Georgina Lucy | 1 Oct 2015

Story of the control freak bride: When life throws you lemons…

It’s been a while since my last post as I’ve been in the midst of wedding mania – I’ve had both my own wedding and my best friend’s wedding so it’s been a busy time to say the least but now “normal” life is resuming…

I don’t think I can find a word to sum up the last couple of months – a whirlwind is probably the best description.  The last two months have undoubtedly contained some of the most amazing, special and happy moments of my life… do you see a BUT coming??!!… but I’ve also learnt a lot about myself and about life which I realise sounds very dramatic, but it’s true.  It’s been quite an eye opening time actually.

I am an organiser, both in personal and professional life, and organising is what I do and I what I love. Fellow organisers may relate to the fact that, with being organised, also comes the tendency to be a bit control freakish!  I’ve always recognised this in myself, along with being a bit of a perfectionist.  You can probably see where this is going… and you probably think I’m going to say I turned into a control freak and total Bridezilla over the colour scheme and all the little details of the wedding but not at all.  I think in that respect I was quite a chilled out bride.  I admit that I spent HOURS planning everything and making sure everything was as we (mainly me) wanted it but I didn’t let it drive me mad as I could also see the bigger picture and that weddings are about way more than the little details.

Without sounding like I’m blowing my own trumpet, over the years I’ve got used to putting in hard work, time and effort and usually getting the results I’ve aimed for.  My dad always says that if you work hard it will pay off and I am totally with him on that.  However, there are some things that are out of your control and not everything is going to be perfect all of the time, no matter how much positive thought and positive action have gone into them. It would seem that until recently I was a somewhat unaccepting of this fact of life.

I won’t bore you with the details but we had a whole host of issues with our tipi company meaning the final days before the big day weren’t as chilled and enjoyable as I’d envisaged, quite the opposite. Unfortunately the day itself wasn’t without its misfortunes either.  My poor nan was taken ill in the house on wedding morning (with me getting ready upstairs none the wiser!) so she was unable to make the wedding. This also meant that other family members weren’t there.  And then due to separate reasons, and again reasons outside of anyone’s control, one of my beautiful bridesmaids had to leave the wedding after the ceremony.  My poor sister had to break both pieces of news to me – I didn’t envy her, no one wants to give a bride bad news on her wedding day, let alone two pieces of bad news! Whilst both pieces of news were very sad to receive, especially after being so ecstatically happy just moments before, the day did include moments that were truly amazing.  After the wedding it took me a while to digest everything and filter out the good moments from the not-so-good moments but I think I’ve cracked it now.

As lots of girls can no doubt relate to, a lot of day dreaming time goes into wedding planning and even before we meet ‘the one’, many girls have imagined their most perfect wedding day, so I suppose anything, even a tiny thing, that stops the day being as perfect as it should be feels like a shame.  I was relaying my wedding day dramas to some girl friends and one of them said something that has stuck in my head and given me the basis of this blog post – she said that accepting that things aren’t always perfect and not always in my control is a good lesson for life and she’s right.

On the honeymoon and in the weeks after the wedding I’ve taken this fact of life on board and given it a fair bit of thought.  I’ve said before in this blog that we control our own happiness and I do still stand by this but the wedding day has also made me realise that sometimes life happens and things may throw you off the happiness bus and there is nothing you can do about it! I’m proud of myself though as, on the whole, I made sure I didn’t let the sad things overtake everything else and made sure I soaked up all the other happy times.  In fact, I had to practically be dragged out the tipi and off the dance floor at the end of the night.

Going back to the statement which I do still stand by, we do make our own happiness and part of this is accepting that sometimes a few lemons are thrown our way.

I am choosing to remember and cherish the good times and the happy moments which really have been in abundance over the last few months.  I’ve been so lucky to find someone to spend my life with (and who’ll put up with me) so that’s something to be extremely grateful for every single day. All the other moments of fun and happiness we’ve enjoyed really are the icing on the cake.

So what has my wedding day experience taught me? It has taught me that as much as I naively thought I could, I simply can’t control everything.  Life happens and that’s just the way it goes.  And what’s key to remember, and this is what I think I’ve done successfully, is not to focus on the not-so-great stuff, but to focus on the blooming marvellous stuff and that’s what’s important. So here’s to cherishing the happy times, accepting the things which we can’t control and when life decides to throw you some lemons…grab the salt and tequila!

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