I WILL NOT GET MY DREAM WEDDING DAY

(Happy Tears - your stock Google photo)

That is something that I have to get used to but it's not pleasant to say.

I guess it started when I realised that I would be marrying in Leeds. A risk of being attracted to Northern guys. I'm not even sure I like Leeds. I like Lancashire. I like the coastal towns there. Anyway, I won't be living there [Leeds or anywhere in the Red Rose], post-marriage, but my Fiancé’s family lives there. I knew it was the right thing to marry in Leeds. The honourable thing to support him. After all, he's the one with a job. (Not that it seems to matter that I'm the one with nearly two degrees.)

However, the more I compromise about the wedding, the more I feel that my ideas are slipping out of my hands. The more it feels like I am being ignored and pushed away. Like they say in ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’: this is the woman’s wedding, too.

I get it: I’m old fashioned, and I live by old fashioned virtues and old fashioned premises. However, the ideal of being hoisted over the threshold I just have to let crumble into smoke. Neither of us can afford our own place; and even together, it would be a paltry flat. Hardly romantic. Even if I were to keep a part-time job (the stats are not looking so rosy), I would be putting my degree at stake again. What with my summer laziness (!), my anxiety-depression, and my wandering mind, I can't afford to add any more risks to my studies.

I guess I don’t really mind that, though.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not unrealistic. It has been a long time since I had the dream of marrying my sweetheart and we with a house in Oxford big enough for a swimming pool and a sound-proof music room.

I am not naive. Believe me, I know how it is to feel naive. To think that I could leave a mark on the world when I was thirteen. To believe that my two favourite inspirations would be there at my wedding. To believe that my ex would talk to me again and even play the organ at said wedding.... But it's not going to happen.

But is it wrong to want to have wanted and to will want that certainty of celebrating marriage in a new house that we have acquired for ourselves?

Furthermore, with every decision that is made for the wedding day, the more I see what I would have expected for a wedding tumble to shreds. No father to walk me down the aisle or give a speech, no quiet woodland photos (and believe me, everybody is going to be on the couple’s tails, aren’t they?), and the general sense from the familial side of things that this union is better off hated. I suppose I am asking too much, but with everything I’ve been through, it seems only fair that I should be allowed to have things go my way for once.

Instead, the dread is building up the more the days tick down.

Yes, it is painful to give up on these dreams. I never wanted a big princess wedding, I never wanted a reception, I never wanted a grand hotel – until I started looking and thinking “I have to give people the reception they expect”. I was always interested in the building of a family microcosm before I was ever interested in anything involving a grand drinking session (as so many wedding receptions have come to pitifully be now).

But in the end, I have to accept it. I have to buck up, shelve my desires for the sake of the masses (Utilitarianism, anyone?), and get on with the wedding day.

Edited to add: Despite what might seem the numerous issues and pains I have with this union, there is nothing that gives me more hope and more faith in God's work than the upcoming start to this new phase of my life. I would much rather be married and doing my duty with some bumps in the road than live a life ‘not chained down’ but a life without purpose, closed off to other life.