It brings be great joy to constantly get to know Emily and her Fiance through her writing. It makes me dream of being there to share with her in their special day. It also brings me great joy to see everything that she is doing as a DIY Everything Bride. I have great pride in seeing her go through the paces of planning a wedding without someone like me (the planner) by her side. She reminds me of all of my friends who have been or are getting married; sharing in the wonderful world of weddings. It saddens me to read the ignorance of “friends” no matter their intentions and not realizing that you should be happy for a friend who is getting married and help as much as possible. If not, be as encouraging as possible. To find out what I am talking about, please please read Emily’s post, and do your very best to comment:
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I’m going to be a little more serious for this post. Planning a wedding is mostly about the laughs and the fun moments, but it can’t be ignored that there are some pretty mellow moments as well. Anyway, I guess this post will be less about my plans, and more about some of the feelings I’ve been experiencing this week. Is that okay? I hope so.
I’ve spent my whole life dreaming about my wedding day. I’ll admit, I was one of those girls that frequently thought about my future husband and the life I would live as a “Mrs”. I grew up drawing pictures of what I thought he might look like. I wrote in my journals about my dreams for my wedding day and which friends I thought might be standing beside me as I say ‘I do.’ I played dress up wedding in a little white gown my mom made just for me and I would end many of my dreamy days by watching Father of the Bride as often as I could. I could probably tell you every detail of what I thought my wedding would look like. But as often as I worked my imagination on these things, it could never, ever prepare me for the real thing.
Six months ago, I said yes to a man who stole my heart so fast I didn’t even have a chance to watch him take it. I knew he was the one after our first date. Ask my mom; I called her up after our date ended at three in the morning and told her I had just met the man I would marry.
He is everything I have waited for. I really, truly mean that. Call it cliche, or ‘cheesy,’ but I believe that all those days spent dreaming about him were worth it. He is so, so good to me and has gone beyond any of my dreams for what kind of man I had imagined him to be. Not to make you think he is flawless; he is a man like any other and knows exactly how to push my buttons. But I know he tries his best to be a man I can respect whole-heartedly–and I do.
(I’m gonna take a second to show you one of the reasons I love him so much. He’s like, really ridiculously handsome.)
The fact that I am now engaged to this amazing guy still brings butterflies to my stomach. Six months in and I still wake up in the morning, take a peek at the ring on my left hand and grin as big as I can. But my thoughts the last couple days have been less about my excitement and more about my frustration—not about the fact that I’m getting married, but about the fact that sometimes these days, it is really hard to share that excitement with other people.
I believe in marriage. I believe that God created it to last, not just for a few years, but for allyears. This belief seems to go against the grain of what is the popular thought these days, since divorce is a common option to marital problems. As I finally plan my own wedding after years and years of pretend, I am forced to think about these things.
I have so many things left to do before the wedding day. So many projects and shopping trips and meetings. It puts me in a bit of a ‘wedding fog,’ as I like to call it. However, even though my wedding is on my mind about 70% of the day, it doesn’t mean I talk about it the whole time. I was catching up with a friend recently and she asked if we could hang out soon. Of course! I told her, and I said something about going to a store we were both interested in. There were a few things I could grab for the wedding there as well, so it was a double win. Hang out with a friend and take a little stress off the wedding planning. She said we could go, but on one condition: that it would be the only wedding related thing we would do together, or talk about.
I’m gonna be honest, my feelings were really hurt about this. It’s not like I was planning on talking about my wedding the whole time, but I felt like I would be in the wrong to even bring it up. But I also understand that a lot of times for single people it can be difficult to hear about weddings; I’ve been there, and I know it is hard sometimes.
So this is where my thinking kicked in. I’ve been in situations like this one more than once, where I bring up my wedding and people just don’t want to hear about it. It makes it really hard to feel happy that I’m getting married. I am so excited to marry this man, and I want to tell everyone how excited I am, but how can I do that when I feel bad about sharing this excitement? Have any of you brides had anything like this before? I know I am probably rambling a bit too much, but honestly out of all the wedding things on my mind this week, even through realizing that I have SO much left to do, my disappointment at feeling restricted in my joy has been on my mind the most. Engagement should be such a happy time (and trust me, for the most part it really is) and I’m ready to lose the stressful aspects; physically and emotionally. If anyone else has had similar feelings or simply feels overwhelmed with the emotions involved in planning a wedding, leave a comment! What better way to bring some joy into the wedding planning than to share it with another bride-to-be?
But here is my thought.
All this wedding planning, all this money and time spent, means nothing to me if I don’t believe it’s going to last. So when people get annoyed with me when I talk about my wedding plans, or when they tell me they don’t even want to be involved in the planning, it makes me..well, sad. I don’t talk about all the plans I’m making so I can brag about the fact that I’m getting married or boast about whatever creative decorations I plan on using. I talk about all the plans I’m making because these plans are the beginning of a lifetime with my best friend. Since I believe marriage is a forever thing, then all of these plans mean more than a wedding day to me. The wedding day is just the beginning, isn’t it? I mean, we make all of these plans because of the marriage that is about to be woven together, not because we just decided we wanted to have a party in a white dress (at least I hope…).
I guess what I’m trying to say is, to those of you who have felt discouraged during your engagement when you feel like it’s hard to share the excitement with others, don’t worry. It’s not about that. Think about when you were little, and you dreamed about your wedding day. Well, it’s finally your turn to be a bride, regardless of how excited people are for that. It’s your turn to marry the man you’ve been waiting for. So tell him that. This wedding is about being with him after all, isn’t it? He’s the one you should share the excitement with the most, out of everybody else.
Ainsley's Affairs 
