One year ago today I was running around in the pouring rain, trying to find and gather up as many mini pumpkins as I could possibly get my hands on.
I needed nearly 100 and Coastal Black was generous enough to let us loose and dismantle their so beautifully put together displays in order to get my tiny gourds.
The days that followed were a blur. I do know they were filled with appointment, after appointment, after appointment.
Meeting with my hair stylist. Meeting with my makeup artist, the priest, the florist, the cake baker…and the list goes on. Who knew so much work went into planning a wedding?
Well, I guess I could have simplified the whole process but I’ve never been one to eschew tradition.
Nope, I was going for the whole traditional wedding, church and all.
I think I nearly killed myself trying to make everything perfect.
I had to finally stop and ask myself, ‘was I really doing this all for me (and my husband) or for my wedding guests?’
I was so concerned and preoccupied with making sure everyone else would have a good time that I think somewhere along the line I forgot what the day was really about.
It wasn’t the celebration and the party afterwards, it was about the life-long commitment I was making.
After all the fanfare was over and the dust had settled that was what I had – a partner for life.
In just five days, on Thanksgiving Monday, my husband and I will have been married one year. Looking back, I can’t believe how much I worried about one single day. Useless stress I put on myself – what if no one dances at the reception, what if people don’t like the food we chose, what if the bridal party doesn’t know when to start walking down the aisle, the what ifs were never ending.
In the end, everything worked out perfectly fine, as things like that tend to do, and if not, well then you just make it work.
My cousin, who was married two months before me, had her officiant cancel on her at the last minute and, left with no other options, her dad stepped in to officiate the wedding.
Really, he was reading from an officiant’s script and because he wasn’t licensed to perform an actual wedding ceremony, my cousin and her husband had their marriage made official a few days later at city hall.
I figured that if the worse thing that happened to me was that my husband picked up a half done wedding cake the day before the wedding, that I was in pretty good shape.
And in case you were wondering, the cake did get fixed in the nick of time and made it back to the reception hall before we arrived.
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since that happened. Time has really flown by. Of course there have been both good and bad times, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
It’s all a part of growing up, becoming responsible and trying to put someone else ahead of yourself sometimes.
I’ve learned a lot in a year – how to compromise, communicate and balance my home life with my social life.
In the end, October 10, 2015 was the day I flipped the page to the best chapter of my life.
