Weddingbee

In my last post, I was telling you about how Mr. Breezy and I had decided to take care of our girls’ bridesmaid dresses, and how I had taken it upon myself to find said dresses.

After more than three months of scouring the city’s stores, I came upon what I thought was the perfect purple bridesmaid dress at Jacob.

After I sent my girls the pictures, I got a reply from Miss P. She said she was in, so I went back and scooped up one for each girl, juuuuuuust to make sure that Jacob didn’t go out of stock or something.

Well, that turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Because when I went back a month later to return all the dresses, they still had oodles and oodles of them in each size.

I guess you could say I was overcautious.

Not to mention over-optimistic, over-exhausted, and over- OMIGOSH-ONLY-SIX-MONTHS-LEFT-WHAT-ARE-WE-GONNA-DOOOOO???

Yeah. Six months. Not six weeks. Months.

It was time for this bride to take a chill pill.

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I think that there’s a time in each bride’s wedding countdown when she suddenly gets an insurmountable urge to get every single possible detail decided/purchased/organized/DIY-ed/done immediately. We have this weird notion that as soon as we wrap up those details, we can kick back, relax, and just enjoy the rest of the engagement or something. (At least, I thought that was what would happen.) So we stress out and try to rush around getting things done.

Unfortunately, this time is usually so early in the process (”early” in real-time that is, not bride-time) that those around us–especially dear friends who have yet to endure the pain joy of planning their own weddings, and who do not understand why their bride friend is sending them five emails a day with links to bridesmaid dresses that all look pretty much the same to them, when there is still lots and lots of time to go shopping for dresses—think we are just plain insane.

Obviously, this is clear to me now, but that’s only because it’s four months later and I can look at it through my retrospect-acles (where the vision’s always 20/20).

Sure, I was disappointed when one of the girls said she didn’t think the Jacob dresses I had bought would work. Beyond that, I was annoyed with myself that I had this impossible vision of perfection in my head that was turning my shopping excursions into nightmares.

Once I calmed down, I realized that hey, this wasn’t that big of a deal. Sure, this dress was a strike, but everything happens for a reason. And it was time for me to get off of bride-time and out of this bride’s anxiety-riddled head space.

Most important of all, I remembered the reason I was doing this in the first place: to make sure my three wonderful friends who had each agreed to parade around in the Caribbean in a purple dress for an entire day (oh and what wonderful friends they are!), at least felt comfortable, looked smashing, and didn’t have to stress about anything.

My resolved strengthened, and a short mental vacation from bridesmaid dress shopping later, I went back to work.

And since I’d exhausted all the stores in my city, I bit my lip and dived into the world of online shopping.

(Results of my online hunts next time)

Was there a time during your planning experiences where you had to tell yourself to take a chill pill? Did one of your friends tell you that you needed to relax (…out of sincere concern for your health, that is) and put things into perspective?

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