10.03.2009

Some Things About Wedding Planning That Are Making Me Sad

So, wedding planning has been slow going. I told you all about the first of many deadlines, right? Well, now a week has gone by, and A.P. hasn't done a thing. I wonder if he remembers or not. I want to remind him, but have a feeling that if I do, he will see it as me hounding him. And I always have to remember that A.P. is a procrastinator, which technically I am, too, except that I became a lot better about putting things off in grad school. Now I put things off, but not until the last minute. A.P. is still a last minute guy. This might be hard. I hope it's not a planning filled with frustration. That would not be fun.

Anyway, as the week has gone by, I've been trying to look at my old favorites: Once Wed, 100 Layer Cake, etc., as well as read some of my personal blog favs for inspiration (even if most of them are already married): A Surprise Wedding, Not a Bride Yet, etc. But time is still limited, and even hanging out with A.P., or attending one of my best friend's 30th birthday party last night makes me feel as if I'm abandoning my job, since I have soooo much work to do. Nevertheless, I try to look more on my new Google Mytouch since I can now read those blogs on my two bus, one train, hour long commute every day. And as I do that, I try to envision our wedding. Because now, it's not a dream, now, it's a real task that I have to accomplish. I try to picture what I'll wear, what we'll eat, what our tables will look like, what A.P. will wear, how nervous/excited we'll be, how happy we'll be when we don't have to be the center of attention anymore and everyone is just partying. I picture who will be there, too: my friends, my family, A.P.'s friends, and his family. And that's when I get sad. I get sad because this year, while it has been a year of excitement, has also been a year of loss. This will go down as one of the best years of my life (finished grad school, new job, engagement), but it has also marked the demise of one of my closest friendships and a relationship with one of my siblings.

First, the friend. I haven't blogged about it because until recently I was still too upset about the whole thing. I probably still won't go into too much detail, but needless to say my best friend of 10 years, the person I love more than A.P. (probably because let's face it, I don't have to live with her), and the person I refer to as my soulmate (that's what we call each other) basically has been distancing herself from me for the last two years. This year I finally accepted it and grieved and have been trying to move on. But it's been hard. I never thought I would tell my best friend that I was engaged via email with a bunch of people I don't talk to all the time. I never thought that I would tell my best friend about getting my dream job via email with a bunch of people I don't talk to all the time. I guess the big thing is that she has become a person I don't talk to all the time. And it fucking sucks.

In the past our friendship has had some downturns, but about two years ago it got pretty bad. We used to email all the time and talk on the phone a couple of times a week. Then it became email all the time, but talk on the phone every week/week and a half. Then it became email a few times a week and talk on the phone once a month. Then she would just not call me for a month or two. Each time we became more distant I tried to bring it to her attention. Sometimes in a positive way, sometimes by starting a fight. It would always get better, but then taper off again. This year I always felt like I was emailing her all the time and she was barely emailing me. She doesn't call me unless we arrange it, and even then, she usually would forget. It sucked. Finally I looked through my email (I know this might sound OCD, but I actually did it because A.P. kept telling me it was probably in my head) and discovered that this year I had sent her something like 150 ORIGINAL emails, and she had sent me 25 or so, and half of those were mass emails. I decided to stop communicating with her as much. In my head I imagined that she would email me or call me and ask why she hadn't heard from me as much, but I knew she wouldn't. She proved me right.

The other loss is one of my siblings. For something like ten years, I've been fighting this one. One of my brothers, who I always felt I was close with, pretty much stopped communicating with our family years ago. I still talked to him on occasion, though. Then almost three years ago, his wife got pregnant and they had a little boy. After that, I saw them a lot more. But it was bullshit. The wife would call me, and my brother would ignore me. It was ridiculous. Needless to say, I finally decided that I was sick of trying. I cut off all communication with them. I didn't invite them to my grad school graduation party, and I didn't tell them I got engaged. I also don't plan on inviting them to my wedding. I know it sounds silly, but I'm leaving out A LOT. It's basically been years of small hurts leading me to believe that by continuing to talk to them, I was encouraging his behavior. So I stopped.

Anyway, the point is, when I do all this wedding planning in my head, while I picture all my friends and family who will be there, I also picture my best friend who will be there, but who I know will be there more out of obligation than genuine happiness. And I realize there will be a missing member of my own family. It makes me sad. And then I get bummed out about having a wedding at all. Did anyone else experience this kind of thing? Did anyone else while planning on who WILL be there, got sad about who WON'T be there?

4 comments:

  1. I'm currently struggling with who to invite as well - and who to invite that will come to celebrate vs. coming because of obligation. We're keeping it small, and it will be in my fiancee's hometown, so my few friends/family that I'm planning on inviting will have to travel ~500mi to get there. There are a few friends I would love to have there, but they don't have much money to travel or time to take off work. I know that if I invite them, they'll come even though financially they shouldn't. But if I don't invite them, they'll be offended and I'll feel like a terrible friend.

    So yes. I'm currently having the same worries about being sad about who won't be coming, and being sad about quite possibly not inviting some of the most awesome people I know!

    I don't know the right/best/easiest answer. :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh I've only just stumbled across your blog and I so want to give you a hug... I could say all the usual things like it's their loss etc but I know that doesn't really help on how you feel... all I can say is think of the people who will be geniunely happy for you and how happy you will be.

    Me and the other half are only recently engaged but already the wedding invitees are a little problematic... it's kind of the reverse of yours, I have a very close relative who is basically the kind of person that can make me very upset just by being in the room so we're contemplating how not to invite them and failing... I'm told this stuff is never easy. Doesn't make it any easier though.

    Big hug anyway x

    ReplyDelete
  3. I can so relate!

    Many years ago, I was a bridemsaid for MY best friend and soul-mate, but over the years, we experienced something very similar to what you and YOUR bestie have experienced: Increasingly infrequent communication and a general feeling of disconnect. Truly heartbreaking. Some of it was purely logistical in the regard that we live nowhere near one another and have sort of been at different stages in our lives for quite some time. She got married very young while I was still out partying and making out with questionable fellows, which resulted in us feeling like we had very little in common outside of our shared history. Then she got pregnant and had a baby which resulted in making it so, so hard to find the TIME to chat, since we live in wildly different time zones and she had a child attached to her breast for the better part of the day.

    We would go very, very long periods of time without talking and saw eachother maybe once every other year. And then one day, I realized that she truly was not my best friend anymore in ANY of the ways in which we measure such a thing. She was not the first person I wanted to share big news with. She was not the person who knew me best. Not anymore. And it was so incredibly sad.

    I invited her to our wedding of course, and she came of course, but she was not one of my kinda sorta not really bridesmaids. It was a very bittersweet experience because in addition to our having grown apart, she's in the middle of a divorce and there was just an incredibly heavy sadness about her and an awkwardness to our communication all weekend.

    HOWEVER...something has happened in the three months since the wedding, and somehow, we've reconnected. We are still at different stages in our lives, and we still have a hard time making the time to talk, but there's a renewed love for one another that I feel everytime we do talk. Just the other day, we were talking about her experiences with eHarmony, and how she'd gone on her first date in 11 years, how she'd felt beautiful and sexy for the first time in 11 years, and had her first kiss in 11 years, and there was something in that phone call that made me realize that she's finding her way back to her old self, and I'm finding my way into my new self, and that she is STILL my soulmate.

    So perhaps the two of you will reconnect one day as well.

    And as for the sibling issue...I can relate there as well. I've been estranged from my sister for over 10 years and never even considered inviting her to the wedding because, hello!? A wedding is not the venue for that type of family reunion. Not with my sister anyway. And to be perfectly honest, I really do not think we will ever re-connect (not that we were ever connected in the first place), and I am really, truly, 100% OK with that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your post made me cry! I'm a newbie to your page (as of 10 minutes ago), but you really struck a chord. In college, I had a core group of friends, and two friends that I was closest with who were dating, and who would inevitably get married. In a desperate attempt at no longer being third-wheel, I started dating a loser, and my new beau and my new attitude kept my friends away. It was tragic, but when I dumped the boy, I dumped the bad attitude and begged for forgiveness. When I got the invitation to their wedding, I was elated! My fiance (a great guy) and I drove 1,000 MILES to the wedding and brought gifts. Thinking all was normal, I tried to jump right back in with both feet. Unfortunately, the couple avoided me and their other friends talked loudly about me saying, "No way she would show up! Who wants her here?" No one would talk to me, and we ended up driving home instead of staying for another day or two. I never even got a thank-you for the wedding gifts. It is tragic: we were inseparable in college, I came to celebrate their wedding, and there's no way in the world I would return the favor with an invitation to ours. I surmised later that it must have been a need for more guests at their destination wedding that prompted my invitation. It's like they played a mean joke, broke my heart, and it only cost me $500 in travel. Of course, my anger doesn't mean I'll be any less sad that they're not coming...

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...