Interesting question in the Pit thread about Jennifer Wilbanks. spooje and Grits and Hard Toast both wanted to know if pre-wedding jitters and the urge to bolt were common. I wonder that too, and also how many people act on that urge, so here I am.
FTR, I didn’t have pre-wedding jitters, but then Mr. Rilch and I had a courthouse ceremony. A few years ago, my cousin took what she called a “sanity break” the week before her wedding (a day at Disney World with her single gal pal), but this was sanctioned by everyone else, including the groom. They knew she needed a respite from “all the Martha Stewart crap”, and her mom and sister carried on in her absence.
Anyone have last-minute panic, or know anyone who did? Anyone know of an actual runaway bride or groom?
I’ve never heard of an actual runaway bride or groom, or witnessed a groom being stood up at the altar. But I have sung at some weddings where the bride has been very late and the excuses give for her tardiness have seemed pretty flimsy. Those of us in the choir have long suspected “cold feet” on the bride’s part.
It seems strange to me that such a huge, life-changing event wouldn’t cause some jitters. I never felt like backing out of my wedding, but it scared the living shit out of me. I never felt like backing out, but many times I felt like passing out or throwing up.
My one true love told me she chanted a mantra to herself to keep her wits about her and to keep it from spinning away from her. And yes, she thought for a moment about bolting. And we had known each other for 15 years at that point.
But the wedding was beautiful and it’s been great so far…
I called off a wedding 6 weeks before the date (the printed invitations had arrived and I had started to address them) - it was very very difficult. It was almost harder to tell my parents then to tell my fiance. I have never regretted the decision.
I didn’t have jitters, but I might’ve been charged with homicide if my husband hadn’t been there to support me and calm me down. Between all the BS that got piled on me in the week before the wedding, I seriously wanted to either start lopping heads off, or just say “screw it” and run off with him to Vegas and just get it done with as few people around as possible.
Then there was the matter that my husband referred to - later on, he told an initially-heartwarming story about looking down the aisle and seeing me appear in the doorway, and feeling so wonderful… that I hadn’t bolted screaming from the church to get away from his insane inlaws, and now I was stuck with them and him.
We had a micro-wedding, just 30 people in my parents’ family room. Even so, I just about fainted during the ceremony. Absolutely terrified. The rent-a-minister must’ve seen this kind of thing before, b/c he held my gaze perfectly as I stared desperately into his face.
And my FIL’s ex-wife #4 became thoroughly ill just after the wedding ceremony, to the point of winding up at the hospital on their wedding night. That always seemed like foreshadowing - their marriage lasted 2 years.
I had gotten into the habit (before I met DangerDad) of being terrified of marriage*, and I kind of kept it up through the engagement, even though I was happy about getting married and knew it was a good idea. We had a very simple wedding, so I didn’t have a lot of hassle about that to deal with, and we didn’t do the ‘can’t see each other beforehand’ thing–he picked me up in our ‘new car’ (a '78 Volvo, this was in '96) and we drove up there together. Just before the ceremony, I remember sitting alone with him in a little alcove and saying “Are you sure this is a good idea?” He was used to me and just grinned and said yes, it was.
I was pretty frozen throughout the ceremony, so it’s a good thing they only required me to say ‘yes.’ If we’d had to say vows or something I’d have been in trouble; I’m always completely inarticulate at such moments. But afterwards, as soon as it was all safely over, I was happy as could be and had no more jitters. I must say it’s turned out even better than I thought.
*Blame my former boyfriend, who talked about marriage when I was 17. Yikes!!
My former housemate cancelled his wedding less than 4 weeks before. It was quite a drag because we’d mailed the gift and bought the plane tickets.
What was grating was that, as we heard later, the groom knew for some time he didn’t want to go through with it. He was even already involved (secretly) with someone else. He just couldn’t bring himself to do/say anything until it got that close.
My fiancée changed her mind six or eight months after I initially proposed, and two weeks after the official-on-my-knee-and-giving-her-a-ring proposal. She’s ‘comfortable’ in rural Tennessee with her crappy job, and got scared about moving across the country.
About 2 minutes before our ceremony I got really nervous, but more because of a fear of lack of preparation (our preacher actually showed up 5 minutes after the service was scheduled to begin) than it was due to our decision to wed.
My cousin cancelled her first wedding less than a month before it was scheduled to occur. (She’s since married a different guy.) While it was a surprise, everyone agreed it was better to back out before the wedding rather than go through with it. And while the option was not considered, I think we’d have all agreed it was better than taking off for New Mexico and pretending to have been kidnapped.
I think my husband and I were the calmest people at our wedding. My father, mother and MIL had all had freak-outs for different reasons prior to the ceremony. Our matron of honor and best man are not smiling in any of the pictures. When I asked my matron of honor about that she told me they both were so nervous they could barely stand up. I believe the expression she used was “leaning towers of Jello.” It was a good thing we were all right, because we sure wouldn’t have had anyone else to turn to if we weren’t!
I don’t personally know of anyone who just bolted, but I used to work at a Cathlic school and I remember there being a lot of talk one Monday morning about a groom who had left his bride-to-be at the altar at the adjoining church the previous Saturday.
Also, my boss there called her wedding off three weeks prior when she found out that her fiance was secretly taking another woman to the apartment they’d rented to live in after the wedding and having sex with her there. Good thing she found out before rather than after.
I wasn’t jittery, but I was second guessing my decision to get married during my whole engagement. The closer I got to the actual day the calmer and more confident I got.
I wasn’t nervous at all the day of the wedding. My mother, on the other hand, was a wreck. She couldn’t concentrate at all. She missed the hotel three different times on the way back from getting our hair and makeup done.
I’ve never seen anyone bolt (and my wedding-day jitters were more a fear of tripping on my way up the aisle). But a friend of mine was at a wedding where the groom got cold feet during the ceremony – he stopped the preacher and left the church. The preacher and the bride’s father talked him around and the couple got married later that day in private. It didn’t last.
I threw up from nerves about 4 times in the hour before my first wedding. It was a HUGE affair that my now ex-wife and I were only tangetially a part of - it was more of an opportunity for my ex-MIL to throw a big party and re-pay all her social engagements. I had about 12 of my close family and friends there, as did my wife. The other members of the horde (I never did get an exact count) were people completely unknown to me. I felt like I had been cast in a play that I ddn’t even know I had auditioned for. It didn’t help that my ex-MIL was suffering from a bad case of poison ivy and was on some serious medication that spaced her out completely. It was a beautiful ceremony, but I believe that Fellini was the wedding director.
I just remembered someone I knew who cancelled her wedding(s). This girl dated a guy in high school, then broke up with him and got engaged to another fellow. Two weeks before the wedding, she broke it off. She then got engaged to my next-door neighbor–and broke it off two weeks before the wedding. IIRC, she did the same thing again before finally marrying the high-school boyfriend, and then she turned out to be rather screwed up in other areas, so they were divorced within a few years.
I have no idea why so many guys fell for her, besides that she was pretty cute. We all belonged to the same church in a medium-small town and had all gone to school and done church stuff together for years, so they were at least acquainted with each other and with her history. Neither do I know why she was such a mess; her family was very nice and all the other kids turned out fine. (OTOH, the town itself could serve as a great source for soap-opera plots; I’ve never lived anywhere that was more full of drama and weird goings-on than that place.)
I’ve never known anyone to bolt, but my sister should have. I remember very clearly watching her stand up in front of the minister at her second wedding. She wasn’t visibly quaking, but the tiny flowers on her veil were. I’m sure that if she’d thought there was any chance she could have got away with it, she would have run full-speed out of there. And she would undoubtedly have been better off for it - that marriage is over now, too.
I wasn’t nervous about being married, but I was nervous about the wedding.
A few weeks before the wedding, I had a nightmare. I was at the synagogue, about to walk up the aisle, when I realized I wasn’t wearing any shoes (I have had dreams where I’m not wearing shoes when I should be before- I think it is my version of the dream where you’re going somewhere and suddenly realize you’re naked). I tried to go out to my car to get my shoes (oddly enough, since the wedding was in North Carolina and I live in California, so I had no plans for having my car at the wedding). Suddenly, the parking lot at the synagogue was about the size of the parking lot at Disney World, and I couldn’t find my car. I could see it from a distance sometimes, but I couldn’t get to it. Finally, the rabbi came out of the synagogue (while I was still looking for my car in the parking lot), told me it was 6:30 (the wedding was scheduled for 2pm) and everyone was all mad and they were leaving.
The wife and I were both calm as could be during our wedding. Never a second-thought. Of course, we eloped to Vegas, so we didn’t have to put up with all the crap.
I had absolutely no second thoughts about marrying my husband. We both felt it was the next step in our lives and were very excited about the new chapter beginning.
My maid of honor though was a nervous mess. As we stood in the alcove, waiting for the que for her to begin to walk down the isle, she about fainted. It was just a small wedding, maybe 20 people, but still the idea of everyone looking at her freaked her out.
Later people told me that things got tense up front when they heard, “I am so sorry, I just can’t through with this…” and thought it was me.
I thought I would have to walk her down the isle. The minister who had performed something like 5,000 weddings, knew the signs, and told the best man to walk up and escort her. He did. Then to blend things in a bit, my husband then came down the isle to escort me, since I had no one to give me away anyway.
