I was exhausted, overweight, and late for marriage, according to my mother, who had taken it as a personal failure that her eldest daughter had not found a partner despite her valiant efforts. And, bless her heart, she had tried everything. When I was eighteen and good hips to have children, she was looking for a doctor. When I was twenty-five years old and dancing in bars with my friends, she was looking for someone who had a job. When I was thirty years old and had a double chin, the only thing that mattered to him was that he had a pulse. But despite my mother’s tears and predictions that I was destined for a life of screaming at my soaps in a cardigan and slippers surrounded by cats, I found my Prince Charming, and before I even opened the ring box, my Mother had ordered invitations, tasted three cakes, and hired the band.
We wanted a small backyard wedding with a couple of friends. My mom translated it as “great band, open bar, forty-six showers, and an ice sculpture of kissing dolphins.” There was a wedding to be planned, by God, and I was lucky to be consulted.
Six weeks and twenty-four arguments later, the wedding was called off. Surprisingly, it’s not my mother’s fault. My Prince Charming’s mom had a serious health issue and she went from snappy to-we’re-not-sure-how-long-she’s got her, in a matter of days. It’s hard to plan a wedding when your husband is losing his mother and his father is losing his best friend. We wanted to get married, we didn’t want to wait and we wanted her parents there. It seemed that there was only one option: take the wedding to her. Period. End of discussion.
I won’t bore you with the details: the lost refunds, the scrap paper wedding invitations, the comments I received from sixteen bridesmaids who were appalled that we live in a world where a bride would have to make such a sacrifice. at the biggest event of her life. Her special day. I won’t tell you what kind of stress comes with trying to plan a last-minute wedding three states away. I won’t tell you how difficult it is to find a church, a preacher, and a restaurant with tables within walking distance of the hospital. I will not tell you what it was like to find out three days before the event that her mother was worse and could not leave the hospital and now she could not come to the wedding that had been transferred just for her. . I won’t tell you how panicked we were when we quickly arranged a wedding ceremony to be held in the hospital lobby.
I can’t tell you how many nurses it took to do her hair and makeup. I’ll tell you how many rules were broken when we turned her hospital room into the bride’s dressing room. You can laugh at the image of me running through the hospital corridors in my long white wedding dress and veil to look for the shoes I left in the car, while the photographer takes pictures and tries not to trip over the gurneys.
I don’t remember how it felt to have no bridesmaids, or how it felt to have soft music replaced by intercoms calling the doctors. I don’t remember it feeling like a conference room. I remember looking outside and seeing her mother holding her father’s hand. I remember seeing the nurses she had never met crying in the back row. It was the happiest moment of my life. My smile could be seen from a mile away. It was still my day. My family was there, his family was there, some families I didn’t recognize were there, and I am convinced that even though there were no windows, God was also there. My Prince Charming’s mother is gone and her father left this earth soon after. I will never regret our decision.
I tell you this story, not to encourage you to cancel your dreams, but to give you some advice as you launch into one of the best days of your life, or any dream. Know that there will be things that will go wrong that are out of your control. Accept it and go in from the beginning knowing what is really important. Lower expectations. I’m not saying to change your plans, just your reaction when things don’t go as planned. Remember who you’re trying to please so you don’t look back regretting planning this dream for someone else. And keep your sense of humor. You will be stressed, no matter what. Your sense of humor will keep you sane. And remember that life doesn’t always promise happily ever after. Or maybe it is, and you just have to know where to look.