Once upon a time, back when our only means of online communication was email and the occasional Facebook poke, I used to slide into the DMs of APW (aka Meg’s personal email inbox) to regale her with stories of wedding planning. One of my very first emails went something like this:
Hi Meg,
I can only think to pass this on to the members of the wedding blogging world. You guys always get it.
A funny dream I had the other night exemplifying the ridiculous nature of wedding anxiety:
I am in a wedding dress shop with my best friend from childhood. I am wearing the biggest, whitest, poufiest dress. She looks at me and says, “Your arms look fat.”
This made me laugh. really. hard.
I hope it has the same effect for you.
Cheers,
Maddie
Guys, I did not know Meg personally at the time. Why did I think she wanted to hear about something that happened in a dream I’d had? AHEM. Anyway. While this exchange was not something I genuinely worried might happen at my wedding (said friend is a delightful human who would never), I do remember how visceral the wedding fears became once our date started to creep closer—to the point that they started to invade my subconscious. I still remember the one nightmare where I was walking down the aisle, but nobody was paying attention. The horror.
Then there are the awake wedding nightmares. The what if my brother makes a huge scene at the reception and ruins everything kind. And those are harder to laugh off. They are also really hard to talk about. Because our culture has this crappy double standard about weddings. On the one hand, you’re supposed to pull off a seamlessly perfect event. And on the other, you can’t let anyone know you care about said event too much. Care. But only a little. Try. But not too hard. Be the Jennifer Lawrence of wedding planning and never the Anne Hathaway (which, don’t even get me started on that totally bullshit dichotomy).
So when you want to talk about wedding planning woes, or your fears, that double standard means people have a tendency to brush you off. Everything will be fine! Stop worrying so much. It’s just a party. And suddenly wedding planning becomes this tiny isolated bubble of you, your partner, and that one cashier at JoAnn Fabric that you cried in front of last week. Maybe that’s why I slid into Meg’s DMs so frequently while I was planning my own wedding. Who else was I going to talk to?
So today I wanted to invite you guys to share your worst wedding nightmares. Let them out in the comments below, that they may be released from your body and into the universe. In the meantime, I won’t tell you everything is going to be fine. (Because that is not helpful.) But it will be great. And you’ll be married. And that is wonderful.
What are your biggest fears around your wedding right now? And which ones have seeped so far into your subconscious that you are having actual nightmares about them?
