Planning a wedding while dealing with the emotions of being a domestic abuse survivor
I have gone from being a young bride, to a survivor of domestic abuse, a divorcée, a fiancée, and now I find myself planning a wedding again. A wedding is supposed to be a happy experience. For me, this doesn’t seem to be the case. With my looming nuptials I can’t help but feel emotionally and physically drained. I remind myself every day that “he isn’t my first husband.”
Planning a wedding as a fatherless bride
Despite the joy and enthusiasm I felt about getting married, not having my dad there meant there was a shadow, which for me made wedding planning — especially some of the emotions and complexities — as if I were planning both a wedding and a funeral. Death and life. Beginnings and endings. Joy and grief. It was all wound up together in a giant ball of messy emotions.
When family tragedy strikes during wedding planning
To every cloud there is a silver lining — and the silver lining to my father’s stroke and the fear that we were going to lose him was that when, five months later (six months until the wedding), my fiancé’s mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. I was much better equipped to understand what he was going through. And I was better able to support him. In those first few days after she died we talked about many things, some trivial and some very important…
How my fiancé lost his finger tips and our friends saved our wedding
Well, technically my fiance didn’t “lose” anything — both severed finger tips are in the back of our refrigerator. I spent one sleepless night trying to decide how I felt about still having our wedding, knowing that the medical payments are going to be a part of our lives for a long time. But now it feels important, necessary even, in a way that it never really did. Now more than ever, I want to celebrate my relationship with our friends and family. Daniel is the most incredible person I have ever known, and I can’t wait to call him my husband.