Am I excited about my wedding? Yes and no

We’re officially on a one-week countdown to our twice-postponed wedding day, and I’m experiencing a mixture of emotions. “Are you excited?” is the standard question people ask brides and grooms at this point, and my answer to that is: yes and no. This celebration has been put off for so long now and feels so far removed from where we were mentally in 2019 when we planned it that it’s hard to re-enter that headspace and access the excitement. It’s much easier to fall back on those default 2020 emotions of dread, pessimism and a vague sense of impending doom.

My worries are less “will the cake look good?” or “will the bridesmaids wear the right shoes with their dresses?” and much more “will this become a super-spreader event?” and “will my family get enough petrol in their cars to get to the venue after the panic-buying?” The whole thing is very pared-down, with lots of people unable to come because they’re stuck in other countries or their circumstances have changed. There will be fewer people in one room than most of them experience in a pub or restaurant these days. But the fear lingers, because everything in the world has changed since we pulled up to a small barn venue two and a half years ago and decided it would be nice to have our drinks reception on hay bales.

During summer 2020 in New York City, a viral tweet went around that said: “Wish I could’ve known this time last year that in 12 months’ time I’d be turning to my wife and saying, ‘We might have to eat the tinned rations tonight because I didn’t get N95 masks in time to visit the grocery store before curfew.’” I come back to it in my mind every time I feel down about where we are. Things were so much worse a year ago, when E and I were both holed up in a one-room flat discussing how we should get our bodies repatriated to our families in the UK if we died. To be sitting at a kitchen table 12 months later, talking about whether the colour of the confetti is exactly what we imagined, feels in equal parts wonderful and absurd.

And among all this comforting chaos – the chaos of paying suppliers, setting up seating plans and choosing accessories, rather than the chaos of navigating police lines, queueing for vaccines and walking sad circuits around the park on the one permitted exercise outing per day – I have started to become aware of the term “bridezilla”.

“Bridezilla” is a surprisingly persistent term, considering how much we talk about language and its relation to underprivileged groups these days. I suppose you might call the “bridezilla” a spiritual antecedent of a “Karen”. She gets blinded by her big day, goes the logic, and loses all ability to see reason. She is a hysterical stereotype of a woman, obsessed about dresses and dancing, often demanding ridiculous amounts of things from the people in her immediate orbit (week-long hen parties in Mexico, for instance, or that her maid of honour doesn’t get pregnant ahead of the big day). It goes without saying that there’s always going to be someone who is genuinely unreasonable, and some people really do go off the deep end when they get the chance to hold a wedding. But for the most part, I’ve found the bridezilla trope holds throughout the industry – and it makes it very hard, as a bride, to be taken seriously at all.

A word on the actual bridezillas first, the ones who do end up in social media stories or people’s after-dinner tales: is it surprising they became monsters? Women are taught our whole lives to sit down, shut up and preferably help men shine. Behind every great man is a woman, they say, and that’s the best place for her. Then, all of a sudden, one day appears on the horizon with promise. For once in your life, people say, this is a day all about you – one where you, the woman, will be centre of attention and have your every need attended to. For the rest of your life, be prepared to be ignored; but on that one day, you will be listened to as if you were a queen – or a man. Is it any surprise some women hear this and decide to take full advantage? For the first time in my life during the wedding planning process, I sat down at a table beside my male partner and was the first person to be consulted by every single supplier. Conscious that this is supposed to be “the bride’s day”, everyone from the chef to the florist wanted to consult me on whether I was happy with each decision. They spoke to me as if I were the authority on everything – probably because they believed I was, despite the fact that my extremely woke fiance was equally involved in everything – and it was incredible to experience. What with a pandemic, I wasn’t in a position to start demanding the world from people. But what if I had been?

And for those of us who have tiptoed around trying our hardest not to be seen as bridezillas in the first place: this is also hard. You work to not be the main character in someone else’s sexist story. And when I bring up minor logistical concerns now, I often get emails back urging me to “stay calm because everything will be all right” rather than addressing the simple, direct question I asked. The presumption is that I must be in a frenzy of panic, rather than simply wondering if the non-alcoholic beer will be behind the bar. It’s infantilising and confusing.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that it’s my wedding day in a few days’ time. And despite the mixed emotions, this writer can’t wait to experience every second of it. Just don’t call me a bridezilla.