4 Months till K and I
get married, I should be excited right? I’ve had my anxiety moments since
planning started almost a year ago, mostly over money, that’s common right? But
the one thing I have realized lately is how I have been lying about being
excited about the big day.
I didn't even realize I
was lying at first. Without REALLY analyzing what I was being asked, I thought
I WAS excited about our upcoming October wedding. But I am confessing what
doesn't seem all that socially acceptable to say: I'm not excited about our
wedding day, at least not yet.
Am I excited about being
married to my best friend, comedian, Poppa, Hero? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY! Am I
excited to see friends and family I don't get to see all that often in one
room? Yes, I am. Am I excited about the gigantic cake with an inch-thick layer
of frosting? I plan on eating four pieces. But am I excited about the actual
ceremony itself? No. I'm too busy stressing about it. And yes, for me,
excitement and stress are mutually exclusive emotions. I can't seem to be able
to feel both at once.
The stress began about a
month after we got engaged (before which I was quite excited, for the record).
It was after we booked the venue and was torn between laughter and bursting
into tears realizing that my $5K budget just wasn’t going to cut it and my
stress skyrocketed wondering where the money was going to come from. Enter
stress.
Anyone who works with me
or knows me on a personal level will tell you I'm quite the control freak. I
have a hard time delegating responsibility and an even harder time forcing
myself to quit stressing about the things I can't control, like what the
weather will be like, whether we'll be able to get an early check-in at the
hotel we're all getting dressed at or the dog starts barking while Kirk and I are
trying to exchange our vows?
And there are plenty of
things well within my control, or at least closer to being in my control, that
I could still stress about even if I did manage to get the other stuff off of
my mind: What if I didn't buy enough candles? What if my decorations don't look
as great in the venue as they do in my mind? What if I'm so busy focusing on
smiling as I walk down the aisle because everyone is looking at me that I trip
over my dress or turn my ankle because of my shoes?
Seriously, the questions
rolling through my mind are both nonstop and ridiculous, adding to my stress
level: What if my dad cries and then makes me cry? What if the dog runs off? What
if the music won't play when it's time for people to dance? What if we run out
of alcohol? Should we offer soda, too? What if I get a huge zit? What if the
baker drops the cake? Everything short of "What if aliens land during the
reception?" has crossed my mind at some point during this engagement.
Before someone emails me
to remind me of it, I do realize that my seeming inability to feel excitement
about what should be an exciting day is my own problem. Not everyone feels the
need to control every detail like I do (and those people are lucky ducks, by
the way).
I just hope that as the
day inches closer and I check more things off of my to-do list that I begin to
feel the excitement that I haven't felt since about the fourth week of our
engagement. Obviously, I know that this should be an exciting time—one of the
most exciting of my life—and I don't want to solely blame society's
expectations of weddings for my own inability to focus on the ceremony itself
and drown out the stress leading up to it.
But now that the truth is
out there, Can you empathize with my lack of excitement or at least offer me
the comfort of knowing that it will come back eventually?
