfriends all lived in the same place. But you know what? I had an amazing bachelorette weekend, thanks to other friends who flew in (just for me!) and all of my law school ladies who went above and beyond that weekend. It was a special weekend too, because I was able to spend time with a lot of friends who I wouldn’t get to see much on the wedding weekend itself. I think my advice, looking back, is to not be afraid to reach out to your local acquaintances. You’ll be surprised how much they want to help and the friendships that develop. Also, I know I am super lucky to have amazing friends, even if I don’t get to see them that much. And, if you plan stuff yourself, you get to do exactly what you want (and I got to share my law school town with a bunch of friends)!
December 3, 2010 7:06 am
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That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing!
December 3, 2010 7:12 am
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I had kind of a similar experience being geographically far from all my old friends, but I did end up getting a lot of help from a local girlfriend.
She was my only close friend who didn’t know me before Husband, and she was kind of the most excited for our wedding. She thought we were such a great couple and she had no old single-girl days to mourn the passing of. She wasn’t a bridesmaid (not even a top 5 contender), but she was there and it was the big thing going on in my life and she was really happy to pitch in. I repaid all her kindness by giving her *no* responsibilities on the wedding day – I just let her enjoy the fruits of our labors. It was really nice and I’m glad I let myself rely on her so much because it made a lot of stuff much easier for me.
December 3, 2010 10:04 am
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It’s not just the planning.
Although I was surrounded by love, friendship, and support on my wedding day, I look back on it as one of the loneliest times of my life. And that makes me incredibly sad. I had a MOH who was there for some things and bailed on others. I had a mother and a mother-in-law who were absolutely wonderful. I had an entire brigade of family and friends who were ready to step in with a hand to hold, a glass of champagne, or a back to carry what needed to be done. Most of all, I had a loving, adoring, supportive new husband who is my world. But. But, I still felt alone. Alone in my emotions – the love and happiness, and the small grief for the road not taken, alone in my stress, and alone in my bride-ful-ness.
I guiltily mentioned this to my mother a few weeks after the wedding, and instead of being offended or dismissive as I guessed she might be, she just said, “I think a lot of brides feel that way. I know I did.” We talked a lot about this concept at the recent DC APW Book Club, and I was surprised to hear my thoughts echoed so consistently around our little group. Women with lots of bridesmaids felt alone. Women who spent the entire day with their husbands felt alone. Women who had been bridesmaids even admitted that they felt distanced from their bride friends on the friend’s wedding day. There is something about being a bride, we concluded, that sets you apart on the day you least want to be set apart. There is an aura, an expectation… an alone-ness.
I don’t have any brilliant solutions to this problem or advice to women who have not yet walked that lonely walk from the father to the husband/wife (figuratively), but perhaps just this: expect that you will be held apart. Prepare for it if possible. Accept. A few months past my own wedding, I am still going through the grieving process for that single girl, and I think recognizing and coming to terms with that bridal loneliness is all part of that same process.
December 3, 2010 7:07 am
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I’m a little teary at your comment! Thank you for such wise, and REAL, advice. I really do appreciate it.
December 3, 2010 7:13 am
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Thank you. I feel bad writing things like this, and I certainly feel guily for feeling them (didn’t we have a whole post about shame???), but this is what I wish I had known.
APW is worth it’s weight in gold for exactly this type of exchange – real women saying the things we all think and are afraid to say.
December 3, 2010 11:04 am
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THIS. Almost 6 months past my own wedding, where I felt so so alone, I still can’t shake it.
Wedding planning was the loneliest time of my life. I was a mid-life bride, and I don’t have many friends from college (more than 20 years ago) that I keep in touch with beyond holiday cards. Certainly none who were invited to my wedding. I have very few friends at this point in my life — and the majority of them have children and I’m not in that place. The women in my life who I feel close to are cousins who live all over the U.S., and are much younger (by like 15 years) than I am. So, i didn’t have a bridal party. I didn’t have a bachelorette party, nor a bridal shower. My fiance and my best friend and I did all the planning. It was a committee of three. My mother was zero interested in anything. In fact, she had a hard time even listening on the telephone for more than 90 seconds before changing the subject. I did what we all say here — I asked a cousin for help with a small project that involved finding children’s coloring pages online. 2 weeks before my wedding she emailed to say she wasn’t going to do it because her “nanny was on vacation.” The one person who volunteered to help me is an older cousin who is a nurse, who offered to take my sick father from the venue back to the hotel during the reception.
My wedding day just reinforced that while I am the sort of person who will call up someone and say, How can I help you, I’m coming over to do blah blah, I don’t have those sort of people in my life. I was sad.
I wish I had had the guts to come on here and say “I’m so alone, I feel so overwhelmed by no one caring.” I know APW’ers would’ve helped me. So I’m saying it to you. You’re not alone.
December 3, 2010 8:31 am
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Merryf, I am so so sorry that this was your experience. I wish I had been a guest at your wedding so I could have tried to find a way to help somehow. I hope over time you are able to heal from the disappointment and thank you for sharing so honestly because I know women sharing like this is really helping other women in the same situation….
December 3, 2010 9:46 am
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Let me just put this out there: If there is any bride in the state of North Carolina feeling this way, you just say the word to me and I will drive ANYWHERE to show up excited and helpful in whatever way you need.
I feel your pain, Kim. I’m in this awkward period in life where most of my friends are still in undergraduate school, not in serious relationships and therefore uninterested in wedding-type things, living far away, or male and completely grossed out by the words “dress shopping.” I had exactly five close female friends, three of whom I made bridesmaids, and two of whom turned out to be supportive in any way.
I was given two bridal showers by my fiance’s family and I planned one on my own for my home-church community. Very few people came to the church shower because my mom forgot to put the announcement in the paper/church bulletin. I planned my own bachelorette party but by the time it rolled around, I was so tired from planning the wedding all by myself that I only invited my close friends, only two of whom showed up.
Here’s the deal, though. People may or may not choose to be as supportive or fun as you’d like them to be. Maybe only a few people show up to your shower/s and you feel completely disappointed and maybe you even feel like a failure. You’re not. You can’t control how other people will respond to your invitations but I think you always want to give people the chance to surprise you. It’s important that you don’t let this get to you. As monumental as these plans seem now, after the wedding, your friends will still be your friends no matter how much or little they participated and there will be other moments in life when they rise to meet your expectations. Don’t let those expectations and these feelings diminish your love for those friends, though, because these times pass. I think it’s totally okay to be pissed or hurt if you need it. Go ahead and smash something.
For me, no matter how something went over with the showers or parties, I just tried to feel grateful and present. Prime example, for my bachelorette party, I kinda had a feeling that very few girls would come so I just chose something that I would enjoy with anyone, even if only one person showed up or even if I had to take my fiance with me and just have a date. We went to dinner and a ballet and what wound up happening was Friend A and I sat for a very long time in bar afterward with Friend B listening to her cry about her problems with her boyfriend. Instead of a lot of eye-rolling, Friend A and I stepped up and gave her hugs and helped her work through the issues in her head and when I left, I didn’t feel robbed of an experience at all. I just felt happy to be there when a friend needed me, like it was life as usual and not a wedding celebration. I think there’s something to balancing your wedding-sized expectations with the reality of real life that keeps happening whether you’re getting married or not, as Alyssa has suggested.
December 3, 2010 7:07 am
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You’re such a sweetie.
December 3, 2010 7:38 am
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I feel like I need to add the perspective of the crappy bridesmaid – which I think I was in younger days – because it might alleviate some feelings of abandonment. For those friends who have not yet gotten married, sometimes they just *don’t get it.* They don’t know what goes into planning a wedding, the catering, the venue rules, the logistics, the need to obsess about ribbon colors from time to time, not to mention the family stress and relationship stress. I know I didn’t get it in my mid-late twenties when I was asked to be a bridesmaid as my friends started getting married. I had a foggy idea that I had to wear a bridesmaid’s dress and maybe go dress shopping but that was about it. But I didn’t help much because I literally didn’t even know that I *could* help or how exactly a wedding even “needed” help. Now I might have been particularly clueless, but I think my point boils down to: ASK for help before you give up on your friends and acquaintances. And in fact, before you ask for help, tell them (at least the singletons) how you are feeling, how it’s overwhelming, how the logistics are difficult, so they can get a sense of things. So it doesn’t just feel bizarre when you tell them that you need 130 hand-crafted placecards or want a 90 minute conversation about dahlias v. peonies. Believe me, if they get what is going on, they might very well want to help. I still feel guilty about how silly and useless I was as a bridemaid in weddings years and years ago.
Signed,
A formerly flaky friend
December 3, 2010 7:08 am
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Right, I’m trying to find the line between some of my ladies “not getting it” or just being apathetic, too far away, or too wrapped up in their own lives to help too much. But asking needs to absolutely be in my repertoire going forward. Thank you!
December 3, 2010 7:15 am
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Okay this is a really really good point, thanks so much for sharing it.
I’ve been a MOH three times and every time I’m shocked by the behavior of at least one of the other bridesmaids. I can’t believe the bride is friends with her because she’s so flaky/unreliable/self-involved. But! I have a big family full of older cousins and I’d been witness to the inside story on bunches of weddings by the time I was 20. Possibly these other girls had not and that was what was missing.
I think I’m going to make it my personal mission to educate my younger cousins and friends on what wedding planning is like for the bride and how to be a really supportive friend, even if you have limited resources.
December 3, 2010 10:17 am
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OMG I was the WORST bridesmaid during the wedding of my first friend to get married. I had just started grad school so I was super broke and annoyed that I had to pay for a bunch of what seemed to me as superfluous shit, and I just didn’t see what all the hoopla was about (2 showers? bachelorette? engagement party? I have to make a SCRAPBOOK PAGE??!!!) I was single and fabulous at the time, and I just thought my friend was being a Diva. Oh, and I also complained profusely to the MOH. But you know what, when the actual wedding week came around, I realized how happy and in love she was, and I really stepped up my game. People who aren’t in wedding-mode or who have never experienced it really cannot understand the intensity of the engagement period, you know?
December 3, 2010 10:57 am
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This is totally true. I was not as good of a bridesmaid (or potential bridesmaid) as I should have been, esp to my cousin, and I feel bad about that. After having a REALLY crappy BM (and I hope I wasn’t ever that bad, but it’s hard to say – I might have treaded that line), I now GET IT. I hope I have an opportunity to make up for it/pay it forward to another bride one day, if not as a BM, then in another fashion.
December 4, 2010 11:14 am
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I have been dealing with this as well. Three of my four bridesmaids are local, but that does not mean they’re necessarily present. Or that they automatically know what I need from them. I have one that’s kind of hands-off because her aesthetics are so different from mine (I actually appreciate that she has recognized this and kept her mouth shut when she thinks something I’ve picked is butt-ugly, not complaining!). One is a mom of three, so I recognize that my wedding is so not at the top of her priority list, and that is fine. And one repeats the constant mantra “I will do/wear/make whatever you want me to. It’s YOUR wedding,” which is great, but sometimes I want an OPINION! My best friend and maid of honor is half the country away, and doing all this without her just makes me miss her more. My fiance is so stressed about how we’re going to PAY for everything, that I can’t really use him as a sounding board. I have to do all the research and have a well-reasoned plan for things before I bring them up with him to avoid the gut-wrench “OMG, how much is that going to cost?” response.
In addition, thinking about who to invite and therefore, who will share our special day with us, makes me think about all the people I’ve lost. I woke up in the middle of the night last week, couldn’t get back to sleep, and ended up sobbing in bed while thinking about my grandma, who died more than 12 years ago. And then there are the friends who have left voluntarily, who didn’t agree with some choice I made and chose to end the friendship rather than work through it. I mourn all these people on a daily basis now.
But as my fiance pointed out yesterday when I was feeling depressed about the sparse attendance I expect of my birthday party, we have each other now. No matter what else happens, I have a partner who will love and support me the rest of our days. And there is great comfort in that.
I usually hate chirpy “look on the bright side” advice, but it actually does help me to look at the people who ARE in my life and feel gratitude for them, rather than obsess over the loss of others or the feeling that somehow these people aren’t enough. I have a few absolutely golden friends, which is a thousand times better than a whole gaggle of people who don’t really care about me.
It helps me to read APW and know that I’m not alone in my wedding-planning experience, and I hope it helps you, too, Kim!
December 3, 2010 7:14 am
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Thanks for all of your thoughts here Kassy. I’m working on being more positive in general in life right now anyways. This is one very important exercise in that journey I think!
December 3, 2010 7:19 am
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I found that preparing for the wedding really highlighted who was absent – dead relatives and lost friends loomed really large sometimes. You’re not alone. (Not that knowing that makes it sucks much less.)
December 3, 2010 8:24 am
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My husband felt this a lot more than I did. He ended up scrapping the first version of his guest list because he’s fallen out of touch with so many people on it. He was really depressed about it at first until I reminded him of all the new friends we ought to be inviting. He didn’t think he was really that close with them, but I pointed out that he sees them all pretty often and they call him for advice. He started to feel a lot better when he realized he was discounting those friendships just because they were kind of new.
December 3, 2010 10:42 am
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“And one repeats the constant mantra “I will do/wear/make whatever you want me to. It’s YOUR wedding,” which is great, but sometimes I want an OPINION!”
Oh, so, so, so, SOO exactly this.
December 3, 2010 1:27 pm
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i don’t think i’ve ever commented on a apw post before, but today i just had to. this is exactly how i feel. even though i had the opportunity to go dress shopping with my mom, i couldn’t find anything when she was visiting, so i had to go buy my dress all by myself. i just relocated to a new city–a city that is also new to my fiance–and i know he is as lonely as i am. he moved here for me, so i feel guilty about his loneliness as well as for feeling lonely myself. this of course makes me feel even more lonely. does that even make sense? i’ve always had a lot of friends and although i have moved several times, it never took me long to make connections. turns out a male dominated workplace when you’re in your mid-twenties–in a city where nobody plans to stay long–is a much more difficult place to make friends than school ever was.
that is not to say that my friends have not been good about a ton of things–they are enthusiastic and offer their opinions when i share things with them via email or phone. however, without their physical presence, especially when my family is over 3000 miles away–i feel the burden of the whole wedding rests on my shoulders, only. this is not to say that my fiance has not been supportive and enthusiastic as well–but i’ve always had an excellent female support network, and it’s just not the same. who’s gonna help pick out the accessories for my dress if i have no friends here, and my fiance can’t see my dress? it seems trivial, but it’s the details that make things for me. and i miss my sisterhood.
December 3, 2010 7:20 am
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I know. I think the general consensus is that it’s ok to mourn those things. That there’s no other way to really move on from that disappointment then to let yourself be upset and accept that things can’t really go back to how they once were. Hang in there! :)
December 3, 2010 7:28 am
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I feel you on this – my job requires me to relocate pretty frequently and I’m an engineer working in a manufacturing plant – it’s a boys club. When I was planning my wedding I had a lot of male friends who actually tried to be really helpful. They asked a lot how things were going and listened to me bitch about my family. Don’t sell the boys short, they might not all have an opinion about centerpieces, but they are just as willing to be a sounding wall.
On the other hand, female companionship is always a welcome relief. I can’t say that I’ve found a magic bullet for that, I still struggle with it. Just know you’re not the only one.
As always, DM me on twitter @abby_wan_kenobi to swap depressing stories. And funny ones too.
December 3, 2010 10:56 am
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My guy friends also have been really, REALLY great. Whereas my girl friends have been a mixed bag – some totally supportive, some judgmental as hell, some just not present whatsoever – my guy friends have been uniformly incredible. They have listened to me compare tulle to lace, stress about difficult family relationships, supported our low-budget wedding dreams, given me advice about iPod DJing (from the perspective of a professional DJ) and generally been all the support I could ever ask or expect from them. It hasn’t taken away from the sadness I’ve experienced from not getting the kind of solid support I wanted from the womenfolks, but it has tempered it a lot.
December 3, 2010 2:08 pm
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I found the lonely side of engagement didn’t stem from friends not getting involved or coming to parties, even though from a Mythical Engagement Wonderfulness perspective, my bridal bonding would have been somewhere between lame and nonexistent. (Partly because my expectations on that front had been set to laid-back low based on previous experience with friends’ and relatives’ weddings.)
For me, the lonely side was much more related to the pending birth of the baby family, and realizing that a lot of my personal boundaries needed to shift, that some things that used to feel okay to talk about with girlfriends or family members now felt off-limits because it wasn’t just a matter of my privacy, but our privacy, or things that once were hypothetical conversational fodder now were no longer hypothetical and thus a bigger deal to talk about than normal drinks-after-work. I think going through that transition was actually pretty important. So the part of Kim’s letter that stuck out to me was her worry “That I’ll get married and only have him in my life, no friends left, and I would have done that to myself.” It’s a very tricky area, for me anyway, because it’s not as if I or my friends or our friendships have changed just because I went and got married, but the framework those friendships exist in has changed, and not always in ways that are easy to put a finger on. But it’s more than just everyone getting older and having lives that are too busy for the sort of bonding hanging-out we had when we were younger, and friendships taking a different shape (because that one I’ve gone through already).
December 3, 2010 7:21 am
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Yeah I’m definitely having a hard time accepting those shifting frameworks. Not really having to had deal with anything like this before I feel ill equipped. And when that happens I kind of just take up residence in my own isolation and work it out by myself.
December 3, 2010 7:30 am
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“realizing that a lot of my personal boundaries needed to shift, that some things that used to feel okay to talk about with girlfriends or family members now felt off-limits because it wasn’t just a matter of my privacy, but our privacy”
This. This is something I’ve really struggled with. Sometimes I’ll start having a convo (especially with other married women) and it will turn into some kind of bitching or whining about husbands and I have to stop myself. I have *no* complaints about my husband or our life together, but it’s really difficult to have a conversation with someone that doesn’t play out like a sitcom where the women complain about the men. What I do have are things I’m trying to work through and it’s really hard to talk about without feeling like I’m opening our lives up too much or just playing the part of the hassled wife.
December 3, 2010 11:01 am
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I can definitively relate to the “now felt off-limits because it wasn’t just a matter of my privacy, but our privacy” idea and “What I do have are things I’m trying to work through and it’s really hard to talk about without feeling like I’m opening our lives up too much or just playing the part of the hassled wife.”
Perhalps it should not surprise me, but I’ve found myself SO FIERCELY PROTECTIVE of my soon-to-be-born baby family. Except we also just moved in together (with a few months to go ’til the wedding) so it feels like I’m in labor already. I don’t mean that it’s painful–more that my baby family exists in a liminal stage. It’s a lonely process because only I can deal with my part of it, but also because I’ve become so protective of it I don’t want to expose it to criticism, or pain, or lack of privacy, or hurt. I talked about missing the sisterhood for the pre-wedding process, but I guess I am also mourning the necessary changes and adjustments in the pre-marriage one–even as I embrace and actively protect them.
December 3, 2010 11:12 am
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I’m on board with this. I do feel protective, and there are certain things that I’m afraid to talk about, even with my sister because we’re still feeling out the boundaries. I’m afraid that Husband will be upset about me discussing things outside of our baby family, but it feels really weird to just ask him about it – “Hey, I’m feeling really strange about how we’re making the decision to buy a house. Do you care if I talk to my mom about it?” Before, I would just ask him how he felt about me discussing our sex life with my girlfriends, but now it feels…. different.
Being married is totally weird. Thanks for being here APW!
December 3, 2010 1:30 pm
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I was with an ex boyfriend for a long time, and shared our problems with *everyone*. There were a lot of them, and turning them in to funny stories made it easier for me not to claw my skin off when things were bad. (Seriously, I’d sit though his family meals or fights and would be figuring out how to get a laugh out of it later.)
One of the first things I noticed with my husband as things were getting serious was that my desire to tell ANYONE ANYTHING was about nil. It was such a strange feeling for me. It took something that shook me pretty badly before I would even talk to my bff about the inner workings of our relationship, and that was basically a one-off, because I needed perspective pretty badly. I’m still surprised just how protective of us I am.
December 3, 2010 7:24 pm
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Yep. I have amazing friends, who were amazing bridesmaids, but because we live in all different parts of the country, they were only marginally involved in the planning. Yes, we shared enthusiastic emails and they were always super receptive to me bouncing ideas off them, but most of the big things I had to do on my own. Additionally, my mom also lives two states away, and while we did our best to share in those moments together, I had to do a lot of the footwork on my own first. Example: dress shopping. My mom and bridesmaids saw all my contenders via email,’and my mom did come visit for a few days and we “went dress shopping” but by that time I had already
Chosen the dress on my own after visiting several shops completely alone. I still laugh a little regarding the looks of pity I got at a few dress shops when They saw i was shopping alone (and it was even worse when another engaged friend who’s bridal party/family was far away also and I went dress shopping together. She and I had a blast and actually picked the dress we both ended up wearing that day, but the salon ladies really didnt know what to do with us….I mean, TWO brides?!? Aren’t we supposed to be battling it out for attention/the spotlight? BS. In the end I took solace in a lot of my solo bride endeavors. I have a ton
December 3, 2010 7:21 am
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*Of local girl friends who would have totally been down to come with me, but I felt Odd asking them to do so when they weren’t in the bridal party. In the end i think it made my decision making process a lot more streamlined.’my husband was always there to weigh in on most everything else, and for the uber ~bride-y~ things, I mostly made prett quick decisions that I stuck with.
December 3, 2010 7:26 am
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This post made me think of my sister. She’s planning her wedding far away from all her family. It’s just my other sister and I in the wedding party and we’re spread out across the country. She hasn’t really filled us in on much of the details, so I think I’ll start pestering her more! :)
December 3, 2010 7:22 am
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Yay! I’m sure she’ll be relieved and happy for that.
December 3, 2010 7:31 am
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“My mom called me this past weekend to talk about my bridal shower and at the end of our conversation I just sat and cried. I wish she didn’t have to plan the whole thing, I wish I had the typical bridal party of like 6 best friends who still see each other every week and have girl’s nights, who were there for me to do wedding stuff whenever I needed them.”
Kim, sounds like your Mom wants to get involved, so in this one aspect I would run with it! We’re the first of both of our fams to get married, so the “who’s *supposed* to throw what” aspect is more than a bit unclear for most of us. Therefore my Mom and FMIL have really taken over bridal shower planning because that’s what they want to do and my bridal party has decided just to toss in a few suggestions (I think, I’m not sure whats going on behind the scenes because I was the opposite of you and made it clear in the beginning I wanted absolutely no part in planning the shower, partly because if it didn’t happen, I really wouldn’t be heartbroken).
On that note, maybe make a list of what is important to your entire wedding experience, as in what events you want and what exactly you want them to include. Then communicate to your bridal party and closest family know the top things that are important to you. You might find out that one of them secretly always wanted to help with this or just get them in the wedding spirit. Even if no one comes around then, just hang in there! Sounds like you got a super guy to enjoy married life with!
December 3, 2010 7:22 am
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So true, thank you so much :)
December 3, 2010 7:31 am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6EKK9XQ_J0
You think you’re on Woody’s train, and if you had a gaggle of local girlfriends you’d be partying on Sharon Stone’s.
Most of us have had the sensation that there is another, better, prettier, happier train headed down a parallel track just barely out of reach. At least that’s the feeling I’ve got deep down whenever I start a sentence like “I wish I had…” (Hell, that insecurity that if we had the right ticket we’d have a happier path is what half of advertising plays on…the joke is that there is no other train.)
There’s nothing wrong with feelings…I just sometimes have to remind myself that feelings aren’t always the truth. I’m sure you’re an awesome person, regardless of whether you’ve got a troupe of local girls or not. I mean, what would you say to a single friend who felt she was a lesser person because she was single? You’d express empathy…and then tell her to stfu, because her value is not measured by who’s she coupled with. Similarly, you’re no less of a person just b/c your loving mom is planning your bridal shower.
December 3, 2010 7:26 am
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A great analogy! Thank you for the kind and wise words.
December 3, 2010 7:35 am
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Oh my goodness, stop hitting home with me. Between this and the edited stories post the other day, I can’t take it!
I’ve been having not-so-quiet stressing because while my fiancee has a few very close friends, I have more of a circle of acquaintances who I have over once a month and love to spend time with, but not someone I could call sobbing at 3am. It’s been a serious source of anxiety for me and a self-esteem/shame-blaster issue (if I were better, clearly I would have closer friends!). Sometimes the hardest part of planning a wedding is that it’s not just about you, it’s about your relationships and how both parties see that relationship.
I’m overly worried about stepping on toes, I think, but I also tend to minimize my needs to please others, which is what makes having an event all about you and your partner hard. I mean, I can’t hide behind her ALL of the time.
December 3, 2010 7:29 am
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Christina you are so not the only one. This is exactly how I feel “but not someone I could call sobbing at 3am. It’s been a serious source of anxiety for me and a self-esteem/shame-blaster issue (if I were better, clearly I would have closer friends!). ” I am beginning to feel that perhaps those really close friends are not as common as movies/TV/books would lead you to believe. I have had some like that but then they moved or I moved, and now I feel pretty alone with just a lot of acquaintances. I think in today’s world where everyone moves so much this is really common.
December 3, 2010 7:35 am
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This post described my experience pretty accurately. My grandma planned my shower. My bridesmaids were spread out all over the country. I had no close girlfriends in FL to share wedding stuff with. I kind of felt like the friend who planned my bachelorette party did so out of pity since there was no one else to plan it. Reading all the bridal brigade stories here on APW made me pretty sad and sometimes it still does. I am a lot like the poster though, liking to feel as if I can do everything myself. I hate to ask for help because I am so scared of imposing on other people and also secretly scared that they will say no and I will feel rejected. Thanks so much ladies for bringing this subject up.
December 3, 2010 7:30 am
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It’s crazy how few times a topic like this gets discussed and how prominent it is amongst brides. I mean, look at the comments. The proof is in the APW pudding.
We went through a lot of the same stuff. We dealt with emotionally distant parents; annoyed parents who refused to help out of resentment for not getting what they wanted out of the wedding; friends who were jealous and therefore reluctant to help; siblings who didn’t even want us to get married. And although the wedding day was the day I felt the most loved ever in my life, the process leading up to it was lonely. It’s tough when you don’t have the things you think you’re “supposed” to have in the wedding planning process. Neither mother wanted to throw a shower and one of his friends didn’t want to help host his bachelor party because he wasn’t included in the wedding party. Those aren’t things we thought we’d have to deal with, but like the post says, it’s best just to forget the things you think you’re supposed to have. One the plus side, we got to see people who we didn’t expect to be a huge help come through in a giant way. And in the end, most of it didn’t matter because the wedding day was the happiest day for us. All lonely feelings were put aside and we were just able to enjoy the presence of our family and friends.
December 3, 2010 7:33 am
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so true! :)
December 3, 2010 11:49 am
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Hmm, how about leaking the date and location of your batchelorettes and then all local Team APW members can gatecrash… ;)
December 3, 2010 7:42 am
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AH! This idea is awesome! I literally jumped up from my chair at work!
December 3, 2010 9:16 am
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I’m feeling this. Partly I’m happy because I don’t want a *huge* deal, I can be shy. But all of my friends and most of my family live thousands of miles away. Yes, this is my choice, and I’m working to make my own place here, but he lives where he grew up and all of his friends and family are here. There’s a lot of loneliness and fear involved.
Thank god for APW and Alyssa and Kim and Meg and everyone else!
December 3, 2010 7:42 am
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I love you Alyssa:).
December 3, 2010 7:53 am
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This posted really resonated with this former bride… I felt overwhelmed and alone when planning my wedding, largely because I am not that close to my mother and I don’t have any supertight BFFs (other than my now-husband). Somehow I knew it would happen, so I braced for it by only asking my sister to be an attendant, and then telling all of my other friends when I needed help. My oldest friends are all on the other coast. Very few of my current circle of friends are married (and most don’t intend to get married). . . so I relied heavily on APW for discussions and advice (lurking!). In the end, my friends rose above and beyond my expectations but I think it was because I was open and honest about feeling overwhelmed. And, my intended was there every step of the way. He went with me to pick out the fabric for my dress – and there were other bridal parties on Fabric Row staring at us – but it worked out well (he has great taste!). I didn’t have a shower. My long distance friends had a modest bachelorette party for me in my hometown on the other coast, which I flew to. Many of them couldn’t make it to the wedding. My sister and her husband did everything I asked but were fairly absorbed with their own family issues – fertility treatments – something which can be as emotional as a wedding, it turns out. My intended’s best man made the centerpieces with him (I was banished to a supervisory role only), and his friends helped me finish gocco-ing the invitations. In the end I was overwhelmed by their love and support, which came in unexpected ways – but getting there took a lot of me letting go, and cultivating self-awareness.
There’s more than one way to get married and be a bride. The hardest part is figuring out what’s right for you. So, be honest and ask for help!
December 3, 2010 7:54 am
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I just finally reached out to my oldest friend, who is also planning a wedding, telling her I was lonely. She did not commiserate, telling me “This is a joyous occasion.” Yes it is. It’s also a huge mental, spiritual, emotional adjustment. Not to mention it is bringing up all my baggage, to the point where I feel like I’m wearing it!
December 3, 2010 7:55 am
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I am willing to bet she’s scared to admit she’s feeling some of the same things you are because, in her mind, it may equal cold feet. We know this isn’t true, however, it is uncomfortable to question the underlying feelings of why you aren’t feeling “the norm” of this “joyous occasion.” In the long run, I believe you will learn about yourself and your relationship by drilling down and thinking about these things.
December 3, 2010 9:23 am
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Oh I hear you, I hear you loud and clear on the loneliness.
I suffer from anxiety problems, so chose my bridal party based on the people I know who could most help calm me down on the day of the wedding. Unfortunately, these people don’t live close by either. I have some good friends out here, but I’m not yet entirely comfortable being my full self with them yet. The other thing about my local friends is that they are pretty anti-wedding. Whenever I talk about my stress, they are all, “Why don’t you just elope?” or “Why don’t you just cut that part out?” I feel I always have to justify my choices to them, so I don’t feel comfortable asking them for help either.
My faraway friends have been much much better in this regard, but let me tell you, the time difference is a real pain in the butt when it comes to trying to talk to people easily when you need them.
My mom has never been supportive of my fiance and I’s relationship for religious reasons, so I don’t have her interest or support either. It’s a blessing and a curse. I want her to care because she’s my MOM, but I knew if she did care I’d also be having to fight with her wishes which would be a lot different than mine.
Part of it is, I wanted people to be really excited about the wedding, and well, I felt like no one was. I dunno, maybe because we’ve been together for so long people just kind of expected it to happen eventually? That made me, and makes me feel really lonely. Yet feel selfish at the same time: why should anyone else have to care that I’m getting married? Why should anyone have to help? I know that’s the shame talking, but I can’t make it go away.
I’ve been relying a bunch on my aunt out here, who is wonderful, and has been kind of a surrogate mom for me for many years. Even then, I feel guilt about asking for her help, because I feel all, she has her own real sons to worry about.
I don’t know, I feel you. I had all these rosy visions of weddings in a bygone age where all the women lived down the street from each other and didn’t have tons of other life responsibilities of their own and so the all totally just did everything together. Maybe that still happens for some people, I don’t know, but I’m thinking in our generation the-good-friends-scattered-to-the-winds is probably now much more of the norm. And we’re frequently getting married later, or heck not marrying right out of high school, so we have school and stressful jobs to balance too.
December 3, 2010 8:00 am
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If your aunt enjoys weddings and only has sons, do NOT feel bad for accepting her support with your wedding. Most mothers of the groom do not get to play a large role in the wedding planning and can feel left out – I know my mother in law tried her hardest to stay of the wedding planning even though I actually wanted her help! Anyway, you might be giving your aunt a wonderful experience she might otherwise not have.
December 3, 2010 10:34 am
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I don’t know if this experience translates to everyone, but the best way to get closer with new friends is to open up, share a need, a concern, a vulnerability. That’s the only way to start finding out what they, and your friendship, is really made of.
December 3, 2010 10:47 pm
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So glad to see this post. I feel guilty whenever I want to talk about the wedding and plans, because it seems self-centered. But then if I don’t get to chat about them with friends/family/the bridal brigade at all, I feel like I missed out a little on the pre-wedding process. For women who are very Practical Wedding-minded, it’s an odd place to be in. You don’t want to feel like all you can think about/talk about is the wedding, but you also want to experience some of the fun and thrill that comes along with being engaged.
That said, I know I’m the kind of person who has trouble asking for help, and I’m sure a lot of other people here are the same. I think it’s good to contact people with very specific jobs that you know they can probably help with. Most people (even your best friends) might not think you have anything they need help with right now unless you actually say it.
December 3, 2010 8:04 am
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Thank you for talking about this feeling! This post and all of the comments are really making me breathe easier. I have my two sisters and friend I’ve known for a very long time as my bridal party, but the sisters are 18 and 16 and the friend is living on another continent, so it’s been kind of a lonely planning road thus far. At first I was so excited “With only three ladies it will be so intimate! So meaningful!”, but then last week I started looking at it as “I only have one lady friend?” cue sad trombone.
This post and discussion remind me that if all else fails and I’m having a bad day and want to cheer up, or if I’m having a great day and want to pass along good vibes there’s this community here at APW!
Thank you for sharing Kim and opening up this dialogue!
December 3, 2010 8:13 am
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I love that your sad instrument is a trombone. :)
December 4, 2010 6:07 am
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I needed to see this today. The boy and I are preplanning (mostly we don’t want to deal with the hassle of telling everyone yet but also because we’re probably moving next year) and it hit me the other day that we’ll be doing all of it with no one else. I love that he is interested and wants to have a say in things, but at the end of the day, he’s not going to help me go shopping for a dress, or make neat centrepieces, or do any of the ‘fun’ stuff. My mother (who doesn’t believe in weddings) lives halfway across the country; I have no sisters, and my sister-in-law and I are barely acquaintances. I have *one* best friend (in a different province) – and really the very few other female friends are scattered here and there and I haven’t seen most of them in two years. I’m starting to think I should wait a couple more years until my daughter is a teenager and can be enlisted for help :p I sometimes get a little… not jealous, exactly, but surprised and sad, when I see APW grad posts about how the couple’s friends all came together to help set up and do these things. It always makes me think “How do people really have that? Lucky them.”
It’s hard to see past that stuff – what you don’t have. I often feel lonely in my everyday life, too, and the idea that you expressed – ” That I’ll get married and only have him in my life, no friends left, and I would have done that to myself” – is something I feel on a daily basis. I wonder sometimes if I hadn’t met him right after I moved to this city, would I have made more girl friends? Would it better? And the answer is, probably not. Try to remember what you *do* have – your fiance, your mother, your 6 or 7 best friends scattered across the country – and rework your expectations and hopes about what wedding planning “should” be like, because there is no “should”. Alyssa is right about the grieving for what you had hoped for – giving yourself time to be sad that it won’t be what you’d hoped it really does free up your spirit and your mind to be at peace with what it is.
December 3, 2010 8:16 am
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Well, if he is game, why not have him shop for a dress with you or make centerpieces or help figure out the invites? I always thought I would shop for a dress with girlfriends, but it ended up being my parents and my now-husband. NEVER would have planned it that way, but it was just right in the time and that’s just how it happened. Plus, I love that we got to chose the dress that he (and I) thought I looked best in. So…maybe it would be fun to do some of those things with him?
December 3, 2010 8:51 am
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Uh, I totally wanted my husband elect’s opinions on the dress and…. it got old quick.
(I’m also a lone bride, family’s far, have made a few new friends in Gradtown but the ladies I would shop with are several timezones away)
He is my main support and also, just doesn’t care about plenty of aesthetic aspects. To the point where he was like, I can’t help you find a dress. So I bought a sample in a feverish haze just to be done with it…. one I feel perfectly meh about. Maybe not the best move.
But hey, we’re all just figuring this out as we go along. I say, cut yourself a break!
December 3, 2010 9:21 pm
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I wonder if my comment would be of any value to Kim. Last year, I was the #1 superstar bridesmaid for a very close friend’s wedding. I felt super lonely sometimes.
There were three other bridesmaids–sister of the bride who was a recent law school grad studying for the bar, sister of the groom who was a recent college grad who lived 150 miles away, and a good college friend who worked for a family business that was crashing-and-burning. So yeah, I was the live-five-blocks-away, financially stable, detail-oriented and dependable bridesmaid. And let me just tell you, being that person was emotionally and financially draining. At times, I just wanted to scream. But after months of slow to no responsiveness, I started to tell myself that everyone is doing what they can, the best way they know how. Sometimes that meant some people were contributing nothing.
After the initial resentment, I reached out to my own support network, and they lifted me up. I was there for the bride as much as I could be, and I drew boundaries when I was feeling overwhelmed. In the last few months before the wedding, we threw “DIY wedding” dinners, where family and friends came out to socialize and help. Those are some of my best memories.
There are a lot of considerations with bridal party selection, and really most wedding details. It is important to choose from your heart. Shield yourself from negativity. And really, relish in the awesome-ness of being inspired enough to commit to someone for a lifetime.Best wishes!
December 3, 2010 8:18 am
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This did help, thank you!
December 3, 2010 8:41 am
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You are very welcome. I am glad I could be of help.
December 3, 2010 4:47 pm
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This. Yes. I had two women in my bridal party, one my younger sister who was in college several hours away, dirt poor, and dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, and the other my best friend from high school, also an hour away, and very busy with her senior year of a difficult major. When I was stressed, I could call and talk to them, but neither of them had any frame of reference for how I was feeling, and so I ended up doing a lot of my crying alone. My bachelorette (lame to begin with) was ruined my my sister’s pregnancy moodiness and I ended up calling my mother and demanding that she come and pick her up- which she refused to do, because my mother is not the most understanding person either. Most of the fun DIY things I wanted to do got dropped because there was no one to help me with them, and as a result, we spent way more money than we should of, which added to the guilt because my mother refused to let me pay anything or be concerned about costs (until she ran out of money and we unexpectedly had to handle all last minute expenses, of course).
My wedding was beautiful, but I still, six months later, feel that lack of community, because it wasn’t the wedding I wanted, and I feel like that’s because I didn’t have any support or help. I’m still struggling with reconciling myself to the fact that it was what it was, and it won’t be happening again, so I should move past it. I married the man I love and want to spend my life with, and that should be good enough… and it is, as long as I don’t think about the wedding. Our marriage is awesome. Our wedding… makes me cry.
December 3, 2010 8:23 am
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Oh, sweetie. ::hugs::
I know what you mean about not having the wedding you wanted. We were immensely disappointed in ours … not that it wasn’t lovely, because it was. It was beautiful. And totally full of love. But the fact that it was the first wedding in both our families in … oh … 15 years, and that our families are pretty boring? Yah. Lovely day … devoid of the passion and goofiness we know so well in OUR life. There were moments we worked it in (I have a slew of silly photos, taken by my best friend while the professional photog was off doing something else) and I’ll be forever grateful. But the rocking, dance-off, joy-filled party so many seem to have? Yah, sadly, not us.
I can’t say that it gets better … because no amount of time is going to make you like something you didn’t like. But, in my experience, time has allowed me to accept it. Does it still make me sad? Oh yes. But I’m not crying about it anymore. Until that day comes for you … ::tight hugs::
And this: “Most of the fun DIY things I wanted to do got dropped because there was no one to help me with them, and as a result, we spent way more money than we should of, which added to the guilt because my mother refused to let me pay anything or be concerned about costs (until she ran out of money and we unexpectedly had to handle all last minute expenses, of course). ”
I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about. Whenever we tried to discuss our budget, we were told (by my mother) to “not worry about it, we’ll take care of it.” Which is insanely frustrating when I know they have limits, and I don’t want to burden them. But then to show up a week before the wedding, realize money ran out and we were never told (at least they didn’t go in debt) … so, so difficult. Luckily, we had money put aside with plans to furnish our home, so we didn’t go into debt too much. And really, the money was not a big deal. It’s not that we couldn’t afford it, it was that we’d been told not to plan for it … and so we hadn’t. So, in the end, we’re still not completely furnished, but we gained a HUGE lesson on always planning for the unexpected.
December 3, 2010 12:04 pm
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There is NO WAY the experience you refer to as “typical” is ACTUALLY typical. No way. I think of all the people in my life, especially all the young women, and I can think of MAYBE one or two who have a large group of close girlfriends who get together regularly. That’s not life, that’s Sex And The City.
I almost think that “alone” feeling is entirely separate from how many friends you have involved in the wedding planning. Because as a bride-to-be, you are alone. I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about being a bride-to-be and a bride as a transition, as my own Hero’s Journey. In every ritualized transition, there has to be a period of alone-ness. Solitude, fasting, visions, that sort of thing. I don’t think it’s an accident that those activities show up in transition rituals–I think it’s because those things are integral to the transition. You can’t get away from alone-ness, because feeling alone is necessary to be able to transition. Our culture has this whole thing about how transitions are always wonderful (adulthood, weddings, parenthood, retirement…) and that is REALLY just not the case. Transition is death and rebirth, and death is painful. This is a GOOD thing, not a problem.
I want to ask you: what are the feelings you would get from the perfect community you describe? How did you expect to feel and how are your feelings different from that? I hear some worries from you about being different than other people; what do YOU want? What kind of support helps YOU be your best self?
Your community is the way it is because you are the way you are. To have a different community, you’d have to be a different person. You may end up deciding that you want to be the kind of person who has half a dozen girlfriends who all live near each other and have weekly girls’ nights, and this may be a catalyst for changing your life to create that. But there’s no reason you should be that person if you don’t want to be.
December 3, 2010 8:52 am
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Yes, This!
December 3, 2010 8:57 am
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You gave me chills. Awesome note on the rituals of transition.
December 3, 2010 9:29 am
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I agree with Jem, thoughtful and moving. Thank you.
December 3, 2010 9:34 am
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LOVE this. Especially the Hero’s Journey. And the catalyst for thinking about the life you want and working towards that…
December 3, 2010 9:54 am
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This.
December 3, 2010 10:40 am
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WON-DER-FULLLL
December 4, 2010 6:31 pm
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