I am old.
I spent the weekend celebrating my baby brother as he married his love, drinking tons of wine and wrangling my tuxedoed 12 month old. Monday, please be kind.
Because my brain is fried, I am going to treat ya’ll to a post from the archives. Many of you weren’t around when this post was published (to be fair, I’m pretty sure my mom wasn’t even reading the blog at the time this post was published) so I thought you might like to take a peek. 
And for those of you who ask if I’ve always “been….uh….SO honest….” in my blog posts, I think this will answer your question! 
P.S. I joined Snap Chat this weekend and it.is.hard.
Follow along (user name: Oliveandtate) if you want, but it could be rough going until I figure out what the hell I’m doing. 

Bad Bride

originally published June 9, 2013
*Disclaimer* 


Our
wedding weekend was absolutely gorgeous and filled with so many friends
and family who traveled from far and wide to celebrate and love us.
This post is a reflection on me, and me only, and has no bearing on
those who worked tirelessly to make sure that we were happy, blessed and
married by the end of the weekend. 
We
could never say thank you enough to our parents, bridal party, ceremony
participants and friends/family who went out of their way to host
luncheons, farewell brunches, showers, bridal suite meals, rehearsal
dinners and after parties. 
And
most importantly, we could never adequately express our gratitude to
each of you who put on your dancing shoes and showed your best moves on
May 25th. 

We love you.
*************

I have a confession to make.
I was a Bad Bride.

Seriously. I didn’t
looooooove our engagement, I wasn’t over the moon to pick a dress and I
sure haven’t kept up with my thank you notes.

Don’t get me wrong, and let me be very clear here, I love my now husband
very much, but the process of marrying him drove me almost to the edge
of insanity. And you know what?
I think it’s ok to say out loud
“Hey, that engagement BS was for the birds”.

Looking back, I don’t think I was what one might call a Bridezilla.

My lack of Bridal
Bliss fell more into the category of straight up Anxiety. I wasn’t
always having fun, glowing or keeping spills off of my all white
ensembles and that, in all honesty, made me feel terrible about myself. I
thought It was my Bridal duty to naturally love every second, no matter
what.


Obviously, I wanted Justin to propose for YEARS by the time we got
engaged -and during that time I watched almost every single one of my
very best friends get married and start families. 

I. was. ready. 

But I had no idea the pressure it would bring. I worried at every turn
that my parents weren’t happy, his parents weren’t happy, everything was
too expensive, no one would come, everyone would come and on and on.

There is so much pressure to have the perfect wedding. Pinterest be
damned. I stopped looking at Pinterest about a month before our wedding.
Quit cold turkey. First of all, it started to become repetitive. If
you’ve seen one hay bale, you’ve seen them all.

Secondly, Pinterest made me feel like our wedding should be published
somewhere on some blog/magazine/website. If it wasn’t published, was it
not pretty enough? I mean is this the stuff we have to worry about now?
Getting our shit published? Well, quite frankly, yes. Our vendors need
my wedding to be published so they can get their names out there. And
all of our vendors worked so hard for us, why wouldn’t I want that for
them?

The pressure was too much for me. I quit. After I found out we were
moving, I literally quit wedding planning. I sent my mom and planner an
email that said “here’s the seating chart, I’m done now.” Thankfully,
those two were there to pick up my slack in a major way, and selfish as
it was, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So why am I telling ya’ll all of this?

It is clearly deeply personal
(and will sound insane to some), but I just had to put it out there for
any other girl who is beating herself up over not enjoying the process.
Yes, it only happens once (thank you, Baby Jesus), but it’s ok if being a
Bride just isn’t your gig.

 It most certainly wasn’t mine.

It’s ok if your stomach clenches every.single.time that someone says to
you, “oheeeemgeee! Enjoy every single moment, it goes so fast and it
only happens once!!” just put your best fake smile on and power through
it.

I say be grateful for the moment, but also for the fact that it does, indeed, only happen once.

So, for your enjoyment, I have compiled a list of the Top 10 Ways to Deal with a Bad Bride 
(not to be confused with a Bridezilla)

1. Do not, under any circumstance, say “Enjoy it! It only happens once!!” or any variation of that God forsaken saying.

2. Do not ask the Bride questions. If she is a nervous, worrying Bad
Bride (like I was) she will have undoubtedly given you
every.single.piece.of.information.you.will.ever.need. Please reference your Save the Date, Wedding Website, Invitation Suite,
Itinerary or various informative emails that the Bride sent you before
asking what time the wedding is.

3. Do not make an loud or sudden noises near the Bride. She is high strung and, if Southern, potentially armed.

4. Do appoint one even keeled, tough skinned Bridesmaid to stay with the
Bride. My Bridesmaid Courtney spent the entire weekend with me and was
my life line. Most importantly, she was my exit strategy. She knew when
it was time to pull me out of a conversation or a get together and get
me to safety.

5. Only say goodbye once. I can’t tell you how many people said goodbye
to me more than once at various events throughout the wedding weekend.
It made my head spin!

6. Tell the Bride to hang in there. Remind her she’s made it through
however many of the scheduled photo ops and she’ll be on her Honeymoon
in a matter of hours. My Matron of Honor did that for me and it made my
day.

7. Be on time. Always. To everything.
(If you are late, bring some sort of liquor based beverage for the Bride. That’s just good manners)

8. Don’t make side comments to the Bride about things she cannot control. 
The weather, how far away the bathroom is and her grandfather’s dance
moves will just have to be part of the experience. So it’s a little
chilly….dance harder and go with it baby!

9. Make sure the Bride has some downtime. 
Sometimes 5 glorious minutes alone to drink champagne straight from the
bottle in a hotel robe can make or break the rest of the day.

10. When all else fails, hand her a sandwich. She probably hasn’t eaten carbs in weeks.

And, as a side note, I can say with absolute certainty that I am an
excellent Honeymoon Bride. Drinking, eating, lounging in resort wear –
that is without a doubt the type of Bride that I was meant to be!