Worst Bride Ever

Cynicism is part of who I am. I’m fairly sure I came out of the womb mid-eye roll. My sense of humour has earned me the prestigious title at work of “worst bride ever” due to my general pessimism towards my wedding day and utter lack of patience with the whole organisation process. Most of the time, it’s met with a (usually jovial) “at least you’re getting married” or “at least you’re not single” over the water cooler. Let me be clear on that one for a minute; I feel incredibly lucky to be getting married in the way I am. I am fortunate enough to be in a relationship which is healthy, stable and (for the most part), happy. I am fortunate enough to be legally allowed to marry the person I want to, doing so without any stigma attached to it, and I am so lucky to be financially stable enough to have the wedding that myself and my fiance want. This does not however, come with a God-given duty to be exponentially happy about it for every second of every day.

There’s a growing trend on social media amongst parents, particularly mums, in which they’re supporting each other and sharing the times when they don’t quite get it right or the moments when they panic and think they’re the worst parent in the world. Now, I’m not a parent, so I don’t profess to understand anything about being an “un-mumsy mum”, or why anyone would care whether your baby gets its milk from a boob or a bottle, but from what I’ve seen – surely it isn’t a bad thing to be honest about how you’re feeling. Giovanna Fletcher, an author I love, is a really big advocate of this and is always raising the point that just because she may have moments of struggle or self-doubt, it doesn’t nullify her feeling of being lucky to be a parent. Again, I’m not a parent and I don’t believe for a second that planning a big lavish party for yourself and your spouse is in any way as difficult or emotionally challenging as keeping an actual human being alive, but I do know it’s really effing stressful; and not something I should have to endure in silence because I “should be glad I’ve got the ring”.

The idea for this post came to me ages ago and I’ve gone back and forth over whether to write it, for fear of looking ungrateful about the fact that I’m planning this seemingly perfect wedding and marrying my school sweetheart. But, somewhere around one a.m. yesterday when I was fighting back tears and trying to slow my breathing down so I could get some sleep ahead of my busy day at work, and trying to switch off the video of the empty ceremony room which was playing on a loop in my head; it occurred to me that other people might feel like this, and might also be telling themselves “I have no right to feel overwhelmed by this because it’s what I’ve always dreamed of”. I realise that sounds completely dramatic, but unfortunately that’s where I was at that night, and not for the first time.

People judge weddings, that’s accepted as a fact. We all do it, women probably more so, and I’ve made the catastrophic error of following my photographer and venue on Instagram. So, every time there’s a new wedding of course I’m zooming in on every picture, critiquing every angle of the dress, how the flowers are arranged, the place settings, everything. I know, I need to get a life, and much like Googling your unusual symptoms, it’s a dangerous game which I realised the hard way last week when I fell completely in love with a particular bride. I’m not going to name her and come across as a weird stalker, but she was absolutely unreal. Her wedding was at my venue and, if I’m honest, I don’t think mine is going to top that; plus, after midnight on a school night, my rational faculties of “but everyone’s wedding is unique to that couple, all brides are beautiful” were off the clock. So what did I do? I did what any irrational, tired woman would do, and I stalked her Instagram. I made it as far back as her engagement party when the heart palpitations started. She looked unbelievably happy and sickeningly in love in every shot – not a hair out of place, glowing at her hen party, posting about how much she was enjoying the wedding planning with her beautiful, supportive friends and family, and here I was crying in the middle of the night about how my wedding is going to be a failure which upsets loads of people in the process and that I probably can’t actually afford, for the umpteenth time.

Instagram is a dangerous place and, when I’ve had enough sleep, I know that the vast majority of posts don’t show the whole truth. This bride almost certainly will have cried over her wedding. She will have had vicious rows with her own and her fiance’s families over the guest list, of course she will have worried about money and definitely will have experienced the lingering guilt in the pit of her stomach over not being able to include her great aunt’s cousin once removed, who her parents tell her is very upset and hurt at not getting an invite. I have enjoyed planning my wedding and I am extremely excited for the day itself, but it is absolutely peppered with guilt about spending my own money, asking other people to spend money, worry about who will talk to who and whether people will be comfortable, and total fear and blind panic about what people are going to think about it on the day and what’s being said behind my back. Hopefully other people feel like this too and this doesn’t turn into a viral post in which I’m labelled a ‘bridezilla’ like the woman who asked guests to pay an entry fee to come to the wedding (honestly, once you tot up the final bill – not a terrible idea). As I said at the start, this does not take away from my ability to enjoy other elements of the process, but a friendly word of advice to anyone who finds themselves in the presence of a bride or groom who is struggling with it, the helpful thing to do is to sympathise and/or offer to help; and absolutely does not include saying any of the following*:

“You’re spending HOW much? That’s obscene!”
“You should just elope”
“Divorce is even more expensive, you know.”
“I eloped, it was so much easier”
“I LOVED planning my wedding it was amazing from the second we got engaged”
“Well I don’t feel like I need a ring to justify my relationship but some people need the validation I suppose”
“It’s just an expensive piece of paper”
“Your family sound like a nightmare, I’m so glad mine aren’t like that”
“It’s just so hetero-normative getting married like that”
“I would never take my husband’s name, it’s so pointless, outdated and sexist”
“Do you know how many holidays that could pay for?”
“Couldn’t you do it later in the day? I’ll be so rushed getting ready for that time”
“I know I RSVP’d back in November, but something else has come up…”
*Returning an RSVP with additional names added who were not on the original invite*
“I’m just waiting for my invite in the post hahahaha!”
“I know it’s your day but can’t I just -”
“But you have to do it that way it’s tradition”
“You’re NOT getting married in a Church?”
*Not RSVP-ing at all*
“I don’t know why you’re bothering with chair covers, that’s a pointless expense”
“But I don’t like that song, you have to have music everyone likes”

*a non-exhaustive list of things which have been said, directly to my face.

Re-reading

Here’s the thing. For someone who reads as much as I do, the one thing people are always shocked to hear is that I have never re-read a book in my adult life. When I was a kid I obviously had my favourites which were regurgitated every bedtime, but past about the age of thirteen I have never thought to re-visit an already completed story. My mum once said that her only fear of dying was that she would die before being able to read every book ever published which, although was meant as a joke, is a very valid point if you ask me. With new books constantly being churned out by publishers, and a whole abundance of already published material – why would you waste time repeating books when there are so many more to discover?

Recently, I’ve been off reading a bit. I know, just pick your jaw back up from the floor whenever you’re ready. I have already posted about losing my mojo generally, which inadvertently led to me putting down the books for a while. But, I think part of it as well was the fact that my chosen read at the time was a book I’ve wanted for quite a while, which sadly turned out to be a disappointment. I’m not going to name and shame, because the book isn’t bad in itself, perhaps it was just not to my writing style, but every time I sat down to read it; it felt like a case of ‘right I have half an hour let’s try and get this chapter finished’ as opposed to ‘let’s try and squeeze in as much reading as I can because I can’t wait to see where the story goes’. Reading is supposed to be fun, and that was not conducive to a good relationship between me and my favourite hobby, so it’s no wonder I lost motivation altogether. It was like coming home to a tedious relationship – which would be ludicrous to continue doing if it didn’t improve. So, as an experiment, I decided to re-read a book I loved as a teenager and see what happened.

Initially, it was a really odd experience. Because I loved this book so much as a teenager, the plot was well cemented in my memory and certain words and phrases triggered memories I hadn’t realised were still there. It was like when you’re really little and running so fast that your legs haven’t quite caught up with your body – I knew what was coming and my brain was working faster than my eyes were reading the words. However, although I thought I knew this book inside-out, at certain points I had wonderful moments of re-discovery, in the same way that smells can trigger memories from childhood which you’d forgotten entirely. Also, and this is possibly because I was re-reading this story as an adult rather than a teenager, I had a couple of ‘penny dropping’ moments with certain plot points which I’d completely missed previously. Again, it’s possibly because I’m now a grown-up who cries at everything and not a stone-cold teenager, but I was really surprised to find myself having a genuine emotional reaction to some tougher chapters. I think this is possibly because I already had that familiarity with the characters – the challenge for authors wanting to create an emotional reaction from the reader is to get the reader emotionally invested in the characters first. When you’ve read the story before, that’s already been achieved, so I was able to enjoy the story in a new way.

So, my experience of re-reading was pleasantly surprising. It’s apt that I’m writing this the day after watching a new film I’d been wanting to see, which turned out to be rubbish and I’m still annoyed that I wasted my Saturday night on it – when I could’ve re-watched Mamma Mia for the fiftieth time and had a great night. I’ve definitely learned that there is nothing wrong with revisiting already-loved stories, in the same way we all love coming home to a treasured favourite film; and, that forcing yourself to read something that you are simply not enjoying is not a good idea. I actually did that last year with a different book (*cough* Wuthering Heights, *cough* I know it’s a classic but it’s just not good), and it felt like wading through treacle to get to the end which was a complete waste of my free time which could have been spent genuinely enjoying something else.

Losing My Mojo

Disclaimer: this not an April Fool’s post.

I realised over the weekend that my last blog post was a month ago, now, I’m not egocentric enough to believe my followers are waiting with baited breath for my new posts, nor are they losing sleep over my welfare due to the recent lack of activity. However, I do feel a need to briefly apologise for my recent lack of attention to this blog, the reasons for which I will now go into – please have violins at the ready.

I’m just going to hold my hands up at this point and be honest in saying – I lost my mojo. I wasn’t actually going to write about this, I intended to just draw a veil over the last few weeks, pick up another book and review it like nothing had happened. But, I saw a tweet last week from Jill Mansell talking about how she lost her love of reading for about eight years and recently got it back. Anyone who’s even skim-read this blog will know that me losing my love of reading for eight years is extremely unlikely to happen, but, people responded to Jill with so many similar messages about losing their mojo for reading, as well as other things, and I was really quite surprised.

I am one of those people everyone hates, who seemingly crams 48 hours’ worth of activity into 24 – I work full time in a fairly demanding job, I’m planning my wedding, I read, I blog, I work out, I see all my friends and family, my house is always immaculate and I always have time to cook great meals from scratch. Sue me, I like to appear perfect, okay? Or so I did. Up until about three weeks ago I was spinning all of those plates perfectly; if anything, I was standing on one leg while spinning them all and making it look completely effortless. Like the proverbial duck, I was gliding along the water gracefully without anyone seeing the mad paddling of my legs underneath. But, like all people who attempt this and think they’re invincible, I made a mistake. I took my eye off one of the plates to focus more on another which was starting to drop. And what happened? Within about two days, they were all on the floor smashed to pieces, with me left standing like a lemon and feeling a bit sheepish. At that point, I didn’t want to pick any of them back up. I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want to blog, didn’t want to plan the wedding – for a few weeks it was a case of putting one foot in front of the other as best I could and trying not to cry in public (I failed at that, unsurprisingly).

Around that time, I saw someone on social media post that ridiculous Elizabeth Taylor quote which is always doing the rounds, about pouring a drink and putting lipstick on and acting like nothing is wrong. Well, I tried that, and even a large drink didn’t help. I know it absolutely wasn’t meant to be malicious, but seeing that quote just made me feel ten times worse. The plates were smashed so badly at that point that there was no way I could kick them under the sofa, put lipstick on and pretend like it never happened – all I could do was start gluing them back together and I just didn’t want to. So, what did I do? Nothing. I did nothing at all for about three weeks. I didn’t read, I didn’t write, I stopped bothering with the gym, I even sacked off wedding planning for a bit and I felt awful about it. I went to work obviously, I have a contractual obligation to do that, but I did little else. However, taking that time somehow allowed me to recharge and start formulating a plan to put the plates back together, and then once I’d managed to glue one back together, the others didn’t seem so bad.

So here I am, a month later, gluing the ‘writing’ plate back together. Thankfully this is the last plate to get back in the air, and it’s getting there. I have no reviews to post yet because I’m only just getting my reading mojo back, but, thanks to Jill Mansell, I know that’s alright. It’s slowly coming back, and eventually it will be back to where it was, and now I know that’s fine. Your patience is appreciated during this period of self pity.