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Curious August 2023 Buckinghamshire

Wedding Anxiety

Weddingjuly2023, 4 October, 2022 at 10:23 Posted on Etiquette and Advice 0 1

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Hi all,

I wanted to come on here to ask some advice about wedding Anxiety. I'm quite an anxious person and very much take throw away comments to heart. I've even had external help to try and help me change my mindset.
I'm worried about my wedding day and hen do, I'm worried about people making throw away or snide comments. I can handle them in terms of saying something back in a nice way (I do find this difficult), but even if I do that I feel like these comments play on my mind. Did anyone have someone say something on their wedding day that bothered them and how did you handle it?
For example, I decided not to have bridesmaids as I would have had 10 in total and can't choose between them. So I've given them all money instead to buy a dress (any style) which matches the colour scheme as a nice gesture. A dress they can wear again and again! Someone asked my friend if she was a birdesmaid for my wedding and she responded in front of me 'no we're just getting dresses because she doesn't want to spend loads of money on us like a normal bridesmaid'. I felt a bit hurt by this because my friend knows i suffer from anxiety and frankly, I didn't have to buy them any dresses but I wanted them to feel more than guests. I also explained this to my friend beforehand.
It's been playing on my mind since and it's not even a big throw away comment. I understand that she's probably upset that she's not a bridesmaid. I'm worried that I'm going to let a comment like that ruin my wedding day. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

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Latest activity by Bemoet, 19 July, 2023 at 14:44

Genius July 2020 Monmouthshire
RomanticGreenStationery27135 · 4 October, 2022 at 15:11
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I hear you with the anxiety thing. It's really hard to deal with. I find one of the things that is most helpful is to focus on the essentials. Whenever I started worrying about a, b or c going wrong, I'd remind myself that the most important thing was that I ended up married to my OH and that was all that mattered. (Ironically, we then ended up getting married immediately post-lockdown, when the registrar had the authority to stop the ceremony 'at any point' if she deemed it Covid-unsafe!!! And yes, I was freaking out until we'd got through the vows, but it did put all my other worries into perspective!) It's lovely if all the plans turn out exactly as you'd hoped, but at the end of the day, it is just one day. What matters is that you get to marry your OH.
On a practical level, CBT can be really helpful as it puts a stop to the catastrophizing that we tend to do, and helps come up with practical solutions to dealing with anxiety. I did a stress management course that our local health board provided and found it so helpful. It might be worth googling to see if there is something similar in your area.
However, the comment from your 'bridesmaid' is on a totally different level. That is SO passive-aggressive. I don't think you have an anxiety problem in this particular area, I think you have a friend problem. Do all your friends tend to behave like this? I used to be on the receiving end of a lot of poor treatment from 'friends', and a lot of it was because my anxiety made me always think everything was my fault. I'd always be the one trying to appease everyone. So of course, it encouraged people to treat me badly, and also made me a target for people who wanted to be able to treat their 'friends' badly. Once I started getting my anxiety more under control, I found that a lot of the disrespectful behaviour tailed off, and I also found myself able to distance myself from some of my 'friends' and spend more time with those who were my true friends. So I think, as well as working on your anxiety generally, it would be good to spend some time reviewing your friendships and working out how many of your 'friends' truly deserve to have that word applied to them. I wonder if perhaps you are being a friend to them, but they are not all being 'friends' to you.
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