When my lovely editor Stefania (you may know her as The Budget Guru) approached me and asked what has been my number-one worry throughout this wedding process, I had no idea it was going to take me THIS long to articulate what it was. Don’t be fooled, it is not because nothing worried me. Au contraire—everything worries me. I am a worrier by nature. I am that person who wakes up in the middle of the night to write notes to myself like, “Don’t forget to deposit check during your lunch break." I think brides can relate!
So, back to my point. I was wracking my brain, almost about to send Stefania an email saying, “You sure you don’t want me to write a post on what DOESN’T worry me? It’ll be lots shorter…”, when I woke up a couple of hours before dawn one night and wrote myself a note. It read: “#1 worry = not having Mom here with me."
And then I slept like a baby.
My mom and I are as close as they get. She bosses me around like crazy and I pretend to take on everything she says. I was also the only girl in my all-girl’s mission school that could tell her mom when she’d met a boy and had a crush on him. We are tight. Her opinions matter to me and I usually take her suggestions on board.
So when The Mister and I decided we’d get hitched, it was hard not to have her around to plan with me. All I wanted was to jump into the whole wedding magazine craze with my mum, to sit and scrapbook our favourite pictures and have her share good ole' stories from her and Dad’s big day. I tried not to let it get to me, but it did.
Wedding dress shopping without your mum is...weird. You sort of spin around the room in all of these dresses, and for someone like me who is so close to my mother, I searched for those reassuring eyes and warm smile to make me feel safe. Obviously, they weren’t to be found. I am not a person who holds on to negative things in life, but if there was anything in my life I’d have changed, it would be for my mum to have been there when I walked out of the dressing room in my gorgeous Sophia Tolli wedding gown.
But all that sad stuff aside, I must say I am probably Skype’s biggest fan. There is no time difference between Perth and Singapore, so I was always free to chat with my mum, taking her through my entire process and sharing photos and videos.
After a few weeks of watching me jot down Things I Need To Tell Mom, my handsome, awesome, ever-so-amazing fiancé Luke decided to buy me a flight ticket back to Singapore for a month. I literally wrote this post during the plane ride there! Now Mom and I can catch up on some solid wedding planning talk. Isn’t Luke a doll? (I am so lucky.) I will catch you up on what Mom and I are up to in Singapore soon!
On this note, I would like to say that my soon-to-be mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been nothing short of spectacular and I would be a mess without them.
Theresa Asks: So, my lovely BG.com readers, what was or is your #1 worry during your wedding planning process and how do you plan to (or already did) overcome it?
—Theresa Misso
Editor's Note: My apologies to Theresa if my question caused any sleepless nights! Brides, I think you'll agree when I say that it was worth it: Reading her refreshingly honest (and heartbreakingly painful) post definitely brought some tears to my eyes.
Theresa Misso is a real bride who originally hails from Singapore, but is currently living in Australia. This vintage-loving college student is getting married in Las Vegas (nearly 9530.99 miles away!) in an intimate, 30-person ceremony. Expect pops of color and lots of clean lines in her untraditional November 2011 wedding to fiancé Luke William Anthony.
