Lee - WEDDICULOUS: an unfiltered guide to being a bride

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA!

WOWOWOW. CONGRATULATIONS!! YAYYYYY! YOURE GETTINGmarried. Howd he propose? Were you surprised? Shocked? Did you literally fall over from shock? Did you hit your head when you fell? Thats the most romantic way to get a concussion!!!! Wenza wedding? Big or small? What are you thinking? Hometown or here? Will it be black tie and do I get a plus one? Again: Congratulations!!!!!!!!! I would type more exclamation points, but my carpal tunnel is kicking in from hyper-enthusiastic texting!!! Ouch, my hands.

This is the gist of messages I got from friends and fam when I announced I was engaged. It immediately became about the wedding. As in, the day itself, rather than the lifetime commitment. I dont know what I expected: Were they supposed to ask me about how this engagement affects the subtleties of my dynamic with boyfriend, now fianc, Dan?

But still. The instant, alarmingly specific questions about everything from menu to venue felt like a pop quiz. All of a sudden, the second the rings on the finger, the clock starts ticking, and then someone says, Pencils up, and By the way, this test is gonna cost you a lot of money.

This is when you might start cracking semi-serious jokes about eloping.

Let me say now: Eloping is fine for some.

But youre not eloping.

You picked up this book because, when you got engaged, you were so excited you bought yourself a huge iced coffee and made a beeline for the nearest Barnes & Noble and spent the next seven hours there until security kicked you out. You yelled, Only fascists close at ten oclock on a Monday! as they locked the doors on you, and now youre banned from that location. Okay, maybe thats just me. In any case, I knew I wanted to plan a wedding. Or rather, I didnt consider the alternative, i.e., NOT planning. Little did I know what I was in for. But I made it through. I found the dress, I figured out the guest list, and I danced my ass off at the end of the night. And Im here now to bestow my glorious wisdom onto you.

This is a brides book, from bride to bride. If youre not a bride, youre reading Weddiculous because:

Youve entertained the idea of engagement and plan to leave this book out so your partner sees it and gets a motherfucking clue.

You never want to plan a wedding, or had one and hated it, and want to laugh at my pain.

Theres cake on the cover, and you like cake.

Welcome, friends! Unlike a wedding planner or a bridal magazine, I wont be guarded, delicate, or talk around things. Wedding planners advice always comes around to you buying more services, for which they take a commission. Bridal mags are so afraid of being real because it might destroy the fantasy, and fantasy is what theyre selling. Not me! Im just a bride willing to lay it out to you straight.

Time to take your first vow:

I vow to banish from my lips any mentions of eloping, half-joking mentions, or melodramatic shrieks such as We should just elope or Were fucking eloping!... including any euphemisms such as running off to Vegas or going to city hall.

NOW WE CAN BEGIN.

IF YOURE ANYTHING LIKE ME WHEN NEWLY RINGED UP, YOU leap at the chance to finally have an excuse to pick up the $75 quarterly issue of The Knot along with the most recent issue of Modern Bride, Southern Bride, Northern Bride, and whatever other regional market you fit into (Im looking at you, Swamp Bride). I call this group Big Bridal, and it includes all the bullying voices that make up the bridal industry and even the bloggers whove fallen under their sway, echoing the sentiment that if you dont make your wedding unforgettable, youve failed.

These publications have been the only guidance available about how to handle the wedding planning process (until now). You weigh yourself down, compromising your posture, which is already suffering from the fact that you travel with a duffel bag instead of a roll-on because the gate agents somehow allow those on board no matter how giant they are. Again, maybe its just me. But after reading enough of these magazines, I started to laugh at them. They are so serious, so fear-based: 7 Ways to Make Your Wedding Stand Out!; 4 Color Palettes Nobody Has Used Yet!; 3 Passed Appetizers That Will Make Guests Scream My Palate Has Never Felt So Fucking Alive! The takeaway is always If I dont shock, surprise, and downright dazzle guests with unexpected details, my wedding will be as embarrassing as audibly queefing at a funeral. If I dont get ornate candelabras for every table, even though I really just want to spend money on a great DJ, my tables will look as bleak as a Wendys drive-thru on Christmas. In sum, If I Dont Do X and Y, then Z (My Wedding) Will Suck.

This is how I really feel about weddings: They are goofy. Wonderful because they get everyone together, but stressful in ways that are not worth it in my opinion. They are also not mandatory. We seem to act as if they are, but theyre not. Theyre volunteer work: If youre passionate about having one, have one! If youre not passionate about having one, find something you are passionate about and put effort into that! Marbling paper? Strengthening your core? Staring at the wall so long you hallucinate a portal to another dimension? Do it up!

Weddings are like a less creepy child beauty pageant. Youre in a foofy dress, youre the JonBent (but less sad), and a bunch of parents are gawking at you as you twirl and smile, and it feels nice to have that attention... but if you werent in the pageant, youd also be fine. You would just be a kid. And thats okay, too. Better, even. Because then you just get to be you.

So by all meansenter yourself in the pageant, but pull a Little Miss Sunshine and dance crazy and forget about winning or perfection. The stakes are low! Youre just a kid, remember? Life goes back to normal after the pageant anyway. You can run through the sprinkler in the front yard and laugh about how uncomfortable that teeth-whitening procedure was, holy shit...

Dont get me wrong, its not always going to be easy. Doing comedy and writing this book are the only things that kept me sane during the WPP (Wedding Planning Process.) To be honest, it was mostly nightmarishwith the exception of the event itself and the days leading up to the event, and the days immediately after. But the year and a half of planning was truly awful. Dan and I hated each other, I hated his family, my family hated whatever I hated, and, instead of working together in harmony, like a soon-to-be MARRIED COUPLE, we were playing for two different teams: The Lees vs. The In-Laws. Emotions were heightened due to stress from too many cooks weighing in on decisions, so what might have been mild irritation on a normal, non-pre-wedding day, felt like full-blown unforgiving disgust. But apparently this is not unique!

A few months before I got married, I met up with my friend Matt, a guy I worked with at my first writing job, for coffee and a platonic hug. I was wearing no makeup and an oil-stained hoodie because at that point I had no energy to expend towards anything other than staring at Excel documents and fighting with Danabout money or the way he was raised or I was raisedthrowing the word divorce around before we were even married.