wedding

When I first got sober, I started to accept that the “happy” occasions in life — holidays, birthdays and other special events — might not only feel happy. When I’m “supposed” to feel good, I feel nervous, anxious, and embarrassed. The center of attention, I feel vulnerable and on display.

Some people think that the size and budget of your wedding reflect how much love you and your partner have for each other: The bigger the wedding, the bigger the love. On the other hand, my father likes to joke, “The bigger the wedding, the bigger the divorce.”

For someone like me — someone with difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, who has struggled with commitment, and who’s got intimacy issues galore — surely, you can see the appeal. You don’t need to be Freud to figure out why, at a disturbingly young age, I looked forward to the day a man would commit.

When you boil it down, a wedding’s a wedding’s a wedding.

Occasion: You are invited to your friend's wedding. YAY! WEDDINGS! You want to go. But then you can't. Bummer.

Then we had that talk that made my eye twitch: the budget talk.

It's common knowledge that weddings are ridiculously, outrageously, soul-crushingly expensive.

Time to ditch that white dress: 60% of newlyweds have shagged at least two of their wedding guests.