- 3 years ago
- Wedding: February 2015
So, I made a slight youthful mistake many years ago: I got married to someone I’d met only a few months before, in a bar, who I barely knew. That worked out about as well as you’d expect. (Obviously ‘slight’ mistake is major understatement.)
I’m getting married again in a few months, and I’m pretty sure that this time around, I’m doing the right thing. My fiancé and I have lived together for a couple of years, gotten through some really tough stuff together, and I know and love him as a real human being complete with flaws, not as a handsome glossy Ken doll.
I’m organising the wedding atm… and every time I go look up something mundane (wedding invite wording, guest list, registry stuff, what happens to trains on grass, etc.) somewhere it says something like, “the one unbreakable rule is SECOND TIME BRIDES CAN’T DO THIS!!!!”
When I looked up what second time brides are allowed to do, I came up with articlues with titles like, “how to snicker-proof your wedding,” because apparently if I do anything only first time brides are allowed to do, people will laugh at me, to my face, at my own wedding!
It’s not like I’ll be doing any of the usual wedding stuff for the second time. Last time, I got married in a registry office in a silver cocktail dress, with no veil, bouquet, bridesmaids etc. We didn’t vow ’til death do us part’; we wrote our own and they pretty much amounted to, “yeah, we’ll give this a shot and see what happens.” It wasn’t exactly a lavish affair (not that this one will be!) We got exactly one wedding gift, and that was a check from his father. I will be getting married in a different country on a different continent this time, and there will be exactly one person there (other than myself) who attended my previous wedding – my best friend. I had a total of three guests who were ‘my’ guests last time!
I don’t have any kids from the prior marriage, thankfully, and I’m not really an ‘old’ bride; I’m in my 30s now but people are often surprised when they find out because apparently I look mid-20s. My fiancé is in his 20s but mostly people don’t notice the age difference til I start talking about stuff that happenned in the early 00s. (Though why should older first-time brides miss out if they want the pretty stuff?!?)
I’m not planning to do a huge white ‘virgin bride’ kinda wedding. We’re getting married under a tree, not in a church (though it will be religiously valid this time.) I’m not into long trains for outdoor weddings, but a couple of the dresses I like have a sweep. I wasn’t planning to have a veil, though I’m reconsidering because a long veil trailing behind looks soooo pretty… Especially walking down the aisle, which apparently I’m not allowed to do, but I want to anyway. Also, there’s no easy way to ‘enter discretely from the side’ at our venue, like I’m apparently meant to.
I really don’t want to word the wedding invites according to the ‘sullied second-time bride’ etiquette. I don’t want to put my maiden name and ex’s name on the invites, instead of my middle name which was my grandma’s and means way more to me, and wording it as an invite to our ‘new start’ or something like that seems awful because my fiance has been my life for years now.
And having the people I love involved in my wedding this time is non-negotiable for me. Which means having bridesmaids and having my step-father walk me down the aisle, even though I’m apparently not allowed to do that, or people will laugh at me. But they weren’t part of my first wedding, and I really want them to be part of this one.
Also, on the delicate subject of the registry: my fiancé and I have been living overseas and are moving back just before the wedding. We’ll be buying and setting up our first home together, and frankly, we could really use a lot of the traditional wedding gifts, if people want to give us gifts. But the etiquette stuff says I can’t have a traditional registry the second time?!?
Is there anyone out there who’s been in a similar situation? What did you do?
Did people laugh at you, or comment unfavorably on it, if you did a more traditional wedding for your second marriage than your first?
And more generally, everyone: if you were invited to a wedding like mine, would you think it inappropriate and wrong, since I’m a second-time bride?
- This topic was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by FLAussie. Reason: Typos fixed. Thanks auto-correct