Weddingbee Blog

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Stupid WordPress. I wanted the title to look like this:

I don’t wanna get married.

Anyway, I know I’m like a broken record with my constant “I never imagined my wedding or my dress or any of this stuff” that I now LOVE writing about nonsense. But there’s a pretty simple reason:

I never really wanted to get married and I never thought I would.

I’m not talking about feeling like a bride, or planning your whole wedding pre-engagement peeps, nope, I’m talking about the actual act of joining your life with another person. Marriage. Didn’t want it. Not a bit. No joke. Seriously.

I know, I know… I’m pausing to allow for your collective sigh of shock.

See I’ve always been fiercely independent and had big dreams of travel and education and writing and art, and well, marriage just didn’t really jive with those things for me. I think this is in large part due to my blue-collar upbringing. All of my friends in elementary school had a dad who worked and a mom who stayed at home or had a part time job. None of these women had careers. And none of them were pursuing the dreams I aspired to.

Now despite this dynamic or perhaps because of it, my parents were always incredibly supportive of their nerdy, artsy little girl and insisted that I go to college and do whatever I want to in this life. I went to a fancy high school and finally met kids who had two working parents, decidedly un-blue collar. Lawyers. Doctors. Writers. VPs.

And yet it still stuck with me that marriage was not conducive to freedom and success and travel and art and all of my other big dreams.

I pretty much maintained this attitude through my early twenties. I went to an awesome college, I’ve traveled extensively, and I have a job I love.

And somewhere along the line, as I began to achieve my dreams, a funny thing happened: My universe and the possibilities within it expanded to include marriage.

I credit this dramatic transformation to a few very diverse sources: First, I had a pretty traumatic break up in my mid-twenties followed by the “oh my god, I really am gay” moment. (So yeah—marriage seemed a lot more awesome once you took the boy out of the equation). Second, I took a good look around and realized that a lot of very successful people in my industry weren’t very happy with their personal relationships (or didn’t have any) and I decided I didn’t want to be one of them. And third, I started admiring a few of my close friends abilities to be independent, successful, and hitched all at the same time!

And then I started dating F Stripes and it all made sense. She has always been so open about her desire for marriage and children that she made me a lot more comfortable acknowledging that I want those things, too! Now I can focus on my career, on making art, on having fun and creating new friendships in a totally relaxed way because I know that F Stripes has my back. And I’ve got hers. I’ve found greater freedom, comfort, and possibility in our relationship than in any other I’ve known, and I can’t wait to marry her!

What about you guys? Any other converts from the “I’m never getting married camp” or were you born toting a wedding binder?