If you still believe in perfection, you are too young to get married. Nothing in life is perfect, especially a big party. But even if we don’t believe in perfection, we are all being force fed this idea that our wedding day will be perfect. Everyone talks to you about “Your Big Day” “Your Perfect Day” “The Happiest Day of Your Life.” The problem with these ideas are that they stress you out. Since brides are told to expect and require perfection, and that all the details matter, that often translates into a huge amount of stress. I’ve seen brides waiting to go down the aisle in full freak out mode over one detail or another. I read about a bride who didn’t enjoy her wedding day at all, because after all her planning, her $10,000 gown ripped, and even after some safety pin intervention, she couldn’t enjoy the rest of the day. And I think we can all agree, we don’t want that to happen to us.
So, what to do? Things are going to go wrong on our wedding days, and we need to expect that. Our Labor of Love posted pictures of this adorable bride, who was in a cast on her wedding day. Instead of ruining the day, it made for great pictures, and gave the couples stories they will tell for the rest of their lives. She was carried down the aisle on a chase lounge, holding her dad’s hand, and her new husband carried her back down the aisle.
When you start asking around, everyone has a story of something that went wrong on their wedding day. My parents had all red and white flowers for their wedding… except for the floral cake topper which the florist inexplicably made out of bright yellow roses. During our friends wedding the grooms 11 year old brother and groomsman fainted during the service because he was locking his knees to stand “extra tall.” I went to a wedding where the DJ started narrating the brides every move “The bride picked up a wine glass! The bride kissed the groom!” And my mom turned to me and said, “Boy is this going to make a great story one day.” These crazy mistakes didn’t ruin the weddings. They added imperfection to joyful days celebrating wonderful, but imperfect relationships.
Maybe we should think of whatever goes wrong on our wedding days as lucky. Maybe we should start telling brides to “break a leg” on their wedding day. It would be healthier then wishing them the happiest day of their life.
Photos via Our Labor Of Love (my photo crush out of Atlanta).
