Click play button to listen to blog in audio format.
Public Bride and Private Bride: The Power of the Notes App
Have you noticed that, with some people, you’re now just “a bride”? That some see your ring and immediately ask you about the wedding? That the older admin in your office, whenever you pass her desk, stops you, wanting detailed updates about your planning? That random people are offering up wedding ideas?
That some people no longer see you as YOU, but as A BRIDE?
It happened to me.
And it happens to most of the brides-to-be I work with, too.
For some, in the early stages, it’s fun, suddenly being the center of attention, with folks – strangers, even – getting excited for you. Asking about the proposal. About the wedding planning.
Soon, however, that happiness begins to sour. Because there are a million reasons you don’t actually want to discuss your wedding – at that moment, or with that random person:
You’re in a huge work project, under stress, and you have zero interest in tending to that admin’s interest in your venue options.
Or you’re someone who likes to keep your work life and your private life separate. You’ve been successful so far. Your colleagues didn’t even know you had a boyfriend. But now, with this ring on your finger, your private life feels like public property.
Or you hate being the center of attention.
Or, as with most brides I work with, you’ve been feeling out of sorts in many aspects of your life since your engagement. (See my e book and video course for explanations why as well as what to do about it. Or contact me for a free 15-minute Zoom consultation to talk about your specific situation. I’m happy to meet with you.)
Before your engagement, you thought you’d feel only happy as soon as you got engaged. Always over the moon. Always clear-eyed and confident. Always lovey-dovey. Always eager to dream about your future and to plan your wedding. Always, always happy.
You never expected to feel happy only some of the time, and anxious, sad, confused and scared a lot of the time.
Like all the brides I work with – myself included – life as a bride-to-be is not a champagne-filled picnic, but instead, a bit of an emotional slog.
It’s a good and worthy slog, once you figure out what issues you need to work through. It’s an important emotional slog that ultimately serves to help you grow up into adulthood, prepare you for taking on the responsibility of deep relationship and partnership, that matures you so you are ready to actually be married.
But a slog nonetheless.
(If this resonates, or if you want to figure out what your personal slog situation is, contact me for a free 15-minute Zoom consultation.)
When we are in the throes of an emotional slog, when we are in a state, when we are feeling not quite ourselves, it’s painful to be pummeled with questions about the wedding. And yet it happens. Constantly.
When I was going through all this during my engagement (which is why, by the way, I do this work; I went through it myself), I’ll never forget a conversation with my mailman.
I was already frazzled that morning.
My parents had become emotionally distant and prickly as soon as I got engaged. They were cold. We fought more than ever. We could not see eye-to-eye on anything. Our once close relationship was strained. I couldn’t find any solutions, and I didn’t see how things would ever improve.
It was deeply upsetting.
And yet, they were paying for our wedding, so we had to work together on the planning. We were constantly in touch, working on the wedding, and it was awkward, sometimes unpleasant, and painful.
So when my mailman said, “Hey, you’re getting married.”
“Yes, in July.” (It was March.)
“You’ve gotta have bubbles as you walk back down the aisle after you get married,” he said. “You’ve gotta have bubbles. It’s not a wedding unless you have bubbles.”
This. Pissed. Me. Off.
And it set me off, too.
I probably blanched and scowled but said thank you.
Not that bubbles aren’t great – but his butting into my life where he wasn’t invited pissed me off.
I stomped up the stairs to my fiancé and said, “Who is he to tell me what to do at my wedding? ‘It’s not a wedding unless you have bubbles.’ Seriously?”
Rant. Rave. Bitchy.
Wow.
Now, I’m not normally a hair-trigger away from anger like this.
But I was a bride-to-be, and I was in a charged internal state. Working through a lot of areas in my life, like leaving my single life, changing relationships with my parents, distance between my best friend and me, and wondering if I was up to the task of marriage. Oh, and planning a wedding.
So when the mailman butted in with his “must-have,” I lost it a little bit.
Months later, I could see that the mailman was just being friendly. Expressing interest in me as a human being. Chatting. Having contact with a human being on his long and lonely route.
To the mailman, bubbles after the couple is officially married mean a lot – they bring joy and happiness and make for great photos. Years later, I can even see it as sweet.
Truly, I now remember this story with tenderness.
But not back then, when I was in the emotional slog of being a bride-to-be.
Oh no, his butting in with his idea pissed me off.
So that day, I came up with a solution, so that a random wedding idea from a random person wouldn’t put me over the deep end like that. Wouldn’t send me into a bizarre rage.
I started to carry a tiny notebook in my purse – today you’d use the Notes app in your phone – and every time a wedding suggestion was offered up, I said, “Thank you for that idea. I’ll write it down here.”
The person would see me take down their idea, feel good about the encounter. I’d write “bubbles during recessional” in my tiny notebook and never read that page again. Never think about it. Never let it get me riled up.
The tiny notebook became a way for me to deal with the endless random suggestions without getting bothered by it.
Never again did a wedding question from a co-worker, my Mom’s friend, the mailman derail me emotionally. I acknowledged their idea, and I’d put it away, forever.
This tiny notebook served a great purpose, and it does for most of the brides I work with today: it’s a buffer between you, the bride — who is planning a wedding, who kind of feels like public property, who is subjected to invasive, ill-timed queries about your wedding planning – and you, the individual, who is processing through a lot of emotion and growing up a lot during this time.
The tiny notebook is a way to tolerate your role in our culture – you as The Bride are filling a role, an archetype – while also protecting your inner, private experience as a bride.
And maybe, just maybe, this will spare you that bizarre rage rabbit hole when your mailman suggests bubbles for your recessional.
