Your Wedding day is not the Happiest Day of your Life
You know how people say, "Your wedding day is the happiest day of your life"? They are wrong. They are also wrong about it being the most important day of your life, but that's another post.
Your wedding day is not the happiest day of your life! My mum told me this, in not so many words- in 22 words actually.
She said,"Focus more on your marriage than the wedding, which is just one day. Your marriage, on the other hand, is for years."
When she said that, I thought, "Well, mum, OK... I will do everything you have just said...right after I get my bouquet of perfectly formed blush-pink peonies, my get-Cinderella-green-with-envy shoes, the cake of my dreams and my two veils!" (I know, who gets two veils!)
Every time I got seemingly carried away and distressed by my wedding planning, she would repeat herself, using some variation of the statement.
Then things started to go awry.
I never got those peonies and that got me very upset, also one of my veils never got delivered! The delivery company claimed that it was actually delivered and someone accepted it and signed for it. Clearly, it was delivered to the wrong address. It's beyond me why anyone would want to willingly accept a wedding veil and not return it, when they discovered it was a mistake!
Why was this happening to me?! *insert bride-static melodrama* I was paying a lot of attention to this wedding plans but it was still going wrong. What then would happen to my marriage plans, which I was paying like 21% of my attention to?!
I soon realized a wedding is really 1 day in over 30,000 days to be spent with this same, sexy person.
That's what mum was trying to say, in other words.
In other, other words, what she was trying to say was, prepare yourself for marriage, build your spirituality, improve your temperament, practice forgiveness, develop the habit of flushing away grudges, guard your lips and pray for your home, even before you walk down the aisle. In essence, pave the path for increasing happiness in your marriage.
Your wedding day is not the happiest day of your life, every other day is and it gets happier with each sunrise! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Also don't let them tell you that you should enjoy your wedding day because it only goes south from there. Arch your brow (and your back and any other thing that can be arched) and ask them,"What do you know?"
Do you know anyone going crazy with her wedding plans? Please share with her (or him...yes, indeed, groomzillas exist).
What are your thoughts? Did you have any disappointments with your wedding planning? Do people say it only gets worse after the wedding to you? Bah, lies.
What to do on sunny Saturday afternoons: fool around in your wedding dress.
Related posts: 6 Must-haves for your dress fitting; Watching someone else find "The One", The Organized Bride PGI Girl-Ufuoma ; The One that got away.
Photo credit: David Bragdon
In Pursuit of Happiness' cousin- Joy
I have a problem with Happiness. She is very fickle, temporary and most problematic of all, subject to the environment. Stuff make us happy all the time; the weather, food, friends, Chelsea FC's new humble status(lol), a raise, your new car with 0% APR, that Zara spring jacket, a guy, your child, your pet, your spouse, a rerun of Back to the Future!
These things can make you happy, they truly can. They possess an inherent quality which evokes a feeling of pleasure within us; but watch this, a man can make you happy, friends can make you happy, the same way your child can make you happy and then in the next second can easily tick you off; the same way your perfect-10 jeans can make you happy, when those lunges begin to pay off. You feel great, you look great, everyone on the street thinks you are Joy-Girl(pun unintended); construction workers are falling in gutters, cabbies are gaping, commuters are slowing down, husbands are getting backhand whacks from their wives. It's a great top-of-the-world feeling. Then comes a week long of ice-cream, pizzas, some caramel stuffed nutty chocolate bars; temptation galore which you fell into gladly. Now those same pair of jeans no longer make you happy; the construction workers don't notice you anymore and those that do can't take their eyes off your new tummy ( aka "the flabster.")
The thing about happiness is that it's subject to external forces, THEY own the power.
Joy, on the other hand is your personal decision to be full of delight whether your waist hangs high or low. I once met a homeless guy who honestly might be the most bubbly person I know. Even though he had no shelter and lived off the charity of others, he was such a riot! We might have talked for over an hour and honestly, when we were done I was tired, he was still roaring with energy! I'm like this guy though....even though he's homeless and lonely, he's full of an infectious, albeit exhausting joy.
Here's something even much more stable than happiness; Joy. It resides deep inside us. Situations and issues try to affect it but can't, not unless you give them permission to.
Remember, you are the sole protector of your own joy on earth. God does his bit and then you do yours. Do not let anyone or anything steal your joy. No one; nothing, not your jeans, not the construction workers, not even yourself.
xx
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