Almost a run away bride

This has taken me months to write.

I have a confession. Part of me didn’t want to get married. Not because I wanted to be single, I had cold feet, or I didn’t love him. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when this picture was taken, but I’m pretty sure somewhere in my mind a voice was telling me not to do it. I wanted to be married to the man I was in love with, just not with all that pressure, pomp, or hell that ensued that day.

Society puts a lot of pressure on a lady. I had several people tell me because we had a child we needed to get married. One even said she couldn’t be happy for me and my baby because he was born out of wedlock and she couldn’t support my decisions. When I (accidently) let it slip that we weren’t married one day to a newer church friend she was really surprised and started speaking to me a little differently. I’m not blaming everything on them, by no means, but maybe if they (and others) would have stopped pressuring us we would have worked it out for ourselves eventually.

Everything about the wedding was a disaster; the planning, the funding, physically putting it together, the day of the wedding (which was the worst), and the day after. As I was walking down the aisle I almost turned around and walked away. I think the only reason I didn’t was because I was expected not to. I was supposed to keep walking and say I do. So I did.

There was so much stress that week. People, getting things together, my fiancé was acting weird, my mother-in-law was freaking out. What I felt on my wedding day wasn’t cold feet. It was honest to God doubt. Again, I wanted to marry him, God knows I wanted to spend my life with him and continue building our family. The day of the wedding came and I got a call early in the day saying nothing was ready and they needed help. So I frantically called people to see if they could go help to finish the preparations. I wasn’t due at the house until later in the afternoon and I was dealing with my own crisis at the house. Not only was I trying to keep Xander occupied and to get him to take a nap so he wouldn’t be grumpy during the ceremony and reception, but I couldn’t find the rings and my fiancé didn’t know where they were. The last place either of us remembers having them was hung on the deer antlers. He is a hunter. Well those were hung about 15 feet near the roof, and I didn’t have the ladder to get them down. So I had two people boost me high enough to pull myself on the ledge they hung above, couldn’t find them, and then as I was lowering myself down I slipped and fell. Thankfully the couch was under me, but the drop was still a shock. A few hours later I finally found the rings in some obscure drawer in our bedroom.

Xander slept late, which made me late getting to the wedding site, but it doesn’t take me long to get ready, and most of my prep had been done already. I literally just needed to pin my hair back and finish my make-up. That’s all of 15 minutes. As soon as I walked in the door though my mother-in-law started yelling at me that nothing was done, the wedding was going to start late, and somehow it was my fault. My fiancé had apparently cut his thumb, it wouldn’t stop bleeding, and there were 10 people trying to talk to me at once. Yes, I was certainly stressed and my anxiety was through the roof. With my mother-in-law snapping at me, I snapped at my groom, which made him mad so as I was walking away to get ready (because people kept pulling me toward the bedroom) he was saying hey, hey, and I turned around and yelled what. This resulted in his mother yelling at me again, I burst into tears, and my grandfather and I drank a bottle of wine together.

My grandfather always tries to cheer me up with humor so he joked about having a horse outside ready to go if I needed a quick getaway. It worked in cheering me up because it was funny, but I also honestly considered it. No, he didn’t really have a horse ready for me to ride away on, but the fact that I honestly considered it was a red flag, but what was I supposed to do?

The ceremony started an hour and a half late. Anyone who knows me would realize that this is mortifying to me. Twenty minutes would have been one thing, but not an hour and a half. We pushed on though, I walked down the aisle, all the while wondering if we were doing the right thing considering how horribly the day had already been, we had the ceremony (it was nice and the kids were great), and then had a slightly awkward reception because many people had to leave right after the ceremony because of baby-sitter issues, previous plans, and an array of other reasons. I’m sure all of them were legitimate, but I was still sad they weren’t going to be able to stay.

All of this has been really difficult to write. I wanted to marry him, but I wish we would have just eloped like I wanted to. Maybe then we wouldn’t be sitting in separate houses and splitting time with our kids. Maybe being a runaway bride would have worked out better for you. I know some people reading this are shocked, worried about the implications, or maybe even offended. If that’s you I am sorry you feel that way, but just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or I didn’t feel it. My husband looked at me three days after the wedding and said to me he regretted marrying me. About seven months later I finally told him I almost didn’t walk down the aisle. He didn’t seem surprised.

Because I finally told him that secret I was able to finally finish writing this post for the hundredth time and hit publish. I’m not proud of it, and posting this is making me feel very vulnerable because I know I will probably receive some backlash from it, but it is the truth. I’m nothing if not honest.