I have been married exactly 0.0 times but from what I guess, and from what I gather from other people, the following is (unqualified) advice I’d give to someone just before their wedding day…
(In 3 days, I will be able to say I have been married exactly 1.0 times)
- Something will go wrong. Don’t expect everything to go right, because it won’t. At least then if something does go wrong, your fragile state isn’t shattered by an unexpected event. And if it somehow miraculously does all go perfectly… great. I’m happy to be wrong about that.
- Slow down. One of Israel’s greatest ever leaders, Moshe Dayan, was once on his way to an important event and he was pushing it for time. He said to his driver, ‘We’re late. So, slow down.’
If you hurry up and to do things at double speed, you skip the basics and that’s when you make errors. And these errors can be huge, and can take much longer to fix than just simply slowing down.
- Take breaks. Everyone says that their wedding flies by, so my fiancee and I made a pact to have ‘love breaks’ every now and then. Yep, I’m a lameass married person already.
Over the next couple days, at random time, we are going to take a few seconds at least, to stop, hug each other, kiss and just pause and be present with each other.
Even with all the stress or last-minute preparations, in-law related drama, and things not going as planned, I’ve realised that this week is the week we will look back on, as the ‘Remember, that last week before we got married?… That week went by so quick…’ week. So just taking a break and being present with each other, reminds us that what matters is right now and being with each other. It slows things down.
- Take mental pictures. It all goes by so fast, and there’ll be moments you want to remember that are impossible to capture on camera.
- Your routine matters MORE now. Doing the usual things you do, is especially important when there’s chaos around. It’s that thing of ‘If you can’t find 5 minutes in your days to meditate, you need 2 hours.’ Times of craziness are when you especially need to go back to your core and remember who you are and what you usually do.
- The small things are the big things. My fiancee has gone 2 hours South of me for the last 2 days before the wedding, so the next time I see her will be when she walks down the stairs at the ceremony in her wedding dress (which, by the way, I cannot wait to see). She remembered all the big things – the dress, shoes, jewellery etc., but I reminded her to remember her toothbrush, usual pyjamas, spare contact lenses, breath mints (Her breath usually smells fine, but if she eats a nasty kebab on the day and is about to walk down the aisle, there’s gonna be nothing in the world that she needs more than breath mints. More advice: Don’t eat a nasty kebab just before you’re getting married). In the intensity of some big time event, with so many moving parts, it’s easy to forget to do the simple things.
- And… simplify. Remove as many potential things that could go wrong as you can. That’s why we chose to do the photo shoot close to the venue. Who’s to say if the photographer took us far, we didn’t get in a car accident, or my wife’s dress doesn’t get trod on by some stupid kids or whatever.
Regular cars have hundreds of moving parts and break down all the time. Tesla motors have, I think, under 10 moving parts. Which do you think is more likely to fail under stress? Exactly. The less moving parts, the better.
I could be wrong about every one of these, but I’ll only know for sure after Sunday, when I officially become a lame, boringass married man. The lame, boringass husband of my dream girl.