Posts tagged movies

The thing I’ve realized about getting married is that it’s like NOTHING you’ve ever experienced, and it definitely doesn’t feel like watching a wedding in a movie. No, this is a whole new beast. But we humans like generalizing things based on what we know, so I’ll try anyway.

Five months away, getting married does feel like watching a romcom. You associate with the general lighthearted excitement, drama and romance that the quirky blond experiences prior to the wedding, but in the end, the credits roll and it’s not you and those few emotions are all you can associate with that great event so far away.

Two months to go, however, getting married starts to feel a lot like watching a Wes Anderson drama or some gritty indie flick with weird, raw emotions, fears, longings and a whole bunch of other crap you don’t really want to understand. People cry and fight and die and sometimes things don’t go happily ever after in the end. And while the movie invokes deeper emotions than the romcom, it’s still a stringy brunette marrying Owen Wilson, and it’s easy to fall back into the comforts of Romcom dreamland after the gritty nightmare fades a little. However, something much bigger is looming ominously overhead, and whatever it is won’t let you sleep in romantic idealism long.

Four days away, that’s when you start feeling like someone plucked the stringy brunette out of the gritty indie drama and shoved you up on the screen and conveniently forgot to give you the script. You still sort of feel like the Romcom Bride; your hair got screwed up and your face looks vaguely like a pizza, but you’re definitely not in that genre anymore, Toto. Families are selfish and filled with hate and they won’t come happily coming together in the end. They’re doing construction by your ceremony and the park isn’t quite as pretty as you remembered it. Money is scarce and your fiance is stressed to the max.

And hell, it’s you getting married! You are going to be living with this random man you’ve picked out of millions and you will have to choose to love him every time he talks about video games instead of real life. It’s funny when the guy talks about nerdy things and embarrasses the girl in the romcoms, but it’s a little different in real life. You and he have to work to make this work because life won’t fade to black after he kisses you and swings you around in front of a happy, clapping audience.

No, getting married is nothing like anything you will ever experience sitting in the dark of the matinee. Two days to go and all passivity vanishes when you realize that you’ll be giving your very heart and soul to someone outside of your warm, protective shell self, and that’s dangerous and risky. But when I look at him and see the warmth, love and loyalty in his soft blue eyes, I have no doubt that he will wrap my heart in a blanket and carry it as carefully as a clumsy, nerdy puppy-man can. I know he might stumble, and I’m sure he might chew on my nerves a from time to time, but through it all, he will be doing everything he can never to drop me. Just knowing that makes all the worries, fears and doubts roll away like the names of stringy brunette actresses and their fade to black lives.

So I say, let’s do this marriage thing. No more fears, no more doubts—-just happy stomach butterflies. I’m ready to live and no amount of pessimism is going to ruin our fun.