*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.
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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 ya’ll? I think it’s ok to say out loud “Hey, that engagement BS was for the birds”. 
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. 
Ya’ll, 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 nice 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! 
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