15. The joy of being single at a wedding
This past weekend I stood at the altar as I watched my twin brother commit to spending the rest of his life as a HUSBAND; a forever partner to my now sister Sarah. Daniel and Sarah, CONGRATULATIONS. 💚 I loved celebrating your love this weekend, and the chairlift ride to your wedding at the top of the mountain was epic.
I planned to write about how happy I am for my brother (which I am!) but instead my brain has been captured by my reflections on the intensity of being single at weddings.
A genuine question:
Can we go through someone else’s major life milestones without getting existential about our own?
In my own experience attending weddings, I spend about half the event thinking about the people involved, and half the wedding thinking about myself. I find my wedding fun to daydream about. Who will my bridesmaids be? What kind of setting will I choose? What will the speeches be like? But it’s one thing to daydream about my wedding and another to daydream about my marriage. One is a party, one is living with ANOTHER PERSON FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE… 🙈
Despite not having made a life long commitment to someone, I arrived at my brother’s wedding in a relatively confident place. I am feeling more beautiful and comfortable in my body, I am dating again, I am excited about building my business, and I am taking care of myself with a chronic illness.
Yet, I have decided going to a wedding single is like getting a thin inescapable layer of loneliness poured on top of you. It’s not really a choice, it’s just in the air. The longer I was in this environment I became increasingly insecure about not having a romantic partner by my side.
Destination weddings (especially when you are in the bridal party) feel to me like summer camp…this small community forms to support the bride and groom over the course of a few days, and for this short period of time, no one else outside the community matters. People gossip about who came with who, speculate about which single people could be a good match, and discuss who isn’t getting along.
Naturally, all the single folk start gravitating toward each other to find connection and shed some of that loneliness. Which usually involves reminiscing about past breakups and discussing what marriage even means. This was all the more funny for me to navigate as the groom’s twin sister, because I was one of the only single women at this wedding, and I had already kissed multiple of the wedding guests in high school. 😂😬 Yikes…what a time.
*Me with my two first cousins Leah and Sarah. The single ladies of Daniel and Sarah’s wedding. 💚
Over the course of this “summer camp” I reconnected with old friends, hung out with family, gave an amazing speech at the rehearsal dinner (if I do say so myself), and did some serious flirting. The best part about flirting at summer camp is that the practicalities don’t matter. You don’t need to discuss who lives where, or how any of this could work in the real world; it’s all context dependent.
I bantered, shared some dances, hugged for a little too long, and returned stares that lingered. I couldn’t really tell what part of it was genuine, and what part was the growing desire within me to feel intimacy in the context of love being celebrated. It became a fun will I, won’t I in my head? Nothing long term was on the table, but wouldn’t it be nice to share a short summer camp fling?
I weighed that against knowing that me kissing my brother’s friend at my brother’s wedding weekend would create a family heirloom story I would never live down (reference point: me having to awkwardly reunite with boys I kissed in high school). Plus, I am sober because alcohol hurts my Crohn’s laden stomach, so I wouldn’t have any excuse for my behavior…I would have to own it.
It was seriously tempting. But, towards the end of the night one of the men I was talking to asked, “So what are you looking for now?”
I thought about this for a second and then said some version of, “Myself.” 💚
Alas, I decided to use my grown-ass woman wisdom, take myself to bed, and let the cute boys pass me by. I made myself do the work of holding my own fragile single-heart together rather than using someone else and creating chaos in my life.
Eventually, camp ends. It’s sunday morning, and after a night of tension and almosts, everyone packs up and heads out of the hotel back to their lives. Leaving me to sit in the lobby, thinking what in the world just happened, and did any of this flirting and connection matter?
In reclaiming my own joy, I have decided flirting does matter. I was told that me being a flirt is something I need to “watch”. But flirting feels powerful, like dancing with life.
I have decided a woman who flirts for her own pleasure, is a woman who is free.
I am also becoming more intentionally open to the in-between. I used to only value things where I knew I could give 100%; the equivalent of dating someone for marriage, or not dating them at all. (To be honest I am still working on letting this all or nothing thinking go). But as I continue to prioritize my own joy I have found there is a lot of connection in the middle.
Being open to life often means being open to mess; being open to beautiful moments that last a weekend not a lifetime.
To the men that flirted with me this past weekend, thank you for sharing this milestone weekend with me, you made my life more fun. ☀️
For anyone else going through a similar period of mess and spontaneity in their love life, I salute you fellow traveler. It’s a mess out here, there are hard days, and days when it’s really fricken fun.
Joy looks different on all of us.
Happy Sunday!
P.S. I am pretty certain my brother’s friends are not the blog reading type, so I suspect none of them will read this. Therefore it will just be a secret between me and this team/the internet that I wrote about them. 💚🤷🏻♀️🙈 But also if they do…thats kind of fun and chaotic too. 🙃
P.P.S. If you need to escape into a teenage rom-com (that feels like a simpler time) where the boy is unbelievably hot, moody, and unavailable, and the girl is spunky, insecure, and finding herself, watch the summer I turned pretty. I started and finished it within 24 hours. 🤗
Saucy!
Honest!
And wise beyond your years...as always what a great read...