I wasn't a crazy person two years ago. I was a sane and rational mid-twentysomething with a boyfriend I loved, wrapping up grad school, job searching, setting up a new apartment, and in my spare time booking a wedding venue, photographer, trying on dresses, and oops - buying a wedding dress - WITHOUT A RING ON MY FINGER.
Shit. I was straight-up crazy pants. I was that girl. How did this all happen?
Now that I'm on the other side of all this I want to get real with you. Some of my actions were cute and "i'msoexcitediwanttomarryyou!" and some where relationship suicide. This is not advice. This is just my story.
Of course, when this was all going on, I swore I had my reasons. First, Mr. Seashell and I had talked very openly about our future. Many conversations included phrases like, "when we're married" or "at our wedding" or "our kids will never...". We knew we wanted to marry each other and we even had a pretty clear time frame of when said marriage would occur. Mr. Seashell would tease me that he was pretty sure I had a wedding date jotted down somewhere, and when I admitted he was right, he asked and agreed it actually sounded perfect. September 25, 2010. We had a plan.
Then, Mr. Seashell's Mom got sick. As family and friends gathered around and faced the possibility of losing her, Mr. Seashell and I had some very real conversations about throwing our time table out the window. Mr. Seashell was adamant about keeping things as we had intended - he wanted to give his Mom something to fight for. So we did.
Mama Seashell was privy to these conversations, and moved forward with the plan of a September 25, 2010 wedding as well. As far as she was concerned, we were engaged. We had discussed our intentions to be married, and having never had an engagement ring herself, she knew a piece of jewelry didn't determine your "relationship status".
Here's the thing though: in my heart I knew we weren't "engaged". Mr. Seashell had every intention of buying me a diamond ring and planning a romantic proposal. As wedding talk moved forward he expressed reluctance ("but I haven't proposed yet!"), and I was too excited to stop the wedding train that had left the station. When my Mom told me she had planned an afternoon jaunt to look at wedding venues, I didn't say no. I genuinely wanted to look at options, and I knew that things booked up far in advance. What's the harm in putting down a deposit? We have a date. But Mr. Seashell didn't know what I was doing that day. I didn't call or text to say that we were looking at - or, oops - reserving a wedding venue. Then we swung by a bridal shop and tried on a few dresses too. I bought one.
Two days later when I told Mr. Seashell about the day with my Mom, he lost it. He felt like all the excitement was gone and now he was holding up the show by not having yet proposed. He said he was embarrassed. Pressured. He also said I'd taken a huge piece of the wedding planning away from him - away from us as a couple - and I understood what he meant. I was hiding the plans of a wedding from my partner, and I was not liking the way it felt. Then I got a sinking feeling: what if I'm the girl who plans an entire wedding - without being engaged - and then gets her heart broken? THAT would be embarrassing. But I kept moving forward. I went on to book our photographer and started doing research online like it was my job. We had a date, right?
In the end, Mr. Seashell proposed about 10 weeks after the venue booking fiasco. Everything wasn't perfect, though. He still made it very clear how hurt and frustrated he was by my actions. It came up A LOT during the next year. I had broached his trust, and taken something away from our wedding planning process. Some of the magic, excitement, anticipation - whatever it was - had been lost.
Looking back, I wish I would have seen the bigger picture. I couldn't, though. I was too immersed, too focused on the end result. Sure, it all worked out, we had a beautiful wedding, and the memory of our pre-engagement has faded quite a bit. But for a while our relationship was worse for the wear and I had myself to blame. Can you relate?
