What We Do for Love

Hany and I just celebrated our three-year anniversary yesterday. On our way to dinner, we were reminiscing about these years, thinking of the good and the bad. Then it suddenly hit us; out of those three years we have spent as a couple, almost one and a half of them has been spent preparing for our marriage. Hany and I always wonder why we can’t getting married like they do in the movies. You know the silverscreen wedding type: a nice, romantic proposal, families meeting just a couple of times, the wedding getting prepared in just two scenes — with maybe a very short dramatic scene to spice things up — the party turning out to be one dreamy fairytale and then off to the honeymoon and they live happily ever after. I wish. From the moment Hany proposed in March 2011 the 18 months that followed has all been about the marriage preparations; arranging for the families to meet, preparing an engagement party, buying wedding bands, flat hunting, picking the wedding venue and date and finally settling on a honeymoon. It is now May 2012 and we are nowhere near done. We still have to find a place to rent since our house won’t be ready before the wedding, decide on the decoration, music and food for the wedding, finalise a guest list, buy the Shabka (the engagement ring and diamond band,) and arrange for the Katb Kitab, or the religious ceremony. I really do think preparations should not take that much time and effort. Now that it is taking up most of my time for the past 18 months, I was wondering how I had the patience to bear with this load of responsibilities and meaningless tasks. My only explanation, and that is going to sound very cheesy, is love. I cannot find any other explanation for going through this much pressure and time preparing to get married. You must be insanely in love with the person and sure that this is the one who deserves to turn your life around like this for. Cliché, yes of course, but very true.   Regardless of the fact that you will spend your life with this person you're not in love with, but how can you possibly endure this pre-wedding stress without love? No judgements, but I would never do it. Lately, I haven’t been sharing my trials and tribulations as a bride-to-be. For the past month I have been telling myself every week when my post is due that I will wait for the next week because this one has too much drama and nothing positive to share. I keep thinking of all the posts I have made and realised that most of them are my ranting. But then again, this is reality, this process of getting married is hard and I have to tell it like it is for you to know what you're getting into. I guess I am turning from a careless, angry bride to a dramatic one. But the truth is, it isn't all rainbows and butterflies, it's a hassle to say the least. Setting aside all the tasks and tedious chores and preparations you have to do, your relationship really does get affected in this period. The happy, carefree days become fewer and fewer that you start to question yourself and the other — but then again momentary sanity kicks in and you realize it is all the effects of the magic that is the wedding preps. You sometimes feel you just need to take a break and leave everything behind, even your partner, because he symbolizes all these hardships. But then again, your partner is your only true source of comfort. You get sucked into one of the most annoying things about our culture and that is family etiquette, you need to make extra efforts to please yours and your partner’s families and you barely have time for yourself. But then again, you are doing it for your partner, for your family — people who matter. I have a laundry long list of this, but you get the gist. Maybe you just have to bear with it all and just get it over with without dramatizing everything. But this is how I feel about this pre-wedding phase. I don’t really have any advice to give except that you should just keep the bigger picture in front of you and remember what you're doing all this for instead of giving in to pressure and stress. It really sounds too romantic, cheesy and cliché but that is how desperate I have become when dealing with this adult life phase, I just need to add some candy and fairytale to make it tolerable.