OK, so confessional time. I’m going through that phase of wedding planning that involves the gut-wrenching fear that everything is, in fact, not going to be ok. It doesn’t really matter how often Kevin reassures me that things are going to be just fine, in my head and in my gut, the terror is a cold hard knot that refuses to go away.
The dress is not done. The bridesmaids dresses are no only not done, I don’t have the fabric for them yet. No one has shoes. The veil is not done, nor is the tiara. There are still day invitations to go out. None of the evening invitations have gone yet. I still need to talk to our friend who’s doing the photos about what we want. We need to write the wedding vows and order of ceremony. There’s a half billion things that need confirming. The wedding list need to be written. And my sanity needs to be found – it ran off a few weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since. I know it’s not hiding behind the sofa with a cushion over its head, because I’ve checked.
Friends kindly tell me that I’m more organised than most brides, but I don’t feel organised. I have a huge list of things to do and a Gantt chart, yes, but Christmas is looming, and the list only ever gets bigger, nothing ever gets ticked off, and it all has to be balanced against all the work I have to do.
The most frustrating thing is that all the lessons I’ve learnt have been learnt too late. I wish now that I’d taken a week of in February of this year and made the decisions that I’ve put off til now. I wish I hadn’t assumed that we’d have “plenty of time”. I wish I’d spent more time organising the dresses, and bought all the fabric for everything up front, and had Kevin’s waistcoat made regardless of whether he wanted one or not because now it’s too late. I’ve done things in such a piecemeal way and it’s made life that much harder.
I keep trying to unravel the knot of fear that settled in my gut for the last couple of weeks, but it just won’t go away. So I am focusing this week on getting the really important stuff done – shoes, fabric for bridesmaids, etc. Hopefully that will help.
This is, I think, the phase I’ve been told all brides go through. So if I’m late with the Christmas cards, or antisocial over the next month, forgive me.
Then again, I’m always late with Christmas cards, so you may not actually notice any difference.
On my wedding day I found myself in Killarney (in Southern Ireland) while my wedding suit was still in Dublin. And that all worked out ok. (Granted, I had to get my uncle to hop a fence and break into my parents house where they’d accidentally left it behind) But it all worked out ok.
I didn’t even worry much about it. Worst came to the worst, I’d have taken my best man’s outfit and made him wear jeans.
I went into absolute panic mode from about three months to go which culminated in me wailing quite a lot and despairing every time I looked at the purple folder of doom (if I’d had a Gantt chart I probably would have been worse). My reasoning was that I was an organised person – heck organising has long been part of my job – so why couldn’t I do it? How did ‘normal’ people (ie those without a long held to do list fetish) get married?
The best solution I found? Copious amounts of wine with bubbles (Champagne wherever possible but the habit got so huge I had to scale down to cava and prosecco or I would have been bankrupt by the big day!).
Turns out that it does all fall into place eventually although having something wonderfully therapeutic and useful to do in those final few days/hours is a good idea – I spent the morning of my wedding making napkin rings out of bamboo grass and eucalyptus!
See, intellectually, I know that it will all work out just fine. We’ll all have a great day, and no one will notice if little details are a bit off. Intellectually, I know that I’ll get everything done in time, and that there’s no need to worry.
Emotionally, I’m a screaming wreck. I’m making bad decisions, and then stressing about them afterwards. I really, really need to get some small and uncontentious things done over Christmas, and then I need to get the big things sorted when the world opens after the holidays, and I need to stay. fucking. calm.
Maybe vodka will help.
And chocolate.
It’s a shame that weddings turn into such balls of stress for brides. They really should be more fun than that, even in the planning.
Speaking from more than 12 years’ remove from our wedding (and, alas, as a man), anything that doesn’t get done or that goes wrong in reality (rather than just in worry) simply gets forgotten or becomes a funny story. Maybe it might help to recall that you’re projecting a lifetime’s worth of societal expectations, very little of which is a true necessity. Consider which things for your wedding are actually necessary (groom, someone to perform the ceremony, family and other guests, probably rings) and focus on those. The rest is dressing — even the dress.
And if you’re willing to delegate some big chunks of stuff to Kevin, that would be good. You shouldn’t take on all the stress yourself.
Just remember the Athens Olympics, it looked like the wouldn’t happen but they did!
it will be AWESOME!!!!!!!
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