#did noooooot expect this post to get so many notes

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touched up some daisy, daisy fanart i made at least a year ago but never got to post

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A “Murphy’s Law” of a Wedding

Disclosure: This is a rant post. Since the wedding has happened a couple weeks ago, with everything that happened, I just can’t get past all the bullshit. People keep telling me to look past it and appreciate the day for what it is; marrying my best friend. You’ll see how that’s noooooot exactly easy in my case. I should also note that my mental health background is that I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and dissociation disorder, so I actively attend therapy. Over the years, my therapist has recommended putting stuff down on paper or a word document, but I feel like I need to get it off my chest somewhat publicly in hopes maybe it can help someone else (i.g. wedding advice, first-hand mental health advice, just feeling better about yourself because you didn’t get fucked over many times trying to just have one day of happiness, etc). I get that some of this may seem like not even an issue and I need to suck it up, but married/engaged people should get it. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of this, I don’t know.

 Now, let’s get into this.

The engagement: My husband was stationed at an Air Force base within the U.S. (I won’t say which, sorry), and I was still living in our home town 5 states away. We had met in high school, and definitely had crushes on each other, but we never officially dated. He literally slid into my Instagram DM’s, which couldn’t have been better timing because I had just left a rough relationship. I was immediately swept off my feet, and he bought me plane tickets for the New Year’s Eve after we started dating. The night I flew in, he made me a lovely steak dinner, took me to bed for our “first time” (if you know what I mean), and proposed in the middle of it with a beautiful silver plated lotus necklace. When I got home, I was so excited to tell my family and friends! I was ready to post all about it on Facebook, face judgement from everyone because we dated for not even a year, but just be happy-go-lucky. I got in my dad’s car at the airport, and he tells me...

“your mom and I are getting a divorce”.... Turns out my dad had left the night before I flew back home to pick up his girlfriend from jail, packed up whatever could fit in his car, and just.. Left. It couldn’t be worse timing, even if we tried. I had to keep the engagement a secret from a lot of people until my husband saved up for a ring, because I just wasn’t comfortable telling my mom I was getting married right when the love of her life was leaving her... When we went public with it a few months later, I got the criticisms that I expected, but overall people were happy for me. I thought, “ok, I can move forward with wedding plans and get excited about this now”. HAHA, nope!

The Bridesmaids: Throughout the wedding planning journey, one year and 4 months after the public engagement, I had a 100% turnover of my 5 bridesmaids and even the Maid of Honor (I’ll talk about them in a different section). I admit, I rushed my decision to make them bridesmaids, and in hindsight, they were TERRIBLE people to be in my party. Don’t rush picking your bridal party for the love of god. One girl assumed herself into the position and didn’t even make it to the wedding. She made every decision difficult for me to make in some way (being stubborn, wanting her way, tried to get other bridesmaids to go against me, etc). One girl I had to remove from my life completely because she stayed at my home for 4 days and shat all over the wedding. She made the wedding miserable to plan because I was being forced to make choices around her, and I still got criticisms as she got her way. One girl refused to talk to me anymore when I quit my job I had with her at the time, then told everyone I was the one who ended the friendship. The fifth girl dropped out of the party due to being uncomfortable standing up in front of people 4 months before the wedding (a whole year passed with 0 communication about this and no chance to convince her it’d be ok and so on). That’d normally be understandable (frustrating, but I understand it), except she then refused to come to the bridal shower, and ultimately, refused to at least show up to the wedding. I ended up having to block her from my life just like the last one mentioned. It was clear she didn’t want to be supportive in any way. In the end, I had 1 maid of honor, and 4 new bridesmaids.

The Maid of Honor: This was the most heart-breaking thing to happen. I like to think I was a laid back bride. I didn’t make any of my bridal party members do anything, I planned my own bridal shower and bachelorette party to take stress off of my maid of honor’s already stressful home-life, I wanted to make things as easy as I could for everyone involved. I planned the entire wedding myself, from budgeting to planning the ceremony to the details of the reception. I was stressed as fuck, and at times I was worried my anxiety was going to take a physical toll on me again (I’ve been hospitalized related to panic attacks and anxiety). Then, 2 months before the wedding, before the bridal shower, and before any other celebrations, my maid of honor drops out. This was someone I grew up with, someone who was there for me when my dad left, someone who stayed up until 4 a.m. on multiple occasions to make sure I was ok when I was having suicidal thoughts. She was the only person I had a special handshake with, we were “420 buddies for life”, and we’ve considered making a blood pact together because they were the closest thing I had to a sibling I could ever want. They left because the position was too stressful... Doing literally nothing was too much for them. A month before this, we went over everything that was going on with them, because they had been very absent in the wedding planning. They told me they were upset that all I’d talk about is wedding stuff and drama... Well, yes, you’re the maid of honor, I will be talking to you about wedding stuff a lot... Because you’re supposed to be my right hand man... And I thought we were close, I could tell you anything... Like that the fuck is that supposed to mean? We talked things through, everything seemed ok. All they had to do was show up to shit, give a Maid of Honor speech (they knew they didn’t have to), and that’s it. But that was too much?? Her mom was supposed to be our florist; she dropped out too, so we had to compromise with fake boutonnieres and bouquets. Her soon to be step dad was going to be our officiant; he dropped out. I thought I was part of her family (went to all the annual events and some birthday parties every year), but in the end, no one wanted to show up to the wedding. I got completely abandoned by the people I thought welcomed me with open arms when I needed it most...

The Officiant: Yes, shit happened with the officiant too. Since the ex-maid of honor’s step dad dropped out of the position, we got a new one. He was a new airman we had over for a Christmas dinner, and we became fast friends. He’s an ordained minister so he offered to wed us. It was going to be this lovely ceremony with a poem, a short story about how we came together, a lot of thought was put into it. What did this fucker decide to do? He missed his damn flight... Hire someone local and spend the money to have that security for fucks sake. How did he miss it? He thought it was a GREAT idea to show up to the airport 45 fucking minutes before the plane takes off, and the check in people basically told him “they just started boarding, there’s no way you’re getting through TSA before they close the gate”. Everyone knows to show up to an airport 2 hours before your flight takes off, and he was mad he wasn’t allowed to go through within an hour of takeoff?? And you know what’s worse? This was the MORNING. OF. THE. WEDDING. My girls and I showed up to the venue to get our hair done without an officiant. We had to scramble to have someone else run the ceremony. And to make things worse, the original officiant idiot that deliberately missed their flight was also in charge of music. So they had all of our songs saved in a text message and they knew our Bluetooth stereo situations. So we had to give a fast run-down to the new officiant, one of the groomsmen, the 3 special songs to play, when, and so on. It was pretty straightforward; one little one speaker downstairs for the ceremony, one big one upstairs with a mic for announcements/toasts.

It. Gets. Worse.

The officiant gets high before the ceremony... He’s a stoner, so we didn’t notice it for the ceremony. The ceremony was the best part of the entire wedding process. It wasn’t until after the ceremony that shit his the fan. He brings the tiny speaker upstairs, completely ignoring the big one, shouts our entrance announcement over everyone talking, which only maybe half of our guests heard, and people barely heard our song. It was just really awkward. He then starts drinking, and getting very out of control. The large speaker and mic was completely forgotten, and he kept forgetting about music. A lot of people left before we could even do toasts and cutting the cake; no one could hear what was going on. Toasts just didn’t happen because there was miscommunication between the wedding party and our officiant; everyone thought the mic wasn’t working, and I had to deal with people being upset they had to write a speech for nothing... It was heartbreaking because it wasn’t our fault... It was a Friday evening wedding, and everyone was gone by 7:30 p.m. because there wasn’t anything keeping them there... After the reception, and cleanup commenced, the officiant got pretty aggressively faded and tried to make everyone drink with him. It was so bad, our bartender, a friend of ours, had to kick him out of the building because he was just making messes and stumbling over himself. He kept getting in my face, uncomfortably close, pressuring me to drink champagne straight from the bottle with him. He got angry no one wanted to drink with him, so, I shit you not, he grabbed a bag of our leftover produce (carrots, celery, seasonings, onions, etc) and stormed off telling people he’s gonna go find a bar to drink at. With this bag. Of fucking veggies. Not even his bag of stuff, just... Our food... We were awake until 3 a.m. getting him safely somewhere to sleep, booking his Uber to the airport, and making sure he makes his flight that takes off at 6 a.m.. We had no special wedding night.

My Dad: Since my dad left, I was forced into a position as my mom’s emotional sponge. There were so many things that I didn’t need to hear as the child in all of this, like the legal shit, arguments, how much of an asshole my dad was, and so on. With that, mixed with feeling abandoned by my dad, I made the decision to have my grandpa (mom’s dad) walk me down the aisle. He never got to with my mom; they had a quick courthouse wedding, and he had a step son, so he never walked anyone down the aisle. I thought it’d not only be fucking cute, but I’d be fulfilling a milestone for him before he passes. Then my dad and I talked and we were cool again. Briefly. I was in a weird position where I couldn’t just take it back, my grandpa was in tears when I asked. It’d break his heart. So I thought I’d have them both walk me down the aisle. Well, drama happened with my birthday and the holidays, so I was on the fence with that idea. When I had my bridal shower, I was visiting my home state for a month before the shower, and he didn’t ever reach out to see me. He saw my “sister” half a dozen times, but whenever I reached out, he was always “busy with work”. I took it as he just didn’t want to see me and preferred my “sister” over me, so I stuck with just my grandpa walking me. Because fuck it. Fast forward to the wedding day; we had a father daughter dance song picked out, I texted him to be ready for it, I thought things were fine. After the ceremony, my photographer took the wedding party out to the park across the street for pictures. We get back, and he and my “sister” are waiting on the porch for us, where he informs me he’s not sticking around and he’s just leaving. I asked if he could at least take pictures with me, and he said no and walked off. In front of everyone... I spent 20 minutes crying in a bathroom, trying to collect myself to face the rest of the evening. My grandpa wasn’t physically able to dance, so, I just didn’t get any father/grandfather-daughter dance. No pictures with my dad. The only picture of him I have from that day is him, sitting in the back of the ceremony room, pouting and looking pissed. We talked later, and he knows he was a selfish asshole for leaving, and he knows he took part in ruining my big day. I know he wanted to walk to me down the aisle, but that’s no reason to just leave behind your kid entirely and with seemingly no remorse. He admitted that he should’ve just sucked it up and stayed there for me, and he regrets leaving because, yea, there’s no photo memory of my dad in our wedding album now. We’re working past it at the time of posting.

My “sister”: When I announced my engagement, I asked (let’s call her Dani) to be our flower girl. We spent several months looking at dresses, even my mom was trying to show her things. Now, Dani and I.. never got along. At all. You could say we’re polar opposite people, except she hates me and even straight up told me “I’m annoyed with your existence”. As much as I tried to hang out with her, make a sister relationship with her, turn things around; it was never enough. She turned everything into some dramatic, horrible experience (i.g. I took her out for smoothies and hot dogs, and things seemed fine. We got back and she cried to our mom saying I kidnapped her, I forced her to get something she didn’t want, and she was miserable. I merely asked if she wanted to go and she said yes, so where the fuck that is coming from I have no idea). I thought maybe having her part of my wedding party could bring us together. Fast forward to right before the bridal shower, it turns out she actually thought I was joking and said fuck no.. SO. We had to make one of the groomsmen our last minute flower “girl”. Dani left with our dad when he left, without a word. She keeps spreading bullshit to my mom, making it look like my dad never remembered us talking about the father daughter dance and that he didn’t want to stay because of our mom being at the wedding, when both were so false. At this moment, she has no place in my life. She is nothing but a ball of negativity, drama, hatred, anger, and, as far as I’m concerned, jealousy.

The Legal Wedding: One year before our wedding with family and friends, I moved in with my husband. In order for me to get health care and for my husbands pay to go up a little, we decided to get legally married. When the day happened, I took one photo of us in the car before we went inside. We confirmed our appointment that morning to have the Chaplain, basically a military priest/priestess who weds people and also doubles as a counselor, sign our papers in the on-base Christian church (we’re not religious, we were just recommended him by people in my husband’s office). We showed up with our two witnesses, found the Chaplain’s office, saw he had a marriage counselling appointment, so we waited outside. For an hour. My phone ended up frying in the summer heat, so we only got the one photo, and I had to buy a new one. We eventually were invited to wait in their cafeteria room while the Chaplain finished his thing. Another Chaplain came along and offered us water and juices from standing outside in the heat for so long. After another half hour of waiting, the Chaplain we made the appointment came in and told us we missed our appointment that was apparently supposed to be 10 minutes before the couples counselling we saw happened (we have email receipts confirming our appointment at 1530/3:30 p.m., and he tried telling us he told my husband 1520/3:20 p.m.). He couldn’t admit he double booked. On top of that, he told us “I don’t know if you believe in bad omens, but this is actually the date my first wife and I filed for divorce hahahaha”.... Um, WHAT? OK COOL THANKS DUDE. I’m not usually a superstitious person, but that was kind of uncalled for... Later, I found out the day we got married is the day my beloved great grandpa, who passed before seeing us get married, was born. So the date we got legally married became special again.

The Food: My husband was in charge of all the food while my girls and I got ready and made sure the reception area was ready to go. We should’ve just invested in some damn catering holy fuck. I texted all the recipes to my husband and his groomsmen, and they still fucked up the recipes. The macaroni was missing milk and butter, so it was very dry and almost a grainy texture. The breadsticks were like long versions of those cheese dip cracker stick things you get as a kid in your lunch boxes. Everything was cold (no one listened to me when I said there needed to be water in the bottom compartment of a chafing dish then the burners had to be ignited to keep food hot), lots of food were left uneaten on plates, and it just left me feeling guilty that we served sub-par stuff to everyone. I’m sure it’s not a big deal at all, like, who remembers the food when thinking back on a party or some celebration? But with all the work and planning put into it, I just feel really bad about it.

Rentals: I would have loved to have rentals. Being out of state, I asked my mom to meet with a rental company on our behalf, and we’d pay for all the deposits and so on. It took her 5 months of me bugging her about it to finally go do it, and every rental company in the area was booked on our date. Which made sense, since the wedding at that point was in 4 months and you need to book that shit at least 6 months in advanced, even 9 months if you’re having a “wedding season” wedding like us. So we had to buy every. Single. Thing. We were left with dozens of plates, glasses, forks/knives, even a handful of chafing dishes. We gave as much away as we could to friends and family who’d need it, then donated the rest. Thank you Dollar Tree for just existing. If we had to order through Amazon, we’d have to spend at least triple for the same thing. It didn’t help half of the guests invited refused to answer messages/RSVPs/phone calls/said they’d come but didn’t/etc, so many many things were left unused. Rentals would have been so fucking nice; one less thing to worry about.

The Cake: Yes, even the fucking CAKE had drama. We ordered a small cake for our cake cutting ceremony, and the rest were cupcakes. My mom felt bad about the rental situation, so she covered the cake order, which was a huge help! We were ready to just bake it ourselves (thank god we didn’t. Fuck. That.). On the day of the wedding, our delivery window was 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.. At 3:45 p.m., an hour and 15 before the ceremony starts, the cake is nowhere to be seen. The manager had to get involved, then the OWNERS had to be contacted. We were told “We’ll be there in 10 minutes”. Bitches almost forgot or something. It came barely on time, and everything tasted and looked good at least. Half our guests left before they could enjoy it, and some took cupcakes before the cake cutting happened (is this normal/ok? We felt like that shouldn’t be ok but we’re not sure lol). We ordered enough for 80 guests and by the time it was dessert time, there were maybe 30 people left. A lot of people left with cupcakes in wine glasses, which turned out to be super suiting (our centerpieces were upside down wine glasses with a candle resting on the base of the glasses).

Advice I’ve taken away that I’ll be giving all of my friends when they get married: 1) Hire people wherever possible. 2) Order rentals for the love of god. 3) Stay on top of the cake people, just in case. 4) Don’t totally rely on friends and family for things. Be prepared to have to do it yourself after all. 5) Take your time picking bridesmaids and a MOH (even though there was no one else I would’ve wanted as my Maid of Honor, the replacement Maid of Honor hooked us up with an amazing photographer who does payment plans, kept me organized and calm whenever possible, and helped set up the sound equipment. It was an upgrade). 6) Limit not only your guests on alcohol intake, but your wedding party too (we did a drink ticket system but let our wedding party drink more because they helped us out a lot on our wedding day. That was a mistake with the officiant/groomsman). 7) I have so many links to websites with wedding stuff for a very low price, which beat Amazon prices in a lot of ways, so I can low-key event plan for people.

TLDR version: The only good things about this wedding was the ceremony, the photographer, and the dessert. Everything else was a pain in the ass to make happen or bullshit to get through. Do I regret doing this? No. I can proudly say I single-handedly planned my own wedding and everything looked great. The photos don’t show any of the pain and frustrations of that day, which is a big plus. However, fuck this entire process. I asked for one day. Just one. And shit went wrong from the engagement all the way through the wedding night. I’d really like to hear some advice to get past this, maybe hear some other people’s stories around your wedding.

I left telling people the only thing that could be worse is if someone fucking died. Thanks for reading if you took the time to do so.