My Wedding Day Wasn't The Best Day Of My Life

It's crazy to think that the months and months spent planning and purchasing all build up to one single day that goes by quicker than any other day you'll ever live.My wedding day seems like it was all a dream now that it's over. It happened so quickly - I felt like I was trying to chase the moment and couldn't quite catch it. It just ran away so fast. I feel like the best moments always happen like that - you want to hold them just a little longer, but time is always the same, it's always fleeting.

I feel like the best moments always happen like that - you want to hold them just a little longer, but time is always the same, it's always fleeting.

Your wedding day is supposed to be the "best day of your life," but I just don't think that's true.My wedding day was beautiful and perfect and filled with love and joy and perfect decorations and a gorgeous venue and beautiful flowers and the dress of my dreams - and of course the man my parents and I had always prayed for. It really was better than I could have ever planned. It was a perfect day from the moment I woke up to the moments I prayed at the venue, to the memories we made, to the moment the night ended and "today" turned into "yesterday." I felt Jesus everywhere that day.But the thing is, the wedding ceremony was just the start of the most beautiful adventure I never saw coming. Each day after my wedding really has been better than the last. I realize how cheesy that sounds, but it is so unbelievably true.God didn't bring my husband and me together so that we could throw a really great party for all of our friends with delicious food and good music (the food and music were awesome though.) He brought us together to begin a life together - to co-labor with Him and each other for His glory.I am not at all saying weddings aren't wonderful and amazing, and I am also not saying that mine wasn't breathtaking to me in every way - I am saying what I have been saying (to drill into my own head) for more than a year now - the wedding itself is not what is so important and it should not be where the magic starts and stops.Like I said earlier, your wedding day does exactly what "they" all say it does - it absolutely flies by as quickly as it possibly can. There's so much pressure on it being "the best day of your life" that you try to remember every little detail.I had a few moments when I got completely overwhelmed and felt like I was in the movie "Click" and everything was being fast-forwarded. I couldn't take all the pictures I wanted or hug all the people I wanted or dance to all the songs I wanted - there just wasn't enough time and it really wrecked me for a minute. I had to take a second and escape to the bridal room. My husband and maid of honor followed me and I just told them I had to take a moment to reset and gather myself before I started crying. It was bizarre - it's like all the emotions from the entire day were about to spill out. I wanted to grab the DJ's microphone and announce, "I just want to say hello to everyone and I want everyone to stop right now and soak up this moment with me!!!" (Looking back, maybe I should have. No one would have been surprised.)Speaking of looking back, that's another thing I did and continue to do. As soon as we left the wedding, I was overwhelmed with so many emotions. I was so happy I married my best friend, I was sad to leave my parents, I was sad the day was over, I regretted not talking to everyone, I hoped the photographer got pictures of everything, I hoped everyone had fun, I wanted to redo it all again... it all built up and I sobbed the entire way to the hotel.I continued to ugly cry for about an hour - not at all because I was upset - I was just truly, truly overwhelmed. I was the humanization of the word "overwhelmed." My heart could not hold all the emotions. I called my mom and my dad and my brothers and my grandma to thank them and tell them I loved them. I texted people to apologize for not saying hello or taking a picture with them. Before I ever left the venue, I made my family and bridesmaids gather around so I could tell each of them bye individually while I cried. I was a basketcase!But in that moment, when I was supposed to be all smiles and have it all together, I was really me - caring too much, overthinking, and trying to stay in a moment longer than I was allowed. I was the real, raw me in my wedding dress, in a really cool car, with my husband of five minutes. And he looked at me like I had always prayed my husband would look at me on my wedding day.We drove away and laughed at my mascara running down my face and talked about how perfect the night was. We got back to the hotel and ate the breakfast for dinner from the wedding that was packed away in a to-go box for us and I continued to cry ugly and happy tears. He held me for a while and let me get it all out. He loved me in the most vulnerable moment. I had envisioned my wedding night going a little differently, and I can only imagine he did too, but it was so very perfect in the strangest way.People laugh really hard when we tell them the story, but we also look at each other with a look that only we know and only we will ever understand because to us, that night was so us in every single way and it was the start of what we knew was going to be an incredible love story. And no one will ever get it. It's the ultimate inside joke.I do still look back and dwell on things that I thought went wrong or things that I wish we could've done or moments I wish would have happened, but that's life. There are no do-overs and time is the same for everyone. There will always be things we wish we could change, and we will never be able to. And it's weird because when other people recall the day, they don't recall one single bad thing or moment you missed - they only remember the beauty and the fun and the joy. That's life, too. No one looks at you and sees what is messed up or what should have been, they see the beauty that's there and the love story you're telling.And life goes on. Your wedding day probably won't be the last day of your life. There is no doubt it is a major highlight. It is a day I will cherish forever. I will look at photos and watch videos a million times and remember different happy things every single time. And your day won't be like anyone else's - AND THAT IS OK. Your day is YOUR day. Your life is YOUR life. We cannot compare the highlights from other people's wedding photos to the things we think went wrong at ours just like we can't compare someone's Instagram "highlight reel" to our every day mess-ups. As my husband says about everything, "It's all good baby baby." (I think that's a Notorious BIG quote.) But seriously, it's just all good. There are so many special things about every person and there are so many special things about every person's wedding day. And if everyone in the world doesn't notice the special little details, it really doesn't matter as long as you do.

We cannot compare the highlights from other people's wedding photos to the things we think went wrong at ours just like we can't compare someone's Instagram "highlight reel" to our every day mess-ups.

The days after your wedding day are the days when the vows kick in. Your promises have to become actions and you start walking through life with another person right by your side at all times.Our honeymoon was a dream in every way, but my husband got food poisoning the night before our day-long excursion from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. Instead of doing what I probably would have done and call off the trip to lay in bed and be sick, he insisted we go because he knew how badly I wanted to go. He vowed to go on adventures with me and he wasn't going to break his promise. (I, however, did not do so great on the "in sickness and in health" thing as I slept through his midnight sickness and got cranky with him for waking me up - I have prayed about it, don't worry.)Even the honeymoon days weren't our best days. Because the days got better.Every time someone asks us how marriage is, we can't even contain our joy when we say, "It really is the best thing ever." And we mean it.I ran into a precious friend about two weeks into my marriage and she asked how it was. When I told her how unbelievably fun and exciting it was she asked if we had lived together before we got married. When I said no, she said, "I think that is so special and probably has a lot to do with the newness and excitement you have." And I couldn't agree more.I don't say that to shame anyone who lived together or is living together before marriage. We are NOT perfect and messed up allllll the way down our road to marriage. I say that to say, when you are faithful in the small things that God has called you to do, even when they are hard, and even when you mess up, He really does show His faithfulness in big ways.We struggled with temptations just like every other human, but we kept running the race and pushing through by clinging to His promises for us - we knew something beautiful was on the other side, and we didn't know exactly what, but we knew it was going to be good. That's an exact picture of life - we may struggle and fail, but we press on and cling to His promises knowing there is something breathtakingly beautiful on the other side, and we don't know what it is exactly, but that's why we rely on faith.Our marriage is resting entirely on that faith and on His word. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have lasted a single day.Our wedding verse was Colossians 2:7: "Let your roots grow down into Him and your lives be built on Him," and that is exactly what we have set out today. We have to be rooted in Him to ever grow and see the beautiful fruits of what He has planned. And that is true in singleness and in marriage. It's just true always.

Colossians 2:7: Let your roots grow down into Him and your lives be built on Him.

A month in and we are already seeing our tree grow - a little at a time, but growth is growth. Does that mean we are the most perfect, mushy couple who smiles lovingly at each other all the time and never fights? HA! We fight and pick at each other all the time - sometimes silly fights and sometimes serious ones, but they all end the same; they all end with us loving each other and figuring each other out a little more.Marriage is a lot about discovery - discovering who the person you married is at the core. Even if you thought you knew before you married them, you can always know more. People are everchanging, evergrowing, and always anxious to be learned - that's part of loving them.I didn't know my husband when I said, "I do," like I know him even a month later. How could I have known in that moment what joy was to come? I didn't at all. I wrote my vows and I made my promises and I meant every word, but I'd mean it a hundred times more if I said it right now than I did on that day. And I guarantee, people who have been married 50 years would say the same thing times 50. They said, "I do," on the best day of their lives, but they kept saying, "I do," every day after that, and even on the hard days, every day got better.Even on the hardest days of my short marriage, it gets better. I say that not to brag (although I could brag on how my husband treats me all day, and I do all the time) - I say that to encourage you if you're single and patiently waiting for marriage, if you're fighting for your marriage, if you've ended a marriage, or even if you never want a marriage. I say it to anyone and everyone to remind you that the best is always yet to come when you're walking with Christ - the day you said, "I do," to Him doesn't compare to the joy that is to come.

I say it to anyone and everyone to remind you that the best is always yet to come when you're walking with Christ - the day you said, "I do," to Him doesn't compare to the joy that is to come.

Keep saying, "I do," and keep fighting to keep your promises to Him and watch Him spoil you and treat you like the Queen or King that you are.So, no, my wedding day was not the best day of my life because every day since then has been better and better, and I have a feeling it keeps getting even better if I keep saying yes to love and truth.