1. Your parents pay for your wedding…and your honeymoon.
You’re both broke. Your new-to-be husband scraped together the cash for a diamond ring while working nights as a valet.
But who cares? You’re thrilled. You’re off to Jamaica on your in-laws dime, because otherwise there would be no honeymoon.
Don’t have upper middle class parents? You’re probably in the woods at a small cabin eating mac n’ cheese and peanut butter and jelly (which you also ate five out of seven days in your senior year without a meal plan—so you’re used to it).
2. You have never planned an event larger than your boyfriend’s surprise birthday party…and now you have to plan a wedding.
How hard could it be to plan a wedding? Last February you threw a surprise birthday party, complete with solo cups and a Betty Crocker cake-from-a-box. Oh, and a lifesize poster of your boyfriend, circa highschool. Your guy friends talked about it for days afterwards.
A wedding is just a bigger party, right?
Yeah, no. Fortunately, there are mothers who still see you as that teenage girl munching popcorn on the couch in her teddy bear pajamas when home from college on break. Everyone is going to pitch in, because, let’s face it: this is not a surprise bash for eight people.
3. You have no idea what the names of different flowers are.
Bougainvilleas, rhododendron, amaranthus, amaryllis? You start to wish you paid more attention in Biology 101…or Latin? You pick the prettiest flower you see, only to be told it is used at funerals. Oops.
4. You just want to taste the cake.
Let’s face it. The best part of planning a wedding is tasting the different frostings and fluffy vanilla cake. You schedule the cake tasting way ahead of time, like two months in advance. Then you forget to send the save-the-date out. And you have to scramble to get all of the addresses from your parents because you don’t know anyone’s address. Why should you? No one mails anything anymore, right?
5. Your friends receive their wedding invitations simultaneously at the college post office.
When you finally get your invitations out, you drop them off at your campus post office. A few hours later, your friends are retrieving their only piece of mail—your hand-made invitations to the wedding. Oh, and those friends who weren’t invited are there, too.
6. Your husband’s BFF attempts to pilfer all of the alcohol from the wedding.
That is, if you even have alcohol. Let’s say you are one of those lucky couples with a small open bar. You can bet your bottom dollar that your husband’s closest pals are not watching the daddy-daughter dance.
7. Your friends are late to the wedding because they made a post-college road trip out of it.
Your husband’s college friends squeeze through the heavy church doors just in time to see your husband place a smooch on your lips. You are secretly pleased. Your hubby never knows they missed most of the service.
8. Everyone is in awe that you are married.
People still can’t believe at the reception that the two of you are hitched.
Grandparents exclaim how young you are, uncles blink when they see you kissing, and your father is secretly incredibly relieved that your teenage years are over. You are safe-and-sound in someone else’s arms.
After all, it was only three years ago that you were crying in your freshman dorm before they left. But now you’re off to wedded bliss!