Maybe it’s because I’ve been to so many weddings. Maybe it’s because I’m one of the last of my friends to get married and I’ve now been a bridesmaid several times over…I’ve been inside the eye of the storm. Maybe it’s just a silly, harmless little term we should all just ignore. All I know is that I’m thrilled to be getting married and terrified of becoming Bridezilla.
Who exactly is Bridezilla? Though she has probably existed for a long time, she was discovered (and nurtured) by reality television. Think steamroller in a white dress. Think Medusa in a veil. Think Godzilla with a smaller waistline. We’ve all seen her, and she’s scary. She hurts other people’s feelings, she makes a fool out of herself. She builds whole mountain ranges out of molehills.
The real question is: does she live somewhere inside all of us? I’m not a dramatic person. I’m not confrontational. I consider myself to be rather “chill” in most social situations. And, yet, I wonder what this wedding process might bring out in me. At first, I worried about it so much that I developed a kind of planning paralysis.
I have the fiancé of my dreams, and I’m generally excited to celebrate this love I thought I might never find. But there was a serious hesitation. It seems, from the reactions of friends and acquaintances, that I might be the only engaged woman in the universe who didn’t immediately run out and purchase a truckload of bridal magazines after receiving the ring. One night, I came home to find three of them fanned out stylishly on the kitchen counter. They were purchased with love by my fiancé. (A hint perhaps?) Still, it took me a few days before I could crack open that first one.
The theory I loosely adopted was that if I didn’t have a plan, there wasn’t anything I could get too upset about. This kept my fears at bay for a while. After about three months, I realized that if we didn’t have a plan, we probably wouldn’t have a wedding, either. So we went ahead and found a venue and identified date. It’s the only event space we looked at and it’s exactly what we wanted: sparse, cost-effective, loft-like, with the Manhattan skyline in the background. The place even has built-in bookshelves.
Then, we (or I should say I) stalled some more.
What disturbed me was that once we had a space, I began to have certain fantasies about how to fill that space and how to fill our time within it. But what if my fiancé didn’t want the same things? What if we couldn’t afford what we wanted? What if what we wanted came to fruition but then flopped? What if I ended up punching someone or frothing at the mouth? I had this horrible image of myself stomping my foot, and whining like a child, something I was not even prone to doing when I was four years old.
Again, it just seemed a lot easier to do nothing. I kept my ideas to myself like a squirrel hoarding precious nuts. When asked, we justified our dillydallying by telling people that we were just enjoying being engaged. This was true. But people who were sincerely interested in helping or just plain curious, started asking us so many questions that we have been gradually impelled to tentatively take some further steps.
I was afraid I might fall in love with a ridiculously expensive dress then throw a violent in-store tantrum upon realizing I couldn’t afford it. In fact, I didn’t even allow myself to try on gowns above a certain price. With the help of my mom and a few friends, I found a discount dress with an excellent silhouette. I’m unsure about the beading so I might rip it off and replace it with something else, a project I’m looking forward to. Likewise, we were concerned that staying in Manhattan would be too costly for our guests, so we went on our own little hotel tour in search of nice lodging at reasonable prices. In fact, we found a perfect one and secured a block rooms.
Still keeping a few of those dreamy wedding nuts to myself, I began wonder how much this wedding process foreshadows how your marriage will work. On one hand, I feared that my fiancé and I might start flinging plates at each other’s heads over something as silly as flower choices, and on the other, I didn’t want to feel as if I was therefore sheepishly self-censoring. That’s not what I’m about either. Would it really be so hard to communicate and keep level heads?
All I could do was try. Time was (and is) ticking. When I suggested that I thought it would be cool to have a bagpiper play while guests are arriving, his reaction was indeed extreme: he practically jumped out of his skin with excitement, and we booked a piper within an hour. Together, we designed some save-the-date cards with clipart I found online and printed them out at Kinkos. We joked about having a cake decorated with oreo cookies, and now have two tastings of oreo cakes set up at the end of the month. When he suggested something I originally didn’t want – i.e. including some religious icons in an otherwise secular ceremony – I braced myself, half-expecting that my head would start spinning around á la The Exorcist. It was a relief to simply agree and genuinely believe that if it would make his family feel more comfortable then it was important.
The weird thing is that even though organizing all of this so far has eaten up a lot of time, it’s been way more fun than I anticipated. In fact, things seem suspiciously smooth. Thankfully, my inner Bridezilla hasn’t appeared…yet. I haven’t sprouted fangs or even considered tackling anybody.
But wow, there’s still a lot left to do and only four months to do it. Glimpsing at a few of those wedding timelines provided by bridal mags confirms that we are woefully, almost laughably, behind the curve. There are all kinds of loose ends (and we probably don’t even know what all those loose ends are).
As we plan to do our own flowers, invitations, programs, and place cards, I still can’t shake the feeling that Bridezilla is lurking somewhere in there, perhaps crouching inside one of those very projects. I wonder what form she’ll take? How would I fight her off? With laughter? Deep breathing? Throw champagne in her face? Maybe we should just shake hands and I’ll introduce her to our guests. After all, I’ve heard that it’s good to keep your enemies close.
About The Author: Jocelyn Jane Cox is a staff writer for Manhattan’s uppereast.com and writes the regular Upper East Side Informer blog: http://uppereastsideinformer.blogspot.com/ .
