When I was 5 my Mother’s cousin flew the whole family out to Seattle to attend her extremely lavish and gigantic fairytale wedding. As the flower girls, my sister and I wore matching white dresses that complimented our matching bowl cuts quite nicely. 5-year old Madde thought this wedding was fabulous because her dress was soaked in sparkles and she got a McDonald’s Happy Meal on the flight home. 23-year old Madde has evolved into think that this wedding and most weddings are pretty redic.
You see when I turned 23 there was a definite gigantic shift in my life. Suddenly, without warning, my friends started getting engaged and popping out real, live babies! WHAAAT? Because my childhood bowl haircut screwed with my oxygen-intake levels, I have been left incredibly self-involved, and subsequently I can’t help but wonder what this whole wedding business says about me. Here I am at age 23, in what I’ve liked to dub my “Second Puberty,” being distracted by cute boys and playing the field, while my dear childhood friends have found their soul mates and are starting their families. It seemed like just yesterday the same friends were dressing like hussies and flaunting their foobs (future boobs) for any boy who has just sprouted 2 chest hairs. What happened?? When did we stop being little girls and start becoming women?
(....Alright, let’s talk about the elephant in the room....Yes, I just nearly quoted a Britney Spears song, but stay with me on this one!)
Weddings are a big deal, I hear. Upon reflection, I realized that my 5-year old fabulous wedding experience was the only significant wedding I had ever attended, and the extent of my wedding knowledge stems from years of extensive Romantic Comedy viewing, and seeing “Bridesmaids”...Twice.
My dear sister, with whom I shared the darling matching bowl cut, will be getting married this September, and the fam and I are beyond excited for her new marriage! We really like the boy, we really like her, we really like this wedding. She’s 4 years older than I and I still think...”Woah! You’re a baby! How are you getting married right now?” I had what Oprah likes to call an “Ah-ha! Moment” recently. A major “Ah-ha! Moment” that changed everything...for now.
"Ah-ha" with me for a moment...
With weddings come Maid-of-Honor duties, gift buying anxiety, brushing up on the Chicken Dance pressure, and looking appropriate/ showering responsibilities. There are multiple levels of anxiety when it comes to wedding talk with my friends and fam.
Level 1:
Insane pressure that this one day has to be ultimate perfection, and all involved are responsible for facilitating the success of this event. This is the level in which you feel like the ultimate wedding planner and imagine reality TV show crews following you around and capturing all this high-stress drama.
Level 2:
Bizarre self-involved stress time in which you linger for a moment and wonder if YOU will ever get married yourself. I'm assuming this is a self-soothing mechanism that is the only thing that prevents level 1 from making your head shoot off from the stress of the flower arrangements.
Level 2.5:
The level where you try to explain to your family and pals just exactly WHY you are NOT bringing a “plus one” to the wedding. At some point they will get this weird look on their faces and then say, “Don’t you have a fun gay bestie you could bring! You guys could wear matching outfits!” After crying from the judgement factor, you then consider bringing an actual straight man, but opt out of it because you’re not ready to explain to other guests how he’s NOT your boyfriend, just a friend, and then they proceed through the buffet line and talk about how they always figured you were a lesbian, and how someone had heard you were moving to Iowa very soon with your life-partner, Janet Thunderpaws.
Level 3:
The most selfish of all the levels. Here is where you wonder if your dear friends or family will still have time for you in their lives after they get married and become an old maid or father-like man. :) This level requires faith and trust that no matter how fabulous their new husband or wife is, you remain even MORE fabulous. And yes, it is a competition.
At the end of the day weddings force me to put aside my cynical side for a day and really believe in everlasting love and adoration between two people who love each other. It’s easy to make jokes and be a Debbie Downer when it comes to love. Hell! I’ve devoted over 200 blogs to this very topic (excluding my recent blog about my belly button...you can’t love a belly button...or can you??? I bet Janet Thunderpaws loves hers), but weddings are a time for optimism and the celebration of love. So, with the impending weddings of my dear love ones, I make this promise: I will celebrate all love.
If my extensive RomCom watching research has taught me anything it would be this,
You can’t truly love someone else if you don’t truly believe it exists.
BARF.
