This weekend was interesting to say the least. My boyfriend and I were in our good friends’ wedding and it was stressful as fuck. Don’t get me wrong, we love them so much and are so happy for them, but it was so much work and so exhausting.

After having to get up at 6:45am and working until 1:00pm, my boyfriend and I drove to the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and we were all supposed to start at 6:00pm, but the main people needed were running late to this got delayed to 7:15pm. That unfortunately kind of set the tone for the rest of the events to come.

With starting late, the actual dinner part of the “rehearsal dinner” didn’t happen. Instead we all went back to the hotel to set up for the wedding. The bride and groom ordered us all pizzas and we got to work- setting up tables, blowing up balloons, decorating the reception area, and so on.

My boyfriend and I were so tired, and especially me because on Thursday night I went over to the bride’s house to help her and her MOH with last minute wedding crafting and then I had to retwist my boyfriend’s hair so I didn’t go to bed until about 1am. I’m sure running on 5 hours of sleep and then the schedule running behind really added into my stress levels.

We ended up going to bed around 11, while others stayed back to continue helping. The coordinator had already left so they were just finishing up the balloon arch, but I still felt bad leaving. However, when I spoke to the bride she said that she was up doing stuff until 3:00am! Then I felt even worse, but also we had to be at her hotel (different one than we were staying at/where the reception was) at 8:00am to start getting ready.

Once everyone was there and getting ready things were pretty smooth sailing when it came to timing, but then shit started hitting the fan. I honestly don’t want to go into details, but the poor planning and feeling everyone stress levels for HOURS was so draining. I started having a panic attack on the trolley where the whole bridal party was minus the bride), but was able to stop crying and calm myself down. I was also lucky enough to have my boyfriend with me, which helped tremendously.

After her horse-drawn carriage entrance, and the live butterfly release, we took 8 million photos and were late for the grand march and delayed the whole reception by 45 minutes. Once we were there I was just so happy for all of this stress and timeline shit to be over. I was so triggered because I hate running late and I hate when things don’t go as planned and everyone else was feeling stressed and angry, and I could just feel everyone’s negative energy.

So now that we were finally where the open bar was, I was just so happy to finally get food and drinks. My boyfriend and I loved the greek buffet food, and we really enjoyed drinking and dancing the night away with each other. He really doesn’t like big events or being around people, but we truly had a wonderful time together once all the stress was gone (other than having to help clean up everything at the end of the night).

I truly hope the bride and groom didn’t feel all of this stress, but I know for sure the bride was stressed a few times. I can say they will have great pictures from the wedding, but this whole thing really reinforced my thought that big weddings are really about trying to impress other people and I think people get lost in it.

I’ve never wanted a big wedding, and my boyfriend agrees. We decided years ago that we will have an elopement ceremony once that time comes. When we went to Aruba in 2019, we decided that we want to get married there! We’ve been ring shopping in the last couple months, and last night when we did our video message to the newlyweds he said that our time was coming soon (to be fair I caught the bouquet)!

We are coming up on our ten year anniversary in October, but we’ve been together since we were 16, so we’re still young! I’m okay not being married right now, but I mean we’re basically married already. We have been living together for seven years, we bought a house together, and we take care of our cats together lol! I get so happy when I see my friends getting married and having kids, but I’m also so happy that we still have those things to look forward to. Weddings always make me emotional, and I’m so happy that I have such a great life partner.