Weddingbee Blog

Just picture it: you’re in your gown, ready to walk down the aisle. Your bridesmaids have made their way down the aisle and are waiting for you at the altar. Your hair and makeup are immaculate, your veil “just so”. Your bouquet is absolutely gorgeous, and your train is splayed in a perfect semi-circle behind you. The music that you have painstakingly selected for your entrance beings, and you start to take your first step down the aisle towards your groom…

… and your knees start shaking, and maybe buckle. Suddenly, you notice that your hands are sweating profusely, and at that point your gown seems just a tinge on the tight side – tight to the point where it gets a teensy bit hard to take deep breaths. Your face gets flushed, your vision starts to get a little blurry, and you feel like you might be passing out. This is stage fright on steroids, except the steroids have downed 3 cans of Red Bull. OK, OK… maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. But suffice it to say: I’m a shy bride.

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I’ve been shy most of my life – so it’s no surprise that I’m a “shy bride”. The thought of walking down the aisle makes me a little nervous (as if you couldn’t already tell). I’m hoping that the day of the wedding I’m so excited to see Mr. French Fries and to get married that the nervousness melts away and I’ll be calm, cool, and collected… but I know how I react to stress, and sometimes it involves what I’ve described above.

That said, we’ve done some strategery with our wedding planning to dim the huge “bride and groom spotlight” a little bit. First off, we’re not doing a head table. No long tables on risers at the head of the ballroom for us (the very thought makes me a little sick to my stomach – nobody needs to see me chewing my filet! Leave me to my niçoise salad!). Instead, we’re sitting at a round table – just like everyone else! – with my MOH and Mr. FF’s best man and their spouses.

We’re nixing the receiving line (our church doesn’t allow for them anyway), and will stop by tables together after we’ve eaten dinner. The line of thinking is this: if they’re my guests, I’ll do most of the talking, and if they’re Mr. FF’s guests, he’ll do most of the talking. Easy peasy.

Also, we’re attempting to choose a shorter song for our first dance, or editing our first dance song to be a bit shorter so that it doesn’t feel like we’re dancing from our wedding day until the day that we celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Still, all of those eyes on us will make me a tad nervous. To alleviate some of this nervousness, we’re planning on taking dance lessons (so at least we can sort of look like we know what we’re doing) and I’m trying to remind myself that people will be eating their salads, and that croutons are more interesting than our fox trot.

Still, the walk down the aisle remains. It’s not that I’m completely dreading it – no, not at all – it will be the first time Mr. French Fries sees me that day, and I can’t wait to see his face. So, I guess I’ll fix my eyes on Mr. FF, focus my nervous attention to holding my bouquet at bellybutton level, and hold onto my dad’s arm to steady my knocking knees. Luckily for me, my face flushing will be attributed to being a “blushing bride”, not someone on the verge of passing out.

Are you a “shy bride”? How are you preparing for wedding day attention?