Vlog: Being Married at a Wedding

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I've got a new vlog over on the YouTubes! 

Visit my channel to watch my new video about going to my first wedding as a married woman.

You can read the text version below, if that's more your style.

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Hi everyone! Today I’m doing a sort of personal insight vlog about weddings.

I got married on May 31^st of this year with a lot of excitement and maybe a little fanfare. We had a blast. It was the best day of my life. I looked pretty good.

We also had other friends who got engaged a couple months after us and decided to get married in August, last weekend, in fact. Now, this vlog isn’t to critique their wedding (which was beautiful) or to talk about what we did differently or anything like that. After all, everyone has a different idea of what the perfect wedding looks like and everyone’s wedding is supposed to reflect the couple, not what everyone expects to see. So it would be absolutely wrong for our friends to have a wedding just like ours.

This vlog is actually about what it’s like to go to a wedding two months after you just had one. It’s different, I promise. And if you’ve experienced this – going to a wedding shortly after your own – you’ll understand what I mean.

Weddings are stressful. After all, if you’re going to spend all that money – or if you’re lucky and someone else is playing for it – facilitate spending all that money, it should be stressful. I was lucky because I’m pretty organized, so I broke the whole task down into bites and tried to tackle each little bite on a timeline. But I still lost my mind. I think it’s impossible to plan a wedding without losing your mind. Unless you hire a wedding planner. But I think wedding planners just take all the fun and experience out of having the thing. Planning the wedding is like your first BIG test as a couple. To have someone else take the test for you… that’s just cheating.

So, going to a wedding two months or so after I just went through all that stress, I sympathize. It’s a different feeling. I used to be really judgy about weddings. Pointing out things I would do differently or things that I didn’t like, that sort of thing. But things are different now. I won’t say there weren’t moments where I found myself thinking that I liked what we did better, but that’s natural and of course I would have liked what we did a little better. I planned my wedding. I only picked the things I liked.

But as I looked around the crowded reception hall – their wedding guest list was at least twice the size of ours, their wedding party too – I also found myself thinking, man, it must have been a pain to set that up or oh I like what they did there. They had a photobooth, which I had considered getting but vetoed due to lack of space. I was seriously jealous. I loved the photobooth idea.

I sympathize with the huge feeling of relief you get at the actual reception too. After all the pomp and circumstance is over and it’s just you, your new husband (who you’ll probably see three times the entire night if you’re lucky… I think I saw mine twice), the drink in your hand, and all your favorite people (and uncle Joe or Bob or Tim… you know… the weird one that everyone swears must be adopted). It’s an amazing feeling of release and calm that comes over you. And you look out on the crowd and think that it was all worth it. You will have told people for months beforehand that you’d wished you’d eloped instead of taking on this huge thing. And then, when you’re sitting down resting your feet and sipping on a drink, you’ll realize that this is exactly what you had wanted and you would have been so disappointed had you not endured all of that stress and anxiety to get here. And I think I may have seen our friends have that moment too. It’s a beautiful moment and I will always cherish it. That feeling of calm happiness and love.

The other feeling I sympathize with is the immense feeling of despair and letdown that you get after it’s all over. Our friends won’t have had this feeling yet and maybe they’re stronger people than me and won’t get it at all. But after all of our stuff was over and I was sitting back in our apartment surrounded by unclaimed wedding favors, unwrapped presents, and a worn wedding dress I was overwhelmed by the letdown. The horrible realization that, for the past 6 months I had been living for the wedding day, it was all I talked about, all I thought about, all I dreamed about, and now it was over. That feeling is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But it gets better with time.

It does get better and going to another wedding helped it to get better. To step out of my little world that I’d been living in for so long and celebrate someone else’s lives together. I watched our friends dance and cut their cake and I found myself not tearing up remembering when we did that. I smiled at the memories. The despair is finally gone and I can now look back at our wedding not with a feeling of longing but with a feeling of fondness instead.

Going to a wedding as a married woman is very different from going to a wedding as a single one. I didn’t get to go try to catch the bouquet for the first time and I watched the other girls do it instead with a smile on my face. I thought of my husband while I watched those girls struggle to reach the flowers and thought about how lucky I was to already have found my love.

I enjoyed it, I really did. And I think I’ll enjoy weddings a little bit more now that I know what it’s like to be in the big white dress. And although I’ll always wish I could do it again, I wouldn’t want to. Our day was perfect in every way and I couldn’t ask for a better man by my side.

That’s all for today guys. Thanks for watching as usual. Remember to subscribe for more videos and check out my blog for text posts. I wrote a really good one last week in memory of Robin Williams. It’s about my own personal struggle with depression and how I found what I needed to be okay. I also have a facebook and twitter you can follow. Thanks again and have a great week! Lanie out.