Brides

Allison Moir-Smith

Getting married in this summer? You’re busy. Very busy. Though you have been planning this wedding for months (years?), now it’s crunch time. No more lingering on Pinterest. It’s final decisions and final deposits only. You’re attending showers. Writing thank-you notes. Exercising, eating right, and sleeping so you look your best. Getting those final beauty and hair treatments to guarantee you gleam and shine on your big day. And still keeping your head above water at your paying job and squeezing in quality time with your man. Your days are packed. Just take a look at your Google calendar. But here’s what’s happening in your emotional life right now.

You’re frustrated.

And, truth be told, a bit humiliated having to hunt down RSVPs. Making calls like this — “Hello? I sent you a fancy invitation to my expensive wedding six weeks ago….Are you are coming?” — doesn’t feel good to anybody. As a culture, we can barely click “yes/no/maybe’ on an Evite. Your wedding invitation requires your guests to write their name, choose an entrée, lick the envelope and drop the card (pre-stamped, we might add) in the mail. Instead of getting too annoyed at your friends and family, keep in mind that all these relationships are worth keeping, even if, with RSVPs, they aren’t behaving up to Emily Post’s standards.

Your inner conflicts are resolved.

You probably spent some of your engagement working through unexpected feelings of ambivalence about getting married . You mourned the end of your single life. You reworked patterns of relationships with family members. You started to figure out how to live at a much more intimate, lifelong level with your fiancé. Now, with your wedding just weeks away, you can feel that your work with your inner struggles is now complete. Your ambivalence has evolved into a quiet confidence. You’re more at peace than you’ve been during your engagement. At peace, despite the busyness of your days.

You’re ready.

What once felt abstract and in the future — your wedding and your marriage — is now a reality, taking shape, coming to fruition. And you are ready. You are feeling more ready than you ever have during your engagement to walk down that aisle. You’re ready to celebrate and party with your family and friends. Most importantly, you’re ready, truly ready, inside and out, to get and be married to this wonderful man you’ve chosen. You are ready — psychologically, emotionally, spiritually — to become his wife and to begin this new chapter in your life.

Allison Moir-Smith, MA, is a bridal counselor, creator of How Brides-To-Be REALLY Feel videos, and author of Emotionally Engaged: A Bride’s Guide to Surviving the “Happiest” Time of Her Life .