A Cancelled Wedding

A cancelled wedding is such a Hollywood thing. Up until now the idea was rare. But here we are in a cesspit of a year where weddings didn’t make the cut. It sounds ludicrous. But how does it feel?

For those who forget or are ignorant of the workings of the heart, a cancelled wedding could be brushed and made trivial. Some could coldly remind us of what it is better than, like being a victim of COVID. That a wedding would be unsafe and impractical in comparison to what they are living in Italy and how we could be living.

But when you are standing here, not in Italy, safe and primed for a day you had been planning for months and have plotted your next life steps around—wedding dress ready, perfect shoes found, body prepped—it doesn’t feel so easy to swallow. It feels more like an acidic burn in your stomach and an unwavering shadow on your thoughts, not relief for safety. And its’ okay to be upset. Devastated, in fact. Angry. Frustrated and confused.

We keep hearing that we need to think about ‘Us’ and ‘We’, not ‘Me’ and ‘I’. But grief has concessions, and this is grief. Go right ahead and react, because not all of society have had to cancel or drastically alter one of the biggest days of their lives. Not everyone has a list of costly and carefully chosen services to cancel or is thinking of the honeymoon they should have been on. They don’t have a Pinterest account which pings and stings with reminders of what they are not doing. Not everyone had been up at night because the dreams of their impending futures were more enticing than the ones in their sleep. So, it is expected that you would feel the disappointing weight of this. Don’t deny yourself this right.

Ivy Boyham is one such bride whose April wedding was called off after 18-months of planning. Her story went viral in the popular Bin Isolation Outing Facebook group after she shared that her wedding was ‘binned’. Ivy says that she’ll always be upset that they didn’t get their day and get to share all they had planned with their crowd of loved ones. But Ivy says she has no regrets choosing to marry anyway. With so much uncertainty they chose not to postpone and put their lives on hold for an unknown date. For Ivy and her fiancé, though some told them it was just a wedding, the empathy and support that came from others only reinstated just what their wedding was about. Them.

Ivy wishes other couples in the same position the confidence to make the choices that best suit them and not be pressured by what others think they should do. Because its’ not about others at all.

This will all be okay, eventually. You know that. One day, this will be one of your stories. But today, it is more than a story, its’ your world. No one expects you to accept it without sadness, but let the story be another foundation block of your relationship. A story of how you managed the hit together, came back stronger, and celebrated bigger.