PHEW! Three weekends, three weddings in a row. It's been an absolute whirlwind of a month. In between planning my own wedding, Geo and I have had the privilege of being guests at three other weddings. I don't know what I liked more: appreciating the details of each wedding that others may have overlooked or knowing that I could simply kick back instead of stressing about details. Then again, it was probably all the open bars.
Weddings are brilliant. I love them. I keep forgetting that when I'm 40-some days away from my own wedding and I can't pick a tablecloth to save my life. Everything is complicated and there are 1 trillion options for every little thing and you can't just point to something and be like "I want that." Because whoops! It costs a million dollars and won't work inside your venue and that needed to ordered 3 weeks ago, but this needs to come from that vendor and where I sign up to get my punch in the face?
So I was struggling with some decisions and expressing myself to Geo (or as he calls it, "complaining"). It's been a particularly grueling phase of planning lately, so I had been spending a lot of time doing that. He kept being like "I think it's normal to be this stressed out all the time. Planning a wedding is hard." But I dismissed this as a "Grooms don't know anything" comment. So then this weekend, we got all dressed up and went to the last wedding we have before our own. It was my friend Mitch's wedding and it was FANTASTIC, you guys. And the best part of it happened before I even had my second butler-passed appetizer.
I was standing at a cocktail table (which, for the record, I have no memory of what color tablecloth was on it) and I met another girl. She said she was also getting married. Like two weeks after us. So I go "OMG, are you SO excited..." and she totally rolled her eyes before I finished with "...to be at someone ELSE'S wedding?"
The biggest grin I've ever seen slipped across her face. She was like "I am SO GLAD you added that last part! I have been SO SICK of people asking me if I'm excited for our wedding and all I keep thinking is 'No I'm not excited, I'm miserable.' Do you ever feel like that?!" I nearly wept for joy. I was all "Yeah, it's horrible. My family is probably going to disown me and if I never another chair cover, it'll be too soon." We both looked at gift tables and place cards and napkin folds with the same mix of exhausted scrutiny and appreciation. We both admitted to calling off the wedding at least a few times and spending more than a few nights crying and waking up in a cold sweat from a wedding-related nightmare. I felt vindicated. I felt like I was not the worst person in the world for struggling so much with this process...or if I am, I'm not alone.
It's very weird to realize how much of wedding planning is based on other people. You think "It's just about me and my soon-to-be spouse. That's all that matters." But it's not. Not always, at least. And I had gotten used to feeling like sharing the experience with other people was nothing but a challenge. But on that night at that wedding, it was suddenly a very good thing to have a new person to talk to about everything. A comrade. An ally. A fellow blushing bride-to-be who knows that it's never as easy as it looks.
So yeah, that was just great. Then I hit the open bar and the dance floor and it got AMAZING.
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