Last week I went to look at a wedding venue nearly a year after I got engaged.
It was the first place I looked at, and it will be the last.
You see, it seems I may be the opposite of a bridezilla now the time has finally come for “me” to become “we”.
Now, not only did I forget to tell most people that I was in possession of an engagement ring for about six months, it seems that the actual business of getting married wasn’t high on my list of priorities either.
I haven’t even written about my betrothed much either, which is odd given I’ve devoted more column centimetres to my hair in the blog over the years than I have to the man that I agreed to marry.
Without getting all psycho-analytical about it (yes, I know that’s not the correct terminology), if I bothered to do some naval-gazing I guess the reason why is that no one wants to read about a relationship that is as smooth as an icy gelato on a hot summer’s day.
No writer wants to come across as content and relaxed – rather we are supposed to be tortured alcoholics who spend most of the time muttering alone in the dark.
Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t been that incarnation a few times in my life.
However, perhaps my paucity of ponderings about my lover is likely because I want to retain my supposed extroverted edginess, built up over many decades while I steadfastly remained single when everyone around me was not.
Traditional is never a word that has been used in the same sentence as me it seems.
For more than 45 years, I have been the bridesmaid, the witness, the usher, and the token single girl at a wonderment of weddings.
I’ve drunk all the free champagne, wreaked havoc on the dance floor to out-of-tune renditions of Michael Bolton and Madonna and made small talk with strangers who became friends for just one night.
Then, as the years rolled on by and I remained stoically single, I watched on as many of those unions started to fracture to the point that they could never be healed.
And, just as the number of singles in my sphere started to swell as divorce parties replaced nuptials, I was no longer one of them.
The thing is being single for more than four decades means that on the outside at least not much has changed.
A few months ago, I went to Vietnam on a whim after getting a cabin fever so unhelpful that my fiancé suggested it could only be cured by getting out of the house – and out of the country – for a while.
It’s funny, though, that on my return some people asked whether he was OK with me taking off with little notice when it was his idea to start off with.
You can see why I am marrying him.
As the months have sped by since he proposed in our courtyard surrounded by the sunflowers that he planted me, I’ve realised that I was never a wedding kind of girl.
I’ve never dreamed about a big ceremony or a special kind of dress.
A friend even had to take the reins recently when I admitted I had no preferences when it came to dress designs let alone sleeve types or fabrics. Friends indeed.
Even though this year has been ridiculously frantic as I co-launched a business (you may have noticed the significant reduction in these blogs as a byproduct), I think I’ve used that as a bit of an excuse to not organise a wedding that I never dreamed about being in.
That said, I can’t wait for the wedding, I just have zero interest in organising it.
Now, just because I’m not a wedding type of girl, that doesn’t mean I never thought I’d get married.
I did, even if many people thought I wouldn’t, or considered I was just being too picky or had become too independent or too successful.
I’ll just leave those viewpoints right there.
I’ve always believed in love and was prepared to wait for as long as necessary.
So, now that I’ve recognised that I’m not a very “weddingy” type of girl, I’ve come up with a cunning plan that will see me marry the man who accepts me just as I am next year.
She’s one of my best friends from high school…. and she just happens to be a wedding planner, so I don’t have to be.