When Vanessa asked me to write a guest post about my top three favorite moments of my wedding day, I felt ecstatic and at ease, like I could just sit down and the words would tumble out with clarity, and I could effortlessly choose the top three moments.
Here’s where I struggle to choose just three: my wedding day was perfect. It rained. My bangs stuck to my forehead. We momentarily lost power right before I walked down the aisle (an old dirt road), so we almost had a ceremony with no music (the horror!). The cake was ugly. The lace on my dress ripped, right across the belly. Like I said, it was perfect. And here’s why.
I married a real man, one who knows how to love and cry and have fun, one who knows how to build furniture and fix things, one who knows how to encourage me and push me to be my best self, one who is creative and smart, one who will do whatever it takes to provide for me and our future family. I married a man who makes me laugh and makes me think and questions me when I’m wrong. I married a partner who understands that a partnership—a marriage—at its best, is about making each other better and more fulfilled.
That alone made the day perfect. How could anything, anything at all, put a damper on such a glorious occasion as committing to spend the rest of our good and bad days together?
It rained. We love the rain. Instead of crouching beneath umbrellas, everyone—all 13 of us—danced wildly into the night with the rain pouring down on our beautiful clothes.
My bangs stuck to my forehead. It doesn’t look pretty in pictures, but it reminds me of the humidity and helps take me right back to the feeling of the day.
We momentarily lost power right before I walked down the aisle. While my brother-in-law scrambled to repair the connection, it gave me a couple of moments to collect myself and my thoughts and be present in the moment, and an instant with my dear videographer friend who adjusted my veil and hair to make sure I would look beautiful when my dad presented me to my then-fiancé.
The cake was ugly, but it sure did taste good!
The lace on my designer dress got caught on my husband’s belt buckle as he twirled me around the dance floor, and it ripped, a big major rip, right across the belly of the dress. I had to leave the dance floor immediately and began to cry, but my dad and brother comforted me by saying, “You just ripped a dress you’re never going to wear again while you were dancing with your new HUSBAND,” which immediately put it in perspective. It’s now a story I can tell when my daughter and granddaughter gaze at my wedding dress, imagining their own fairy tale wedding days.
So none of these less-than-perfect aspects are my favorite moments, but all of them add to my memory of a completely perfect wedding day.
If I could tell all brides-to-be just one thing, it would be this: Amidst all the planning and any unfortunate circumstances, keep your focus where it should be—on the love that made the day possible, on the person you're going to marry, and on the choice you are both making to spend the rest of your lives together. After the guests have gone home, the chairs are folded, and the flowers are wilted, it’s the only thing that matters.
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