BOTB: Weddings

Last week if you had bothered to ask me how I feel about weddings I would have said "I'm so over them." Don't get me wrong I love being able to help my friends with their weddings and I have a sickening sense of pride that I still have every stupid website that has the perfect insert any wedding item imagineable engrained in my brain for all of eternity, but it's really not as much fun when it's not you're own wedding. I admit I was a crazy bride. No, not a bridezilla asshole, just a crazy bride. There's a big difference. One is a crazy asshole the other is just plain looney toons. I was just plain looney toons. Nothing more nothing less.

Now where was I? Oh ya, I was over weddings, I have what seems like a million to go to this summer and I'm in two of them. That's just a lot of wedding maddness for any one person to have to deal with and it certainly didn't help that the first wedding I went to at the beginning of this month was bo-ring. Add to that the fact that the bride and groom didn't even want to hold hands much less kiss or pretend they love each other and it pretty much just dumps it's ass into the dud wedding category.

Then last weekend happened and for the time being my love of weddings has been restored. Sure, the old friends in from out of town helped the situation, but really it was the ceremony that reminded me why weddings are so great.

Let's backtrack a bit.

Leading up to the wedding I had helped my friend, lets call her Diane with quite a few things. Giving her tips and pointers where I could. But poor Diane. Every time she went off and did something on her own it would turn out I had done the same exact thing.

D - "OMG we found the PERFECT song for me to walk down the aisle to."

BOTB - "Sweet! What is it"

D - "Storybook Love. It's by Mark Knopffler. Do you know it."

BOTB (smacks forehead and prepares to break the news) - "Um ya I know it, that's what I walked down the aisle to"

BS - "Nooooooooooooo"

There were a few things like that and I stood by the fact that I did not hold rights to any of it and it was all free game. I was genuine when I said it unlike some ex-bridezillas who would throw a hissy fit. I truly wanted her day to be everything she wanted and who was I to stand in the way of that.

Fastforward to the Wedding Day

As I walked to the entry way and prepared to make my debut as her bridesmaid I heard it. The song I walked down the aisle to *cue tears.* She had told me she decided to use it for the bridal party, but I, not caring so much about weddings, forgot. I walked out with my preassigned groomsman to my favorite part of the song. The point where the music moves you and it brought me right back to just less than a year ago when I was walking towards my hubs to that very song feeling the emotional tugs of the music pull me down the aisle towards the man I loved.

The ceremony started and right away The Art of Marriage was read. While I didn't use it in my ceremony because it's seriously the most overused wedding passage on the face of the earth and if you haven't heard it before you're living under a rock, I did have it on the granite placque-y thing that my bouquet rested on during the ceremony. What? Just because it's overused doesn't mean I can't still like it. Cue more struggling not to cry.

Then the piece de resistance ... the Hands Ceremony. I had been told her hands ceremony was completely different from mine. It wasn't. It was word for word the same thing that was read at my ceremony while I was clinging to my almost-husband's hands looking longingly into his eyes. Yep, that was it, I was no longer paying attention to the bride, I was focused on my husband. The man I love with every bit of myself and couldn't imagine my life without. I was brought right back to that moment when we committed the rest of our lives to each other and I felt all the love I had on our wedding day rush back to me.

When I was reunited with my hubs I asked him if he noticed. He paused and unsurely replied "ya." BULLSHIT. I was sitting there having this uber emotional love inducing experience while my husband was sitting there with his tumb up his ass watching the bride and groom. Motherfucker.

Despite my husband being 100% oblivious. I love weddings again, I love the pure emotion expressed when people are committing themselves to one another. I love the dancing to cheesy song drunk off one too many glasses of champagne and the hook ups. Who doesn't love placing bets on the singles who will hook up after the last dance is done. Most of all though, I love that it's somewhere I 've been before. I know those emotions, I know the pure rush of adreneline, love and holy shit (yes holy shit is an emotion) that fills your body that day. Really, truly, honestly, what's not to love about weddings?