Rearranged Dreams...

Has anyone out there ever started planning your perfect day – your wedding day – only to have something happen to make it totally out of whack? So much so that you just have to go back to the main drawing board and start again?

That happened to me last night. I’ll tell you about it…

My parents seemed to be excited about my new engagement. My fiancé and I live about 4 hours away from my family, so it’s not as if they know him on the level that I know him, but we make the attempt to visit with them and give them that opportunity. So when he asked them for my hand, they all agreed. Some gave advice, and some didn’t – that’s just my parents. (They have been divorced since I was a small child, and have both remarried – he had two sets of parents to talk with.)

But when we got engaged, it was more a formality in my mind. To me, we’d been talking about the wedding that we wanted and how we wanted to do things for the last three months. I hadn’t really talked too much with my family about these things so that he would have the opportunity to ask for my hand without them knowing that we’d already been talking about it. So, pretty much, I need to give them time to catch up.

But the whole time in the last two or three months that we’ve been looking for venues and vendors and deciding what we wanted to have for our wedding, I’ve had this image in the back of my head on how this all would go down. My family would be excited for me, and my mom and step-mom would get involved in the planning aspect of things. At least to go dress shopping with me and maybe be there to help me pick out colors and flowers and that type of thing.

So imagine my surprise when I get a tepid response from my mom when I asked her about having friends to invite to the wedding. She said no. And she didn’t just say no, she said NO. I was taken aback and kinda confused, but I didn’t say anything other than ok. I got off the phone with her and went about my business. But it bugged me. It sat in the back of my head and bugged me all night long. And for most of the next day.

So by the time that my fiancé came and got me for dinner, I had worked myself up all kinds of ways. I laid it out on the table with him to get his opinion. (He’s absolutely my best friend in the world and I trust what he says and value his opinion.) He encouraged me to call my mom and talk things over.

When I worked up the courage to do that, sometimes a girl needs a little pep talk first, I called and talked to her about us picking a date for the wedding (still not decided on that one) and her opinion of it. She started asking some questions and even wanted the website of the venue that we were looking at doing the shin-dig at and I had pretty much convinced myself that I was wrong. That I had just caught her on an off night or just totally misread things. But me being anal me, I had to ask the question to be sure. (Are there ever times you wish that you’d just shut up?)

Her answer was that even though she was happy for me and excited for me, she was old fashioned in her beliefs and let’s be honest here, this was my third wedding. One just doesn’t do a big wedding for the third one. She didn’t have any friends that she wanted to come to it, since it was my third. She went on to say that most of her friends now didn’t know me and she didn’t think that they would want to travel the 4 hours to see someone that they didn’t know get married. She was nice about it all, but pretty much she told me that she thought that it was tacky that I was having a big wedding on my third marriage. It’s just not done.

And my dreams were crushed. The vision in my mind of us dress shopping and asking her opinion on this color vs. that color or helping with the centerpieces just swirled around and around and around the delete tank in my mind until they disappeared. They are gone and that never will be. As I sat back and thought about it, I cried. And not just little tears, but great big wrenching sobs. My mom’s approval means a lot to me, and she pretty much told me that I didn’t have it.

It’s disappointing, but nothing that I can’t work around. Despite how she might feel on the subject, my fiancé and I BOTH want a big wedding. Neither one of us had happy last marriages, including the actual wedding ceremony, and we want that. We truly want to have our friends and family around to support us and cheer us on as we make this step in our lives. We’re not old, we’re both in our very early 30’s, so this is a big step for us. Since we both have been married before, we’re not asking anyone other than ourselves to pay for this, so if this is what we want then it’s what we want. And I’m happy with my decision to press on. And feel truly blessed that when faced with this crying girl that wasn’t even making sense while she tried to explain what just happened, my fiancé scooped me up and sat me in his lap so that I could be held while I cried. When the tears stopped and I was able to explain without the sobs, he hugged me and said that it would be ok. That he would be right by my side and help me do the flowers….he’s a gem of a guy!

But the little girl inside of me is still sad to lose the person that I wanted most by my side during this process….

Has anyone out there had to re-arrange or cope with a new theory on how to do something like this without that one person that you wanted to be involved in it with you?