My wedding anniversary is this week. I still can’t believe it’s been an entire year since we got married. There’s a lot of things that I remember about that day that are so extremely special to me. There’s also a few moments that, unfortunately, I let my anxiety get the best of me. I dealt with normal wedding stress just like any bride would, but with my anxiety and my constant obsession to control things around me it tended to get the better of me. The only downside was, I didn’t have a name for it at the time. I hadn’t identified it as a problem.
So in the spirit of vulnerability & honesty, I’m going to share with you a story from my wedding day about how my anxiety got the better of me. One that I recently shared with my therapist and she – after we stopped laughing – said, “Yeah, that’s definitely the anxiety winning.”
Here is the story of how I shit my pants on my wedding day.
I woke up before the alarm. To be honest, I hadn’t even really fallen asleep. I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. In just 13 hours, my life was going to completely change forever. I’m getting married today. I replayed the events from the night before in my head and tried to just shake off the whole day. To say the rehearsal day had been stressful was an understatement. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
We started the rehersal day by dropping the doggy off at the lady who would be boarding him & training him while we were gone. She seemed so fragile and nice on the phone but when we got there, her demeanor changed. She was a lot harsher with my puppy than I was used to and that made me extremely nervous. I was terrified to leave him, but she insisted that he would be fine. (Side note: She was totally a normal person, she just wasn’t spoiling him like I had been the past year and I was overreacting.)
We left there and drove to the venue; we had a full car, my sister had a full car, my parents had a full car (and a U-Haul), and Johnathan’s parent’s had a full car. We arrived at the venue, which was supposed to be unlocked and found that it was not. We had already gone ’rounds with the venue staff earlier that week for making too many last minute charges out of nowhere on us. We waited – a lot longer than we should have – for someone to arrive to unlock the building and began unloading our things. I kept checking my watch every five minutes. I was trying to stick to a schedule, because if you have a schedule nothing can go wrong. (Narrator: Things would definitely go wrong.)
I was expecting a delivery of our dessert to the venue – Dippin’ Dots. I had to meet the delivery driver at the front of the venue – which was a mile from where we currently were – to pick them up, or he would’ve left them to melt. The driver was an hour late, thus making me an hour late. (My schedule! But I put it in an email! Did the delivery driver not care about MY timeline?!?) I finally got the dessert into the cooler and was able to start heading to the hotel, which was about 35 minutes away from the venue that I would have to return to for the rehearsal.
I could feel my heart-rate going up as the day went on and more and more things keep changing or messing with my schedule. In the middle of driving to the hotel to change, I get a call that the venue forgot about another event they booked and were going to be moving our rehearsal location to a different spot that was outside. How am I supposed to tell people to plan for a rehearsal in the rain now? It’s too late. I’m not even prepared for a rehearsal in the rain! Great. By the time I got to the hotel, I had 15 minutes to shower, change, look like a presentable bride, & get back to the venue – which was 30 minutes away. Whatever, I’m the bride everyone can wait for me.
The later I became, the more stressed and anxious I became. I couldn’t identify this feeling nor did I know how to prevent it from happening, so I started to get mad. I was so panicked about being late, messing up the plan, making people upset, screwing up the schedule, etc. I slammed the car door when I arrived and stepped out into the pouring rain – we didn’t have any umbrellas, we didn’t even think about it. I looked around and none of the groomsmen were dressed nicely, they all still had on their swim trunks and tees from earlier in the afternoon. What was the point in even rushing to get ready?!?
My anxiety had won by this point. I started snapping at anyone and everyone who spoke to me. I’m pretty sure I yelled at my ring bearer for being four. I was rude to my coordinator, even though she was saving my life that day. I gave so much side eye to the groomsmen for being rowdy. And I was sassy to all of my bridesmaids because they were less wet than I was. I was making up reasons to be angry at other people/things because the real reason I was angry was because I was headed for a panic attack and I didn’t know how to stop it.
By the time the rehearsal ended, it was monsoon raining. We all got completely soaked. You could probably literally see steam coming off of me because of how mad I was. We left to go to the restaurant and I just burst into tears in the car. I’m not talking pretty, quaint, bride tears. I’m talking ugly gross angry tears. I was shaking and having trouble breathing. I was having a panic attack.
I was soaking wet; I didn’t bring enough clothes with me to change into something else for the dinner. I sat in the car and sobbed, “EVERYONE CAN SEE MY BUTT BECAUSE MY DRESS IS WET!” I’m pretty sure my dad started to laugh but my mom punched him in the arm.
We made a pit-stop to the hotel for me to dry my dress with the hotel hair-dryer. Let me tell you, standing in my underwear at 26 years old, scream-crying, while my mom combed my hair and dried my clothes, is a photo I wish I had. I was crying so hard I felt like I was going to throw up. My sister graciously offered for me to borrow an extra dress that she brought and I snapped, “IT’S NOT WHITE. THE BRIDE HAS TO WEAR WHITE!” And then I cried harder. It had nothing to do with the dress not being white, it had everything to do with the bride losing her damn mind.
We finally made it to the restaurant for dinner (late) and Johnathan wasn’t there. He was in the bathroom, trying to puke. He had been taking antibiotics to fight a cold all week long. What he didn’t tell me, is that he was also having some back pain from moving some of the wedding furniture around. He took two pain killers before the rehearsal for the pain. Well, antibiotics and pain killers don’t go well together. He spent most of the dinner feeling miserable. I had tear stained makeup and puffy eyes and he was white as a ghost. As you can tell from the photos of us from this night.
Finally his dad took him outside, and forced him to puke. I didn’t ask too many questions – whether he stuck his finger down his throat or punched him in the stomach or what – but he looked like a new person after that. I’m sure it came with a speech that was something like, “Son, you need to throw up and get inside so you can eat this dinner I’ve already paid for.” In the most loving way of course.
The rest of the night went swimmingly. I teared up at my two best friend’s speeches, My mother-in-law and father-in-law gave a moving speech thanking everyone for coming, my bridal party enjoyed their gifts, it was a lovely time. Once it was time to go, I got butterflies in my stomach. I had a hard time letting go of Johnathan’s hand. I was going to leave him that night as Nikki Hope and see him again in the morning as Nikki Dunagan.
Suddenly people were barking details and instructions for what was going to happen the rest of the night and in the morning. I made it back up to the room where a gift was waiting for me; a scrapbook my sister had made me with letters from my family and bridal party. I sobbed through the whole thing. There was no letter from my maternal grandmother, just one from my maternal grandfather signed by both of them, and it made me cry the hardest. There was one from my cousin in London who couldn’t make it.
When I finally laid down to sleep, my heart was beating out of my chest. I was so overcome with emotion, anxiety from the shit storm of a day, excitement for the day ahead. I probably slept for three hours. I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock. It was 4am. I wondered if Johnathan was awake thinking about me. Then laughed remembering how much he loved sleep.
Then I felt it.
My stomach gurgled. I put my hand to it hoping that would quiet it. I felt it again. I tossed back the covers and darted across the hotel suite to the bathroom. I didn’t make it.
I spent that morning being violently ill for five hours. My mom had to go to the store and get me Pepto Bismol and Immodium so that I could finally leave the bathroom and get married. I was literally googling “Sickness on Wedding Day” and scouring forums and Yahoo Answers (of all places) to see if other people had experienced this problem.
The common answer I kept seeing was stress. I stressed myself out so bad the day before that I made myself sick. I cried so hard I made myself sick. I had a panic attack and tried to suppress it and made myself sick. I have so many wonderful memories from my wedding day. Before you ask, this is definitely not the first thing I think of when you ask, “What’s your first memory of your wedding day?” But unfortunately, it did happen and it is a memory. And it happened on a day that should’ve been filled with nothing but those wonderful memories.
This incident alone should’ve been a wake up call that I needed to get my anxiety in check. For any other bride, this day would’ve been chalked up to “normal.” But for me, I was so obsessed with that day pleasing everyone – not being late, being on time, making sure I didn’t make anyone mad or inconvenience anyone – that the anxiety about it all literally made me physically ill.
Unfortunately, it took a year before I took any action against that. I’ve had a few more major outbursts, brought on by anxiety, that should’ve clued me in. Like the time I screamed at my friends, who took us took a Falcons game for free, because the ticket lady wouldn’t let me in the gate with my purse – but that’s another story, for another day.
Anxiety is a major reason why I binge eat. It’s a major reason why I binge eat and then throw up. It’s all stress & anxiety driven. The more I can control my anxiety and stress, the more in control I am of my binging. I’m learning coping tools to keep myself in check. I’m learning grounding techniques, to bring me back in the present. My wonderful husband is learning them too so he can help me when he sees my anxiety levels rising. He is the main reason I went to therapy in the first place, to get help for both of us and for our future together.
I haven’t perfected it, I’m learning as I go, and there’s still a lot more to learn. But it’s a process. And hopefully a process that will keep me from shitting my pants again.
Hope Floats 