I hate weddings for a few reasons.

1. The sheer amount of people I have to play nice with intimidates me.
2. I have to dress appropriately.
3. These days the amount of people I know at these weddings has grown exponentially and it’s difficult to play nice with people I barely know or like.
4. My favorite way to handle 1 and 3 is to drink, sometimes to excess. (At some point soon I will be posting about this drinking thing)
5. There is dancing, which because of 4 I usually end up doing and being embarrassed about.
6. There are two kinds of weddings for me, the first being weddings I am invested in and the second being ones I am not.  They each have their own sorts of problems, for instance when I am invested in a wedding in some way, by doing hair or makeup, by being in the wedding party or close to those who are getting married, I feel a certain pressure to make sure to perform well.  This means that I’m putting on a performance, which I am generally not down to do.  With not being invested it feels incredibly stupid to be there.  I don’t know why I have to be at the ceremony or the reception when I don’t know the person particularly well, or why I have to be on good behavior.  I don’t know why I am chastised for being myself when I wasn’t really important to the bridal party in the first place.
7. I find going to weddings difficult because like most girls that are in my age range and still single I find it difficult to see people getting to have what I cannot at this time.  I get really tired at times of accepting that God has a great big plan for me that includes me being single right now and that excludes me knowing that I will be married at some point.  I am so blessed to see my friends get married and yet I take it as a burden because I am not.  Is this normal?  Perhaps.  Is this right?  No, not according to what I am professing to believe.
8. Ceremonies are the WORST.  They are so filled with meaning and special things that apply to the couples, and they are so full of reminders of what marriage really is: a reflection of what the church is to Christ.  The church is the bride of Christ, which is implicit in the bible in many places.  To see even a shadow of that played out in life surrounding me is really difficult to handle.  I can’t imagine being loved to the extent of someone pledging their life to be entwined with mine on earth, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Christ has accepted me as a daughter/sister/wife/anything other than scum beneath his shoe.  These are things that are too big for me to handle, and by handle I mean allow myself to understand and cry about in private much less in public.  I am grateful that God knows how slowly I need this pace to go, even when I am impatient and petulant.  He knows the perfect timing for my life and is continuing to pursue my heart and lead me to a place of understanding what this love is really all about, which includes leading me to accept that someone might be able to love me past my flaws and sins for a lifetime, much less all of eternity.