Honest Confessions from an Ex Bride-to-Be

I have been seeing engagements happening on social media and even weddings being held. One of my church friends I attended and served in youth ministry got married, and I was so excited for her as I saw her wedding pictures online. It makes me happy to see someone living out their special day. As children, we all learned the idea of having a wedding and wanted one. Even if you do not want to have one or get married at all, we all have fancied the idea of marrying someone. 

Everyone tells you what it is like to plan a wedding. The details from the venue, the budget, bridesmaids, flowers, meals, the cake, the dress, and even how you will pull your hair out nearing that grand day.

They do not tell you how to prepare if the question of ending your engagement and canceling the wedding comes alive. It is a rare thing to talk about. You hear more of getting married and living happily ever after or getting divorced at any time length after the event (even just a few days after the wedding) than what it is like being an ex bride-to-be, like me.

I was a bride-to-be. This is something I never thought I would ever say or even acknowledge the fact that I was engaged before the relationship failed. 

I remember watching wedding shows on TV and videos on the internet and imagined I was the bride. Even if the dress was not my style or not my religion, I saw myself in the bride on my screen. I even remember my innocent, eighteen-year-old self watching Jill Dillard’s wedding episode on “19 Kids and Counting” on repeat and drawing inspiration for my dream wedding. Even now, as a deconstructed twenty-five-year-old bisexual woman, I still find myself watching that episode to feel the sense of nostalgia and even joy I felt planning my wedding.

I have even written a post on a blog (before it was shut down due to the website company going out of business) about how I am waiting to get engaged when the time is right and how it will be with the “right guy” (oh how native my twenty-year-old Christian-self was).

I got engaged to a guy who I have been with for four years on and off. We had just gotten back together a couple of months before, and I thought things were going great and that this step was good for us. 

I planned the wedding. I found the venue, picked out my bridesmaids, picked out the date, and even picked out a wedding dress. I remember finding the dress during my appointment and feeling the euphoria of feeling beautiful in it. It was a beautiful dress, even now, looking back on the pictures, I still love it. It is just a shame that I will never get to wear it.

Then, our relationship went downhill; it got worst. I do not blame the whole stress of wedding planning; we were two different people who are also strong-willed with a history together. Yet, I was determined to marry this person still and become the wife I have prepared myself my whole life to be.

Then, things became so bad that the option of ending the engagement came up in my head. I never thought I would consider canceling the wedding, yet no one does. When I got engaged, I was all in. I jumped right in to prepare to become a bride. I worked extra shifts at my job. I even took a big chunk of my savings to take enough summer college classes for me to graduate in December. I was all in until I decided to end the relationship. I cried, I had autistic meltdowns, I did not sleep that night, I was so scared to end something that I felt I would regret later.

Being an ex bride-to-be is not something I wear proudly. In fact, I am still embarrassed that I had a failed engagement. I hate that I love someone so hard and be an emotional wreck when it fails (even if I end the relationship). What happens when I start dating again and tell my future partner that I was engaged once before? Will they think I was dumb enough to say yes to the guy in the first place? I even feel the shame of it all.

That is something no one tells you about failed engagements: shame.

Even though I ended the relationship, I still feel ashamed. I feel the shame of the relationship not being good enough to be forever. I feel shame when I tell someone I have been engaged before. I feel ashamed when my mother mentions that my wedding dress is at her house and we talk about what we can do with it. (I am not the one to “trash the wedding dress,” so do not suggest me that)

I am not bitter about it all. I am healing from the relationship and even believe I made the right decision. I, honest to God, feel that I have dodged a big ass bullet (both emotionally and financially). It is not about “Oh my god, I did not have a wedding,” it is about “Oh my god, my relationship was not good enough, and it ended after I put my all in it.”

No matter what you do for the relationship to become better or for you to become better for that person, events and actions will show you are not meant to be with this person. This is not your time, and you just have not met the right person yet. Yet, you are not immune to the feeling of shame. Emotions like that are what I was also afraid of when I thought about ending the engagement. 

But at the end of the day, even if shame came with it, I am still glad I ended it, and I stopped myself from getting into a marriage that will become ugly and fail. One thing I had learned when I ended this engagement and what I hope everyone will take to heart: to put myself first.

I have extremely low self-esteem. My family has talked about my self-esteem, and my close friends have talked about it. My therapist has sent me home with books to read to help with my terrible state. Yet, at twenty-five years old and enough trauma to be so damn tired, I refuse to be miserable. I refuse to be miserable with a person who does not put me first and make me the best person I can be. I said this to myself right before I decided to end the engagement:

I do not love myself that much, but I like myself enough not to be stuck in a miserable marriage. 

As I figure out what to do with the wedding dress sitting in my mom’s house and trying to establish myself in this world as a single woman, I brush off the shame of being an ex bride-to-be and put myself first. So, therefore, a partner who does deserve me will see that in me.