So the ENTIRE time throughout my wedding planning, I've given myself credit for being the "cool, chill" bride. I never got flustered over dresses, venues, photographers, nor did I tear my hair out due to being unable to choose a napkin color. I let my bridesmaid choose their own dresses/shoes to accommodate their budget, and we're even letting our groomsmen wear suits instead of renting tuxes. I planned everything early so that no major situations could happen where I am scrambling last minute to put things together. All of this time, I've been patting myself on the back for being the smart, sensible, and fun bride, while scoffing at the last-minute, indecisive brides that couldn't make a decision about buttercream vs. fondant icing if someone had a gun to their head. Well it turns out, even the laid-back, non-high-maintenance types like me are capable of having full-blown psychotic rage over things wedding related. Allow me to elaborate in 3-4 scenarios that have all taken place over the last 4-5 days.
Saturday morning I went to open my Macbook after it was asleep for a few hours, to find that my administrator/username wasn't there. When I typed it in, I couldn't log in; so I took it to the genius bar to have it fixed. Well little did I know that the "geniuses" would crowd around my Mac like it was the ape responsible for HIV and be unable to do anything, let alone explain, how my entire hard-drive wiped itself clean. 3 years of information on this Macbook: Finito. At first I didn't think it was that big of a deal; my initial thought was that I had just lost pictures and old papers I wrote for college finals. It wasn't until I was driving home that the following inner monologue took place:
Subconscious: FYI, Your wedding guest list is gone...
Me: DAMNIT!
Subconscious: Yeah, sucks to be me right now.
Me: Well hold on... I can figure it out, I have an old hard copy in the wedding binder.
Subconscious: Oh yeah? What about all of the addresses you had saved for those guests?
Me: DAMNIT!
I did not have a hard copy of addresses... so I had to manually assemble a new guest list (because the hard copy was outdated) and I'm working on getting addresses back. I realized I lost other way more important things (like my most recent resume) when my hard drive mysteriously committed suicide, but I was optimistic. I started thinking "My moms and my fiance's mom are helping with addresses! This is great! Now I can relax and go back to smooth sailing!"
Apparently that's when the evil, dystopian wedding witch of the west decided to cast another spell at me in the form of another wedding taking place earlier in the day in the same reception hall that we booked. The good part is that while one staff is cleaning, there's another staff setting up and doing centerpieces/tables. The bad part is that the other reception ends at 4... and my ceremony starts at 5:30, which means people will start getting there around 5. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that this leaves about an hour for any hanging decorations to be hung up... which are outright breathtaking, so I'm not giving up on my hanging decor idea.
"Oh well that's what bridesmaids are for, right?" Wrong again. We are having our pictures before the ceremony, which means that myself and the bridesmaids will be unable to do any hanging decor. This leaves moms, aunts, cousins, sisters, and friends... I hope we have enough of them. Right when I started to feel confident that we would have enough people willing to pull together to help us, I had 2 family members in a row make me doubt myself because they told me it was an outright bad idea to do hanging decor since I couldn't do it myself. It's my wedding day; does anyone really expect me to do all of the hanging decorations in my wedding dress? I was told that on my wedding day I don't have to worry about anything... it turns out that I have to worry about every little thing because nobody has faith in me. My ideas aren't traditional or classic; others have "better" ideas they're willing to give me since they didn't get a chance to plan the wedding they always wanted. They try to plan seeds of self-doubt so that I will succumb to their superior planning methods and ideas. I would love to talk to a friend about it, but 1) I hate showing that things get to me, and 2) I know that many people legitimately do not care, so I don't want to waste their time. Plus I can hear my bridesmaids getting bored with talk about weddings, so it would need to be an outsider... and most of the people I used to talk to (outside of bridal party) don't talk to me anymore.
Off-topic: I was scolded by a family member who got a one-sided story about offenses I didn't even know I was committing. It would be like if you ate pickles around me, and I told a mutual friend that pickles offended me, so that mutual friend went to you and yelled at you about eating pickles in front of me. Then that mutual friend tells you that you CANNOT tell me that you were confronted, because it would just upset me more and get you in trouble. Now wouldn't you want to ask me why I couldn't just talk to you myself if I had a problem? I know I would, but I'm not allowed in my given real-life situation. So apparently my job is to sit pretty and keep telling people that my life is perfect, just dandy thank you, and nothing more.
The final offense: single people who are talking about bringing dates to our wedding when 1) I haven't sent anyone invitations and 2) I haven't told them they are getting a plus one. For those who are engaged or in serious relationships: naturally they get a plus one, if anything, we know their significant other's name and have already added it to the guest list. But I find it incredibly rude that young people (because all of the offenders are young people) just assume that although they're single, they get to bring a date. I don't know how much money people think I have, but it's not enough to pay for total strangers to be at my wedding. There are family and friends I can't even invite because we don't have that kind of money, so there's no way in hell some guy one of my friends meets the Tuesday before the wedding is going to be allowed to come. Does Martha Stewart have suggestions for how to delicately handle these situations? Or should I let my bridezilla fully come out of her shell and just be blunt about it? I used to think I had all of the answers, but right now I only have one answer: Eloping would have been much easier.
You know the term "rain on my parade?" Well it's pouring. I could use an umbrella or somebody to shake the confidence and defiance back into me.
