on Weddings

I confess: I didn’t love my wedding day. Something like that is sort of strange to live with, like the fact that no one signed my Junior yearbook (because I even sluffed the yearbook signing day!), or that I didn’t go to prom, or that I put "Mr." instead of "Dr." next to Kendell’s dad’s name on my wedding invitation. It feels a little pathetic, wandering through life without those contemporary milestones, but it’s still the truth. My wedding day wasn't the most blissful day of my life.

My lack of bliss had nothing to do with my marriage, or even with the festivities. My sisters and mom worked hard to make sure I had delicious food at my reception: tiny chicken salad and crab salad sandwiches, vegetables and dip, hand-made mint chocolate temples, individual cherry cheesecakes. It was all very elegant, in an old house that had been renovated as a reception center. I loved my dress and veil (even though now I look at them and shudder a little bit, they look so dated). I think my bridesmaid dresses were gorgeous (although, Chris and Becky might disagree). The flowers were perfect.

No, the uncomfortable feeling I get when I remember my wedding day doesn’t come from the details. It doesn’t come from the fact that we got married in February when I really wanted a May wedding. It snowed that day, one of those bleary, miserly winter days, so all of my photos at the temple are ugly and grey. It doesn’t even come from the fact that the combination of winter weather and a Jazz basketball game on the same night meant that quite a few of our more casual friends didn’t come. No—it comes from the fact that I was 19, and standing in that gorgeous antique house in my beloved wedding gown was deeply, deeply unpleasant. I didn’t enjoy being the center of attention like that. And, at 19, I didn’t know myself well enough to know just how uncomfortable and unpleasant I’d feel in that position.

So when I received the assignment to make a wedding layout for this month’s WCS gallery, I was more than a little anxious. I haven’t scrapped my wedding photos. I have absolutely zero desire to scrapbook my wedding photos. In fact, they are somewhere at my mom’s house, which really means I might never see them again. So, instead of making a layout about my own wedding, I made one about Haley from a wedding we went to six years ago, my niece Lyndsay's:

　

I wrote the journaling based on some thoughts I wrote in my journal that night. They focus on my hopes for Haley when she gets married: that she, too, will love the details, but also that she’ll get it right, somehow. More right than I did, so that when she looks back she only remembers being happy instead of mortified like I felt.

What about you? Did everything about your wedding day make you happy? Have you scrapped your photos? If you want some ideas, you should visit the gallery—there are some awesome ones there!

Comments

[wendy]

Ahhhh. I loved my wedding day. Well, and the day before, which was when we had our reception. My dh had the idea to have the reception the night before---the best idea in the world. We felt no pressure or anxiousness about anything. We stayed late to visit and help clean, because the wedding the next morning wasn't scheduled absurdly early. My introverted spouse even enjoyed THE LINE, we were so relaxed.

Dh's family is very organized, so everything went wonderfully. After the wedding we had a luncheon for the wedding party, and then said our goodbyes when we were ready to go.

I think being 33 was helpful for the whole thing, attention-wise, and lack of anxiety, too. I would've been weird at 19, too, on so many levels.

I love how much journaling you do with your pages.

I have scrapped very little of my wedding, and regret not having a real wedding album. We were concerned about the cost, so I didn't even have bridal poses done. We have some beautiful pictures, and I have done one or two digital 12x12 layouts, but never printed them. I haven't even had any wedding pictures displayed in our current house until the last several months (and we've been here six years).

[Becky K]

I haven't done anything with my wedding pictures. Like you, I never ordered any, so the only ones I have are the proofs from the photographer. I also lost my bridal portraits; I still look in strange places for them (mostly cabinets that we've had for 12 years) hoping to have them turn up.

Loved the layout. :)

[Apryl]

I haven't done anything with my wedding pics either!!! We should start a club!
I also got married in February, but I planned it on purpose (it worked for our schedules and I thought a winter wedding would be lovely). It was pretty low key, but sometimes even the most low-key weddings can still be SO STRESSFUL!!!! (Didn't help that as my marriage was beginning, my parents was dissolving. Sigh.)

[elizabeth]

My wedding photos aren't my favorite either. Our photographer wasn't very good (but he was an acquaintance of my father's and didn't charge us much) and he (I'm not even kidding) died about a month after our wedding, so our photos were kind of in limbo for a really, really long time (he was older. He had a good life. We didn't really know him.) But the photos are kind of dark, very posed, very cheesy... definitely NOT what you see today, all light and happy and natural. I tried to do something with them once for Simple and it turned out to be my least favorite project I ever did for the magazine. I need to try to make peace with them sometime, 16 years later...

[Wendy]

My wedding was scheduled for Apr. 28 and with all the invitations sent and replies coming in, my husband got cold feet and backed out. In June I went overseas for a brief conference and during my absense his feet warmed considerably. We rescheduled for August 4th and lost a fair number of attendees (including a bridesmaid).

I, too, don't relish the limelight. I felt quite nervous (even half snorted during my father's prayer over us - because I was stifling an impending crying spell). The day was just okay.

My best memory (crazy) is of the honeymoon night when we discovered that our Bible study group (to whom we had given the task of shuttling the many gifts to our room) had placed a squeaky dog toy beneath the mattress. It wasn't until the following morning when we were checking the room over for stray items that we noticed the source of that bedeviling squeak in the mattress! Ha! I still have that dog toy!

[Wendy]

Oops - I must have been out of my senses. Meant to write absence!

[Barn Weddings]

I'm not married yet, but I promise to myself ,when that time comes I want every experience to be happy.

[Sue Mattson]

I wasn't able to experience attending prom too, but I would want to be the happiest girl on my wedding day. I guess all girls want to be that on their special day. Maybe you were just too used to wedding designs, and that's why you didn't feel the happiness. Anyway, the important thing is that you're happy with your family and for the twenty years you've been together. That's unconditional love.