The Anti-Bride

In high-school and college, I was never able to engage in talks about “dream” weddings. And even through the seven years my main man and I dated before getting engaged, my mind didn’t wander into “what if” land every time I passed a bridal boutique. I thought the idea of paying thousands of dollars for a cake was absurd. Whenever I saw cascading bouquets of perfectly placed flowers, I always wondered why they didn’t just pick some that day and save the big bills. Frankly, I never thought anything was wrong with me until four months into our engagement when friends were astonished that I hadn’t begun looking for wedding dresses. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE fashion, and a wedding dress is the pinnacle of fashion for a lady. But, the thought of going to a bridal boutique left me feeling like I just came down from a sugar high. The hubby-to-be was in the same boat. We both knew we wanted to have a wedding—duh, he proposed, I said yes—but neither of us were interested in dealing with anyone in the wedding industry. I tried buying bride magazines, thinking this would pique my interest, but I just ended up making fun of the brides and loathing the industry even more.

Bribing me with a free lunch and drugging me with champagne, my best friend took me to the dress shop where she purchased her wedding gown. I gave the woman working at the boutique a list of things I did not want on or near my dress and challenged her to bring me something that met my qualifications. She said she had just the dress. Yeah, right. Aren’t they paid to say that? Lo and behold, she appeared with a dress that took my breath away. I tried it on and cried in delight at the woman I saw in the mirror. Who the hell was that knock-out? It was the most fantastic dress I had ever worn. I knew right then, it was my dress.

From that day on, I realized what it would take to plan our wedding: our personalities. My husband-to-be and I are not conventional people, therefore we would not have a conventional wedding. Just making that promise to each other escalated our excitement to plan the wedding. We also know that we are lazy individuals when it comes to planning anything, so we hired a wedding planner.