Weddings, as we all know, take at least 20 years to plan. This is why young girls—who’ve never been responsible for anything more complicated than an imaginary tea party—have to start dreaming up their eventual wedding early. It can be a little confusing, as you grow up and realize that you have plenty of time to rethink any early plans for your career, home, and love life, but you have to remember that this is different. Your wedding has to spring fully formed from your youthful, Disney-infused mind, even if you’ve since decided that everything you fantasized about before the age of 18 is either embarrassing, charmingly ignorant, or just sort of silly.
But some of us flout this natural order of things. Like a YA heroine or your ex’s new girlfriend, they are Not Like Other Women. Rather than stumble through life looking for a groom-sized carbon dioxide factory to plug into their prepubescent wedding visions, they remain ambivalent about lifelong commitment right up until they find someone worth committing to.
At this point, they’re forced to contend with how far behind they are on wedding planning—how adorably ignorant—which is especially difficult to do given how refreshingly little they care about weddings at all. But somehow, many of these brave women still go on to have weddings.
Let’s honor them.
“One of those women who has never dreamed of her wedding,” this lady briefly got excited, but ultimately let her in-laws plan the bulk of the celebration. It’s okay, we still honor her.
Tragically “[lacking] the bride gene,” another hero bravely managed to sneer her way through a bridal gown appointment, mock magazines without ever opening them, and suffer through a casual and intimate ceremony she would have skipped entirely, except that somehow. invites got out before she’d even started planning.
“How many times have you heard a woman say she’s fantasized about her wedding her entire life?” muses another poor soul “missing the bride gene.” This genetic abnormality made her childhood difficult: “Whenever I heard other women talking like this (usually as an excuse for Bridezilla-style behaviour), I would feel perplexed.” It’s too early to tell, but this optimistic and valiant woman thinks she will be able to overcome such procrastination and get married in the end. Still, her failure of femininity haunts her. “Why haven’t I been planning my dream day since I was knee-high to a grasshopper? Why didn’t I work out every element of a ceremony to a faceless groom before I hit puberty?” Why, indeed?
“‘I feel like this would all be a lot easier if one of us had imagined our perfect wedding when we were little,’” a bride remembers her wife saying in the middle of planning a wedding that would have been better designed by children who hadn’t yet met their future spouses.
“Unlike most girls, I had never really pictured my wedding dress,” said a bride whose wedding—hastily chosen dress included—ended up on one of the largest wedding blogs. Let that be an inspiration.
“Unlike most girls, I hadn’t given too much thought about the big day growing up,” said a bride who went on to have a perfectly traditional wedding. “Unlike most girls, my fascination with weddings didn’t begin when I was a little girl,” says a woman who is now definitely a wife. “Unlike most women I know, I hadn’t planned my wedding day since I was little,” admits a woman who managed to settle on a Great Gatsby theme in what was certainly less than 10 years. “Unlike most girls, I never daydreamed about my wedding day,” says a woman who recently celebrated her 10th anniversary.
Of course, not everyone can be so lucky. As a girl who “didn’t play bride unless peer-pressured,” and only imagined the taste of the wedding cake and not the intricate details of the spun-sugar flowers atop it, one bride was left with no choice but to elope. What else could she do after decades wasted “never [thinking] much of the froufrou affair”?
Despite all these cautionary tales, some women are still in denial about the difficult future ahead of them. “Most little girls grow up dreaming of their perfect wedding day … I was not one of those little girls,” says “an almost 22-year-old that [doesn’t] believe in marriage.” Relax, honey. There’s still time.
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