Marriage is living and Most Weddings are Poor Planning?

I wish I never had a wedding.

Sure, the day was great. It was fun and I was happy. But I was miserable for at least four months prior and a long time after. I spent thousands of dollars on one day. I could have put that money into a retirement fund, into a home, into a car or many other practical things. I think back about that time in my life and I had nothing but negative feelings. I regret having a wedding because it scarred me emotionally, it made me an angry person for too long and it wasted a lot of my money.

Twenty-Five years later, and I wish I did everything differently.

It's not that I regret being married. No way. My husband is great. It may not be all rainbows and butterflies every day, but I enjoy my life with him. He gets me, he lets me do my thing and I like being around him. I just wish we skipped the whole wedding thing.

I was always the girl who had dreams of her big day!  I had marriage dreams, career dreams and having a family dreams and was convinced I would have it all. Marry young, have my children young, maintain a career and family. Since I am already 50 and I have been married twenty-five years now I think I did well.

When my husband proposed, I said "Yes”. I knew he loved me and would provide for me for the rest of our lives together. 

I know this sound too good to be true.

I was in 25 years old and was stressed enough about finding a job to support myself. Now I am throwing wedding planning into the mix. We really loved each other with his "we can make it work" attitude convinced me that yes, we can plan this wedding.

When it came to the wedding planning, my biggest problem was being a fan of party planning.  When it came to parties, I want my favorite people to show up.  My mother had a whole different idea…some of my favorite people and most of her family and friends. What is that?

I thought I had high the jack pot when a graphic designer friend of my then-fiancé’s offered to do our invites as her wedding gift to us. I told her our colors and ideas I had, excited to see potential mock-ups. Days went by and I heard nothing. I found examples of invites I liked in the bridal books and sent them over to her, hoping she would respond to a follow-up call. I got a quick brush-off response. This went on until there were two months left before our wedding and I had to say "If you can't make this happen, you need to please, please, please let me know." She couldn't or wouldn’t make it happen.   Luckily, our families were wonderful, creative and had a whole lot of imagination.   We used a make-your-own invitations model. We enlisted bridesmaids and family members to churn out, address and stamp 200 invites on a Saturday night. While we had a technical difficulty with the printer halfway through, we were successfully able to get all the invites finished in one evening. Family and some friends actually mean well.

When it came to my relationship with my bridesmaids, I wanted to treat them as best as I could. We were all either in young, recently out of school or had low-paying or no paying jobs and I did not want them to spend a lot of money on me, especially on a dress, so I paid for their dresses as a gift from me. I thought the bridesmaid dress concept was great. Most of them are tacky, expensive and no matter WHAT the bride tells you, there is no way you are going to wear them again. I wanted my bridesmaids to have dresses that they would and could have a slight potential to be worn on multiple occasions.   I ended up finding the dresses while flipping through a copy of pattern book one day. It was a rainbow color full-length strapless dress made out of chiffon material. I thought it was perfect, gorgeous, and comfortable, would look good on all body types and could be worn multiple times.

Unfortunately, my concern did not translate to a particular bridesmaid. While I wanted to give my bridesmaids a pain-free experience, not all of them wanted to return the favor. There were complaints about the dresses, my organization and much resistance when it came to my wishes for what I wanted for my bachelorette dinner party. All this, even though they knew the amount of stress I was going through with a wedding I was extremely excited about.

My bachelorette dinner party, in a word, was "breath breaking." My best friend and my mom tried so hard to give me the happiest night of my life, and I thank them so much for everything they did. They really were my saving grace during everything.

For the dinner party, I wanted to go to a male strip joint, after dinner. Unfortunately, two bridesmaids felts uncomfortable going and refused to get into the limo that was waiting.  I said, to them “If you don't want to go to strip club, that's your choice”.  

Eventually, I made the compromise that we would for get about the strip club and just enjoy riding in the limo that was waiting for the dinner party after the dinner.

Something that has stayed with me for years is:  you know how the bride is not supposed to pay for her drinks during the bachelorette dinner party? Well, guess how many drinks I had. One.  In six hours. I bought myself the one because it was becoming clear nobody was going to get me any drinks. Being young and unfamiliar with how bachelorette dinner parties work, I thought it was OK.

Now that I am older, I realize there is a special place in for guests who do not make sure the bride always has a drink in her hand and leave the bride and groom parents to pay their drinking bill.

Between the planning, the clashing with others involved and the whispers going on behind my back, the amount of stress I was going through was so intense that I gain 10 pounds leading up to the wedding. So many brides go on wedding diets, but my dress was already a size 14, so there was not much weight I could gain.   My dress that once fit great was now too small. I had to rush out to the dressmaker and have the seams loosen up.  

Even today, I have emotional scars from my wedding experience. While I have made up with one bridesmaid and our relationship is great, I have completely cut the other out of my life. I can no longer look at my own wedding photos with her in them without getting upset about the things she did to me in the past. And not just during the wedding. Looking back, this woman actually said to me she preferred hanging out with another person other than me because, she said "It takes the pressure off me   being less attractive all the time and I have been jealous and envious of you all of my life because I never knew my father." How sad.

I mean, think about that. I at one time could not look through my own wedding photos and be happy because of this person. I spent a lot of money on those photos, and for what? Thinking about that alone filled me with regret.

Today, I forgive her and right not I have let it and her go….my life, my family, and my friends are enough.

This article is an excerpt from the book to be published by Ruby Mae Chapman, entitle 

Life’s Interruptions.

I am Scared Silly

Need Advice?

Life’s Interruptions

 As we are going about our business and something new, unplanned, many times unpleasant, comes and takes us off the planned course we are, were on–Life’s Interruptions.

What do I do when life throws me a curveball?

What do I do when things don’t go as I have planned?

Ask Ruby

I am Scared Silly 

Dear Ruby

I have mentally abused, verbally abused, financially abused, emotionally abused and physically abused and I am chasing faith but becoming more fearful by the day, what can I do? What am I suppose to do? I am scared silly!

Dear Scared Silly

      Start seeing the twinkle in your eyes.  Start bringing sunshine in your life.  Stop allowing other to whisper sweet nothing (negatives) in your ears.

 Let’s start living God’s Blueprint for your life!

      You deserve to live the best life that God has prepared for you.  Most often, we live beneath our upbringing or according to other friends or people on the T.V. standards.  When we refuse to be great (the Star) in our own life, we do God, our parents, and the world a disservice by not allowing them to experience our greatness.  When we are the star in our own life, we do not have time to be mistreated or intimated by others.  When we see greatness in our own life we refuse to allow others to treat us less than how we deserve to be treated.

      In life we spend too much time on things we have no control over.  But, when it comes to those things we can control, we must be serious and sincere about giving them and our life the very best.  It is important that we no longer allow fear and doubt to sabotage or destroy our greatness.  Now is the time to stop dimming and hiding the light in our life in an effort to make others feel comfortable.  Let’s be the bright star in our own life and let’s be extremely careful and selective about who we allow to shine along with us.  Let’s begin to be accountable about the decisions we make.

     As we begin to be great in our own life, remember that life gives us many chances but only one opportunity, so when opportunity knocks lets be prepared.  We must make every moment count.  The time has come when we can no longer afford to allow our dreams to remain asleep while standing on the sidelines doubting, fearing, angry, jealous, and envious while others cross the line to victory.  We deserve to walk boldly in the grace of who God has called us each to be without doubt, fear and our past to whisper to us otherwise.

     It is time for us to not only be great in our own life but also for us to win Eagle Award for our greatness.  We are an original design and God broken mold when he created each of us.  God has but an amazing amount of greatness and blessings designed just for us with each of our names on it. Let’s go take back our greatness and blessing from satan. 

     In the words of author Marianne Williamson from her book A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles. She wrote, “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frighten us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talent, fabulous?  Actually, who are we not to be?  We are children of God.  Playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make true the glory of God that is within us.  It is not just in some of us; it is in all of us.  And as we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates other.”

Dr.  Ruby Mae Chapman, Napolean & Ada Moton Chapman Institute, Life Coach and Scholar   

Visit her blog for more inspiring readings!  http://ask-ruby.blogspot.com/

Contact her at askruby411@yahoo.com or via twitter, facebook, and Linkedlin