It’s probably just me, but I never played “bride” as a kid. I played “teacher” with my cabbage patch dolls, I dressed up my cabbage patch dolls, I rollerbladed (not with my cabbage patch dolls). I read Encyclopedia Brown, The BFG and The Outsiders. I made my dogs dress up in cabbage patch kid clothes (and one small black t-shirt that just said “the boss”). But I never played pretend wedding.
My earliest adult aspirations involved becoming an actress, or a teacher, or Pocahontas. I don’t remember wanting to get married. (This may also be due to a mistaken notion that marriage required a blood test and I was so afraid of needles that I internally decided if I never got married, I’d never have to give blood and didn’t that just sound like the neatest solution to my phobia.)
I’ll confess to doing all of the above in my tweens and teens. I doodled, I planned, I designed the perfect wedding dress. I’ll give you a hint: it was white. (Also the most diva dress you can imagine, we are talking yards upon yards of fabric, and at one point, probably in the eighth grade, the sleeves resembled actual wings — which is kind of ironic now that I mention it.)
So when does it happen? When do we start doodling our first name with our crush’s last name, and designing the perfect wedding dress and planning out what our dream houses will look like? When do we become marriage obsessed? When does it become aspirational to settle down and not to get out? How did I make the shift from Native American princess boldly roaming the wild outdoors of the church parking lot, to deciding if I was going to wear a veil or a tiara for my Big Day?
Honestly I think it’s related to how terrifically awkward middle school and high school can feel. Because in middle school and in high school, what you want more than anything is to not look how you feel then. Awkward, uncomfortable, uncoordinated, frankly ugly. And brides are never ugly. I wanted to be assured that when I became an adult someone would want me. I wanted the security that I knew a marriage and a husband and a house represented. I wanted the “bride’s day”.
For me this is the real sticking point. I never wanted to be married; I just wanted to be the center of positive attention. A groom barely figured into it at all. Sure, he was there, but in the same way an usher is, or a carpet runner. It’s a wedding prop. Probably ancillary even to the doves and the string quartet. A wedding was the gateway to the security I was craving, and the last hurrah I assumed before life settled into the sameness I associated then with married life. The routine monotonous security of the suburbs. To paraphrase a favorite quote from Sleepless in Seattle: “You don’t want to be [married]. You want to be [married] in a movie.” And when I finally figured that out, that’s when I got over wanting to just get married.
However, to this day I still have not gotten over the fact that I will never be Pocahontas or Sacagawea.
Notes from the Sea 