Earlier this week we talked about second weddings and how they should be a source of deep joy, not of shame. So we thought it was a perfect time to dig Brandy's excellent Wedding Grad post out of the archives and share it with you. It's about letting yourself off the hook, letting yourself experience joy, and learning that weddings really are not about you (exactly). Brandy also writes at Second Chance Happiness, which, yes.
My husband and I like to do things our own way, pretty much all of the time—other peoples' opinions need not apply. Then we got engaged. Secretly. We’d met on a dating site a year and two months prior to being engaged. We were inseparable from the first date. He was totally different than anyone I’d met, and I was smitten. We were living together before long—unofficially then officially. Then we had a conversation about engagement rings, and it was decided. We were getting married. Just... no one knew yet. Two months and a ring later, we let the cat out of the bag.
During the two months that no one knew, we talked weddings. A lot. I’d been married before. Thankfully, the ended marriage didn’t leave me unwilling to give love another shot. But I knew that I did not need a wedding to “feel” married. I just needed him. Well, turns out, he needed a wedding. He felt that his mother, the sweetest little Italian-born-and-raised woman you’d ever have the pleasure of meeting, really deserved to see her first born wed. Plus, he felt that it was part of the set of social norms that he really wanted to adhere to. My husband has a lot of friends. He’s been in a lot of weddings and generally was grateful for being a part of it. So, he wanted to have the experience of being a groom in a wedding as part of his mental filing cabinet.
We set to planning, and I felt completely out of sorts. Too many shoulds! I felt like I was being too cheap and yet too wasteful all at once, and that we’d never get the wedding done within an amount that we could reasonable afford. I also ran into something I did not expect... a lot of guilt about this being my “second wedding.” Little jabs were inserted into conversation like, “Well, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve had a wedding, right?!” I guess I thought in this day and age, getting remarried was a bit more common and not so looked down upon.
Yet, there were people, either subconsciously or outright, making me feel wretched because I dared to have a second wedding instead of just eloping or going to a courthouse. Well, you know what?! This was his first (and hopefully only) wedding, and it was my first wedding to him. Our commitment to each other doesn’t mean any less just because I had the misfortune of marrying poorly in my younger years! Somewhere in the planning, I made a decision to stop feeling guilty about being a non-first-time bride. Instead, I started feeling brave. I didn’t let the past and the negative have such a hold over me that it would keep me from the present and future joy of being a wife... his wife.
Then I found blogs (Meg, Sara, Peonies, and Celia to name a few), and I read them from start to finish. I threw the shoulds out the window! It was empowering to go through the process of looking up each tradition and deciding if it represented who we were or not. The things that did, we kept. Everything else got cut! Oh, and I started a blog. It was my husband’s idea to help me manage the stress level, and it worked great!
Things were working beautifully until four months before the wedding. Then things got hard. My grandparents were burgled, a family member attempted to end their life, and my husband’s parents separated and filed for divorce without any warning. My brother had separated from his wife the month we got engaged. One of my closest friends was going through a divorce... I started wondering what the heck we were doing! Was it right to celebrate in the midst of all this? Were we being overly indulgent? Would random fights break out at the wedding because of the fresh, new hurts that were being handed out? I cried a lot. I repeatedly asked my husband why we were going through with this. Between him and APW, I realized that we were going through this process to grow, to publicly declare our intent to be a family, and to share our joy with people who really wanted/needed to have that joy.
Though I’d done a lot of the wedding planning and prep on my own, the weekend of the wedding our friends and family stepped up. Help was dished out by the fistful. People got along. Smiles were everywhere.
The day of the wedding, I woke up in my husband’s arms and declared “It’s Christmas!”… even though it was February. We spent the entire morning together. Alone. We made breakfast. We practiced our first dance in our PJs. We were utterly calm and so at peace. When my MOH arrived to help with last minute details, she was shocked to find there were no details to help with! She called me the calmest bride she’d ever seen. We chatted and ate lunch while our other lifelong friend did my hair (Where I ever-so-gracefully managed to catapult the curling iron into my cheek and slice it open. My response? Belly-shaking laughter. When it started bleeding a few moments before the wedding, I stuck a napkin to it and laughed some more. Luckily it did stop before the ceremony!).
In the end, we learned exactly how to work together to make decisions and compromises. Most of all, we learned that though a wedding should represent who we are, the wedding is really not for us. It was for all those around us that wanted to be happy with us and for us! It was about the community, and I wish I’d realized it sooner. It would have relieved an immense amount of stress.
The Info — Photography: Nichole Chavez through A Love Story Photography / Venue: The Atrium at Park West / Invites: Ruff House Arts / Caterer: Creative Cuisine / Cakes: Delicious Cakes / Dress: Gloria by Maggy Sottero, Bought on clearance at Bridal Designs
I’m my husband’s second wife and I ran into a lot of similar issues… in particular because the people coming to our wedding were predominately from his side since we married in his home country. I honestly just felt silly and that people would think it was stupid and that everyone would be annoyed about having to attend another wedding for the same person. But turns out… since it was my husband’s second wedding, he knew everything he didn’t want and what he did want. And what he wanted most of all was a wedding for our families. That is… a celebration for our families that was relaxing and fun and including good food (and drink!) and there was time to chat to everyone. And there were no pretensions or requirements or stress. And it turned out so great that we’re going to host the same party this years sans the getting married part.
October 26, 2011 10:42 am
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I am SO jealous and overjoyed you got to spend the morning with your husband. It sounds perfect. I got married three months ago and I wanted to stay with my husband the nigh before, it would have calmed my a** down that’s for sure and it would have been the perfect morning. But alas people would not let me. Congrats :)
October 26, 2011 10:56 am
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“People” didn’t get a say. :) We weren’t rude about it. We just never really discussed it outside of, well, just us. And when people asked, we said the decision was already made. It sort of shut the conversation down.
October 26, 2011 6:21 pm
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Ditto here! We had booked a swanky hotel for the night of the wedding, and to make life simpler, we booked it for the night before as well, and so stayed there together.
Waking up in my fiances arms, then going to sleep in my husbands? Awesome.
November 1, 2011 12:49 am
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Second weddings are awesome–especially when it’s so clear that this time it’s right.
I felt so liberated by my second wedding… We could really do it our own way, and people expected it to be unconventional. But then again, I’ve never much cared what people think. The only sadness was that B’s dad and step mom didn’t come. We all pretended it was because they were so far away, but that wasn’t the reason. In any case… we loved our wedding, and if they weren’t yet over B’s divorce, then it was probably better they didn’t come and pretend to be overjoyed for us.
Brandy and Karl, you guys are adorable! I just love the joy on your faces–especially in the one where you are walking in!
October 26, 2011 11:01 am
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Thanks! My brother was sooooo nervous. :) And see, being around my hubby except for two hours leading up to the wedding didn’t seem to take away any of the “first look” joy.
October 26, 2011 6:24 pm
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I am struggling with so many of the same things you’re talking about…thank you for this. It’s nice to see light at the end of the tunnel.
October 26, 2011 11:07 am
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Our mantra turned into “hey, we’ll be married…no matter what else happens….we’ll be married”. Seriously, it’s all that matter. As a bonus, nothing epic went wrong! The potential was there (Lord, I could tell you stores of explosions waiting) but we squashed it all. There is definitely light, girl!
October 26, 2011 6:26 pm
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I wish every second-time Bride could read this beautiful post. I love those happy faces in the photos!
October 26, 2011 11:30 am
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Hooray for you both! As someone planning a second wedding I am facing all the same stoopid barriers you mentioned and it’s getting old quick. I keep bringing myself back to the idea that love is all that matters :)
Congratulations to you both!!
October 26, 2011 3:54 pm
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Make up your mind not to let them steal your thunder!
Thank you….seriously, best decision of my life has been marrying this man.
October 26, 2011 6:28 pm
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[...] sites that got me into blogging and saved my sanity during the wedding planning process, posted our Wedding Graduate post [...]
October 27, 2011 5:41 am
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“We set to planning, and I felt completely out of sorts. Too many shoulds! I felt like I was being too cheap and yet too wasteful all at once, and that we’d never get the wedding done within an amount that we could reasonable afford.”
I felt these exact things. It made me hate wedding planning 90% of the time. And I didn’t even have the second-wedding stress on top of it!
October 27, 2011 8:28 am
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Thanks for writing this. Both my fiance and I are divorced, and I’ve had some worries in my head that certain friends might feel we are making too big a deal of our wedding. I didn’t have a wedding the first time, I didn’t even have an engagement. I married someone I had been dating for about 2 month, in a surprise elopement. So, yes I am divorced, but this is the first time I consider myself to be a bride, and I want all the bridal things. I want a wedding shower, I want a bachelorette party, I want the big white dress. But a small part of my heart says I shouldn’t do those things. I’m also finding it hard to get my fiance to approach the planning with the same excitement I have, since he’s done this all (he did have the big wedding the first time) and I haven’t. I’m so excited to tell the world that he is the right one, that I’m doing this my way this time, and I want to be this mans wife, and that we are going to have a family some day.
October 27, 2011 8:57 am
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Yay!
“Our commitment to each other doesn’t mean any less just because I had the misfortune of marrying poorly in my younger years!”
This.
October 27, 2011 10:14 am
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[...] See the article here: Wedding Graduates: Brandy & Karl « A Practical Wedding: Ideas for … [...]
October 27, 2011 10:25 am
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