What If Your Wedding Day Doesn’t Feel Like the Best Day of Your Life?

I was so mad on our wedding day. I stood on a footrest in our penthouse suite so my friend, Rease, could fluff each layer of my lace gown, pulling the tulle bows “down and out” as my tailor had instructed. We piled my dress carefully into the elevator, Rease tiptoeing around it like you would a sleeping baby, and stopped every few floors, the doors rolling open to reveal clumps of tourists in bucket hats. They would immediately wave us away. “We’ll catch the next one!” they said with a smile. “Congratulations!” When we reached the lobby, I lingered like a furry mascot in Times Square, waving at curious passersby while I waited for our Uber to arrive.What pulled up minutes later was not the black SUV I expected, but a silver minivan. My friend motioned furiously at me in my ball gown, beckoning the driver to approach the curb. Look at this DRESS, she mouthed.“Traffic’s too crazy!” an older man yelled out the car window, so we navigated the 10 pounds of white lace around parked cars and New York City trash cans to the passenger side of Richard’s Toyota Sienna.Before I’d managed to secure my seat belt, our driver lurched into the Flatbush Ave. gridlock, my door still wide open. Was this a new kind of Uber offering—Brooklyn Death Ride XL?“Her door is open!” Rease yelled, no longer curbing her tone.“Oh, sorry, sorry!” Richard said and finally pressed the button to close my door.When we stopped at the next light, he reached for a Sharpie and jotted “didn’t close door” on the single Post-it note adhered to the dash. It appeared to be his catalog of driving mistakes: “didn’t close door,” “too sharp turn,” “broken mirror.”I was originally worried I wouldn’t make it to the venue at the planner-appointed time, but it occurred to me that we might not actually make it there at all. I tried to come up with a contingency plan in case of an accident. Could my friend stay and speak to the authorities while I went on by foot to the park, “Runaway Bride”-style? I clutched the back of the front seat, bracing for the “whoops!” at every red light as our driver slammed the brakes.When we arrived, I jumped out of the van with the speed and desperation of a hostage returning from captivity. We made it. We survived. But that was just the beginning.Mariana Soto PhotographyThe essayist, Isabel Jones, on her wedding day.The social media forums I’ve visited describe someone who goes from fiancée to wife as having “graduated,” so maybe the experience is academic. A semester abroad in the land of brides, where one is to indulge in the beautiful and the feminine, but must remain disciplined over all else. You’re encouraged to spend your life savings on a single night, but that doesn’t free you to enjoy the night. There are rules, traditions—dance with your father, feed your partner cake. Buy a loud, expensive dress, but make sure it’s in a color you will almost certainly stain. Sit in hair and makeup for two hours, and then stand in front of every meaningful presence in your life, bare your soul, and try not to cry your false eyelashes off. The bride who’s still standing (in heels) by the end of the night gets an A.When I finally approached the Picnic House, a large building with a brick facade flanked by greenery, I swanned through the venue (a bride swans, no?) batting a C+ grade at best, looking for someone to tell me what to do.“Stay there,” my planner advised, grounding me in the middle of the floor while vendors busied themselves around me like the village scene in Beauty and the Beast. The musicians did a mic check; the baker presented cake toppers; the florist prepped my bouquet; Rease wedged the comb of my veil into the lacquered thicket of my bun; I tried to remain impassive lest my forehead wrinkle.After the car ride from hell, I was in a bad mood. My veil caught on every leaf and stick I walked past as I padded down the hill to meet my husband-to-be, Jesse—or, more accurately, Jesse’s back—for a first look.Add Cosmopolitan as a preferred source in your Google search results.Use your Google account to add this to your settings.“Place your hand on Jesse’s shoulder,” the photographer yelled from several feet away. I felt like I was about to meet the great and powerful Oz, or maybe the Deal or No Deal banker.I’d seen countless photos like these on social media over the years. The bride beckons her groom to turn around. After months of anticipation, the groom finally sees his future wife in her wedding gown. He sheds a happy tear, kisses her cheek, revels in the possibilities of their future together.Mariana Soto PhotographyIsabel and Jesse on their wedding day.But I didn’t feel like myself in layers of foundation and spidery false eyelashes. I felt hot, pinned, late, and mad. I was supposed to be inhabiting one of the most romantic moments of my life, but mostly, I was trying to figure out how to conduct myself in a way that would please my past and future selves.Something no one prepares you for is how surreal getting married is. It’s a milestone I’d spent decades imagining in the abstract. Once it arrived, I didn’t quite know how to behave.After the ceremony, guests came up to me asking, “How do you feeeeeel?” in that upbeat sorority sister dialect people break out for major life events. How are you supposed to feel? Like a princess? How does a princess feel? Stressed out because she blew half her annual take-home salary on a single day?The DJ summoned our guests to the dance floor with old-school Whitney Houston. My mom and her two sisters kicked off their modest block heels and danced like it had been illegal in their hometown.While we were dancing to “Sexy Back”—a sentence construction that would horrify anyone under 30— I heard a clink of metal meeting wood. A small clasp, the one responsible for keeping my dress up, had fully detached. And though an hour prior this would’ve sent me into an irrevocable spiral, at this point, I had to just laugh.Because here’s the thing, the painful thing I’ve learned after shelling out tens of thousands of dollars and aggravating my gums with Crest Whitestrips and trying on bulky dresses like it’s my job: the wedding is not for you. Really, it’s not. The guest experience is the only metric that matters. The bride and groom’s job is to smile, pose, perform – enjoying yourself is a perk but not a guarantee.Mariana Soto PhotographyIsabel and Jesse on their wedding day.By the after-party, the foot-numbing spray that had gotten me through the night was beginning to lose its potency. Any residual buzz I’d earned from the one and a half cocktails I drank at the reception was long gone. My feet ached and my head pounded with the weight of the 100 or so bobby pins artfully arranged in my hair. My dress had been tailored too precisely, without enough room to breathe. The obligation of greeting my guests in this IPA-scented bar began to feel like an icebreaker on the first day of sixth grade. I asked if we could leave. The day had been too long.When we finally went on our honeymoon, I considered a sobering thought: We could’ve taken this magical trip 10 times over in place of the single day of celebration we’d invested in. People have weddings for a lot of reasons, and one of them is “because that’s what you do.” I wish someone had sat me down in front of my wedding budget and told me there were other ways to celebrate.Still, while this wasn’t the romantic end to the wedding night I had anticipated, it was a fitting reflection of our relationship. I fall; Jesse picks me up. I want to go home early; he holds my hand and walks me through the door.Back at the hotel, Jesse helped me wash my feet, blackened from my shoeless effort to get air outside the bar. After a full day of trying and failing to feel like a bride, I was finally able to enjoy being married.