If it’s not one thing…

It’s my mother…

I have been dealing with a lot of emotions lately. First of all, I am getting married. There is a lot of joy involved in that. The planning is all but done, the dress purchased, we have the rings… I am deeply in love with my fiancé.

But for some reason I don’t feel special.

Isn’t that the line? All brides are supposed to feel special? Well, I don’t. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, except to say that I feel largely inconsequential and I know that shouldn’t be.

Before anyone laughs me off as a Bridezilla (ever seen that show? Fascinating…) let me assure you that I am not. I did not demand anything, and I still don’t. I found a dress that makes me happy, but it will not break my heart if I don’t wear it. I made my own invitations and asked for no help (and didn’t complain – except once when my dear fiancé accidentally spilled soda on one exterior envelope…) I browse the web when I have time, have idly made a list of songs I want to put on my iPod for the day (no DJ here…). My maid of honor is actually my brother (probably shouldn’t call him a maid…), and I have told him he can wear whatever makes him comfortable. I will walk down the aisle to whatever the chapel plays, carrying the bouquet that they provide. I am getting married in Las Vegas, because I want people to have a blast and a mini break. I am about as easy going as any bride has ever been.

And I would know. You see, aside from an avid fan of shows like “Bridezillas”, “Who’s wedding is it, anyway?”, and “Platinum Brides” (I am, after all, fairly girly) I also spent several years as a wedding photographer. I have seen what becomes of seemingly normal women as their wedding day approaches. I have been yelled at, chastised, cried on, and laughed with, all by the same woman on the same day. This woman will sit with a pretty little smile on as I take here photo and two seconds later starts screaming at her best friend about an imaginary spot on her dress. I have learned to avoid these women.

I have seen it with my own friends too. Self-possessed women suddenly become wedding-headed when a diamond ring is slipped on their finger. One girl I knew in college, who had good taste up until she became a bride-to-be, actually dressed me in a pepto-bismol pink sheath skirt and strapless corseted top. There was a giant bow across my ass, which emphasized its enormity in the grand scheme. Her own dress, by contrast to her columned bridesmaids was comprised of all the tulle that was in existence at the time. It had to be, because this girl (big to start with, big-birds of a feather flock together?) appeared to be twice the size of a city bus. I could have made a fortune selling advertising space on her dress. (I’m not kidding, it was so big, that her tiny father was almost covered from the waist down in his daughter’s skirts as they walked down the aisle. The result from the altar was a strange two headed creature approaching to the strains of Handel, one head dressed in a tux, the other in the rest of the dress.) She went nuts when she became engaged. It’s as though something inside her snapped when she realized that she got to plan a wedding. She should have been stopped. Of course, we didn’t say a word. She was the bride, and this was her moment.

I’ve lost track of her over the years. But I know that on that day and the days leading up to that day, she glowed. She was special. She was The Bride.

So why, now that I am The Bride, do I not feel special?

You might think I exaggerate, and part of me agrees. The larger part of me, however, realizes that perhaps I don’t feel special because no one else in my life seems to recognize that (for a little while at least) I am supposed to BE special.

To be fair, most of this feeling has come from my dealings with my mother, ever since I got engaged.

I want my mother to be a part of this process with me. I almost need it on a base level of my being. I value my relationship with her, but lately I’ve started to question it. She doesn’t want to be involved at all, and when I have finally been able to get her to take a day to go, oh, dress shopping, she finds ways to sabotage it. She denies this vehemently, and tells me that it is all in my mind. But I can’t shake the feeling that she is actively trying not to spend time with me.

For example, dress shopping. I asked for weeks for my mother to come dress shopping with me, finally getting her to agree to come one Saturday a few months back. We started out at a coffee shop. I wanted to bond with her. As soon as we sat down, my mother launched into a monologue about a woman connected to my family. (It’s actually a messy story that I don’t want to get involved in here. I don’t like this woman at all, and prefer that she not be mentioned, much less discussed around me. She is an awful human being who has done nothing but bad things for and to my family. ‘Nuff said.) My mother knows that I won’t talk about this woman, and knows that I prefer not to. I have told her as much, and she respected that right up until dress shopping day. For three hours, I listened, disgusted as my mother dwelt on every aspect of this woman’s life. My coffee cup was empty, my stomach had started to growl, and I was really wanting to hit at least one shop before they closed. When I finally started to say, “Let’s go,” her phone rang. It was my father wanting lunch. My mother rushed home (or more precisely had me rush her home) to fix him lunch. I sat in my parents apartment for another two hours before finally realizing that shopping that day was a lost cause.

Take shopping attempt number 2. After a couple of weeks, I got her to agree to go again on a Saturday. I keep picking Saturdays because 1) my mother goes to church on Sundays and 2) Many of the shops I wanted to check were high end consignment stores, closed on Sundays. I called to verify what time I should pick her up the night before, and she informed me that we were supposed to go shopping on Sunday. You understand, she had made plans to go visit my brother on Saturday. She couldn’t possibly go shopping with me that day. Later that afternoon (much later – shops would have been closed later) she called and said that she was now ready to go shopping. I told her we would reschedule.

Attempt # 3 was called off because she forgot we were supposed to go that weekend and went RV shopping with my father instead.

Attempt # 4 was ruined because she wanted to bring my 9 year old half-brother and didn’t see a problem with that. We didn’t get past the book store at the coffee shop.
Attempt # 5 didn’t happen because she “couldn’t leave her roast”.
I didn’t try for #6.

Do you want to know what the loneliest experience in the world is? Shopping alone in the mall for your wedding dress. I have never felt so out of place and so abandoned in my entire life. I actually had to get a pretzel to keep myself from bursting into tears.
I decided to buy a gown on line. At least then I could shop from the comfort of my own home.

It isn’t all about shopping for the dress either. Originally, we were planning a wedding here in my home town of Denver. I wanted her to go with us to look at some of the sites. She put us off or refused or said “I’ll see it another time.” Like when? The wedding day? I wanted to get her opinion on flowers. “Whatever you pick will be fine.”

Finally, we decided to move the wedding to Las Vegas. My mother despised this idea and wasn’t shy about expressing it. Of course, when the wedding was in town she couldn’t be bothered. Move it to Vegas and suddenly it cheapens a sacred moment. Everyone else was on board, so my Mother was out-voted. My father actually reminded her that when they got married, she wanted to elope to Las Vegas.

The other weekend, after asking if she could help me put together my wedding invitations, I brought the materials over to her place. She took the one I had addressed to her and put it aside. No exclamation can sufficiently express how disappointed I was. I was proud of my work. I made a beautiful, professional-looking invitation, and she didn’t even want to open it. When I pointed this out to her, she did open it, but tossed the insert aside with the garbage. I had to point this out to her too. When we sat down to actually do the assembly, she kept getting up and wandering into her kitchen. Ostensibly, she was checking on her menudo, but I will tell you as someone who cooks a hell of a pot of menudo – no checking is necessary until the tripe cooks. You can’t taste the broth until then anyway, so why worry. And it takes hours to do so. I could tell by the smell she had just put it on. She knows this. She’s the one who taught me to cook it.

She couldn’t care less. And that frustrated me and angered me and hurt me. The only time she perked up was when I finally gave in and told her that even though the guest list was small, she could invite her brothers and sisters. (For those who think me callus, allow me to explain. I don’t know my mother’s brothers and sisters, because they never visit or call or sent letters. I grew up in Denver, they lived in Boston, and if my mother had never brought us across country to see her family, I might have never known about them at all.) We were supposed to keep the guest list to under 30 people to keep costs down. My mother is the youngest of 7 that means that half of the entire guest list would be my mother’s relatives that I do not know… who never called me to say happy birthday, merry Christmas, feel better after your auto accident, or congratulations on your impending marriage. Who was my fiancé supposed to invite – no one? Are we supposed to tell our friends, sorry –we’ll send you a post card? What about my father’s even larger family that he insisted we NOT invite so as to have room for our closest friends???…. As soon as it was something she wanted to do, she became excited and animated. I have never seen this side of her.

Then the final straw. I brought my wedding dress out for her and my brother (of honor) to see. Remember, I picked it out all alone… I changed my mind about what to wear at least a dozen times, but now that I have my dress, I love it and any one who doesn’t can kiss my grits.

I put on my beautiful ivory gown, complete with necklace and earrings hand crafted especially for the occasion, and stepped into view. While my brother said “very nice, Dawn,” all I received from my mother was a disinterested “oh.”

Oh. That’s it. Her only daughter is getting married and all I get is “Oh.” Not hmmm, not OK, just Oh. One lousy syllable that spoke volumes about her indifference to my wedding, my dress, and my life. I went back in to change, heartbroken, and came out, only to hear my mother discussing that same woman whose conversation ruined my first dress shopping trip.
Well, that’s appropriate, I suppose – full circle. I can’t fault her consistency.

When I finally was able to get more than a monosyllabic response out of her, nothing nice was said. The color (ivory) wasn’t appropriate for my wedding. She thought I was going to wear green. The shape did nothing for me. I need something to cover my arms (I know that, at least. I stepped out of my brother’s bedroom with the explicit instructions to ignore my arms which will be encased in shawl). She kept dwelling on the color green (looks awful on my btw) and basically told me that I looked awful. She asked if I could have the dress dyed or otherwise altered. I made her get out of the car at the book store.

I called my fiancé and cried. We were supposed to go shopping for shoes. I was looking forward to having my mother involved in this one aspect of my life, but she has made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want that at all. As a result I feel lower than low, and depressed. I even started smoking again, briefly, but starting is starting all the same.

My fiancé thinks I should uninvite her, but I just can’t. I still want her to feel that this day is special.

I am probably, to quote my father, farting in the wind on this one.

But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.