The Worst Wedding

You think you have seen it all until your fiancé invites his girlfriend and her parents to your wedding. Impossible, you might think. Surely, no human being can be that shameless. Surely, there must be some misunderstanding. Maybe the woman is his cousin. Maybe the parents are family friends. Maybe I have accidentally walked into the wrong wedding.

Well, let me tell you something: that shit really happened to me. And the worst part? I didn't find out through a dramatic confession, a suspicious text message, or by catching him in a hotel room.

No. I found out on my wedding day, wearing a wedding dress I had spent months choosing, while smiling for photographs like a woman whose life was perfectly under control.Let me start from the beginning.My fiancé, let's call him Brian, and I had been together for almost four years. Four years is a long time.

Long enough to know someone's favorite food, their annoying habits, how they behave when they're broke, and how they sleep when they're pretending not to snore.

We had survived arguments about money, family, friends, and that one unforgettable week when he refused to speak to me because I had told him his haircut made him look like someone's uncle.Eventually, Brian proposed.And when I say I was happy, I mean I was HAPPY.

I became one of those women who could find a way to mention her wedding in conversations that had absolutely nothing to do with weddings.

Someone: “The weather is so hot.”Me: “I know. We should probably have an indoor wedding.”Someone: “Have you seen the price of tomatoes?”Me: “Don't even remind me. Weddings are expensive.”I had wedding plans before I even knew what the plans were.We started preparing, and naturally, the wedding planning turned me into a part-time accountant, event planner, negotiator, therapist and professional beggar.

The budget kept growing like it had been fed fertilizer.We would agree that we were going to have a simple wedding.“Nothing extravagant,” Brian would say.

Two weeks later, we were discussing chairs.Then tents.Then food.Then photography.Then entertainment.Then suddenly someone was suggesting a cake that had four floors.“Didn't we agree on simple?” I asked.

Brian looked at me and said, “It's your wedding.”MY wedding?At that point I should have known something was wrong.But love makes you stupid in ways that education cannot cure.

The months passed. Invitations went out. Relatives started making demands disguised as suggestions.My aunt wanted a specific seat because of her “status.”My mother wanted to invite people I had never met.

Brian's mother wanted certain relatives included because, apparently, if they weren't invited, they would spend the next five years discussing how disrespectful we were.I was stressed, but I was happy.

Or at least I thought I was.Then came the wedding morning.I woke up with butterflies in my stomach.Not the romantic kind either.The kind that make you go to the bathroom three times before breakfast.

My bridesmaids were running around, makeup...