What's Bubbling in the Stew?
"The only thing that is ever foolish about a dream is not to act on it."
- Pat Croce

Friday, June 24, 2011

Weddings: Depressing or Joyful?

No April rain
No May flowers bloom
No wedding Saturdays within the month of June...
'Tis the season for weddings and love, but for those who don't have it, weddings can suck.  I wrote this article a few years ago not long after I got married.  Check it out.  Your feedback is appreciated!


If I were single, I would have thrown myself off a bridge the other night.  As much as weddings are meant to celebrate the bonds of unity and oneness, they are also depressing as hell for anyone who doesn’t have someone to share those bonds with.  All the songs about love and finding love and losing love and being in love; had I not had the double band on my 3rd finger (not including the thumb), I would have been airborne off the Big Mac.
I’ve never been the traditional woman attending a wedding; the kind that comes home, kicks off her wedding-appropriate stilettos, points at her man, the clock, and then the door.  Weddings never jump-started my biological ticker, beginning a silent countdown for “he better propose or else.”  Nope, I was always the big hold-out.  I never had the dreams of the big beautiful wedding with me in the princess dress and the tiara, walking amongst a floral wonderland of roses and calla lilies, waving to all of my adoring family and friends as I walked toward the groom.  The groom of course, would be standing in white, smiling ready to receive me and all of my perfection with open arms, holding a diamond rock of Gibraltar with a band attached to it, waiting for the right moment to slide it on my left hand.  That was never my fantasy.  In fact, weddings evoked the opposite in me…fear.  I embraced the stereotypical male reaction: come home, hurry up and turn on the TV, and hope SportsCenter would distract him from talking about it.  He was ready.  I was petrified.  I hated the thought of being a wife and morphing into someone I didn’t recognize.  I didn’t want to lose myself.
My revelation came at my friend’s reception.  She was the quintessential bachelorette, the life of the party, the epitome of all the clichés about being single and loving it.  But standing before me was this woman, stunning in her ivory dress, radiating happiness.  She hadn’t altered, her personality was just as bubbly as before; the major transformation would be in her last name.  And in that moment, I knew I’d be the same moody, opinionated, loveable person I was before the addition of the title “Mrs.”
On our wedding day, as I stood there in my princess dress and my tiara, my groom in white, holding a non-Gibraltar rock which suited my appendages perfectly, I realized although I’d never dreamt it, I was living my fantasy.  I just hoped all of my unmarried family and friends would be too happy for us to notice the depressing music.      

1 comment:

by Agent311 said...

FYI - this is bad timing in Cincinnati, as this morning (6/24/11) a man was hit and fell to his death off of the Brent Spence bridge. My condolences go out to his family.