Life Event: Elopement

I was a bridesmaid for a dear friend my senior year of high school. As I stood there watching her beam with joy, I realized this was not my dream. Weird, right?

Every girl is supposed to want more than anything to just walk down that aisle. To see the man of her dream standing there waiting for her. To have her father kiss her cheek and pass her hand to that special man. Her prince. Her white dress contrasting his black tux. Her bouquet of flowers wafting a lovely scent up to her nose. The sighs and smiles of her friends. Her mother crying.

Notice anything in that last paragraph?  It’s small, but really important. There is no I. My pronouns are all wrong. It isn’t my dress or my flowers or my father… it’s all this exterior feminine figure that well… I just can’t put me into.

As I tried to reconcile myself into a white dress image, I realized I felt a pit of panic every time I tried to imagine myself walking down an aisle. Let’s just sum it up by saying, “when I watch Run Away Bride – I get it.” This isn’t for me. It’s not what I want.

Flowers, churches, bridesmaids, an officiate… none of these ever filled me with anything but dread. As years passed and I was bridesmaid for my two best friends. I came to terms that I never wanted a “traditional” wedding. It wasn’t me.

I attended the wedding of my “other mother” and they had a “party with short ceremony in the middle” (that was how the invitation phrased it).  I thought this was much better than a traditional ceremony.  But it still wasn’t quite right for me.

There are only two things in the traditional route I like. My immediate family being present and the exchange of rings. The visual representation of two families joining and the physical gift representing our commitment to each other. That’s it. So that’s what I took. And fortunately, I found someone who agrees with me. We’ll do it our way, and it doesn’t have to be the way everyone else does it.