There is one detail that is so important during wedding planning that it can affect everyone around you during that special time. This one detail, if overlooked, can bring ruin to the opportunity to celebrate with loved ones, to share true love, and to have any sort of time worth remembering. Later, this overlooked detail will slowly but surely erode the relationship between you and your spouse.
What am I talking about? I'll give you a hint. It's a behavior, a sort of personality detail. Often portrayed on the movie screen as a sign of success and being in control, it's a form of interpersonal cancer that is as insidious as it is deceiving. The person who possesses this flaw is rarely aware of it, as it creates a sort of superior feeling as he or she wields it against anyone who dares cross his or her path.
Born of selfishness, this personality detail manifests itself in episodes of loss of self control, irrational thinking, accusations, and temper tantrums. It fails to show basic courtesy, kindness, forgiveness, or mercy. It does not give the benefit of the doubt before it understands a situation. It does not wait to lash out. And after it mistakenly does, it does not apologize for the damage it has done. This is why it slowly destroys good times like weddings, relationships, and even marriages. It's a simple thing, known since childhood, but rarely rewarded in the "me" and "now" culture in which we live. It is quite simply, impatience.
Weddings are a time of stress - no question about it. Some of it is good stress and some of it is unnecessary bad stress, but it all takes a toll. If you didn't have patience going into this life change, you won't find it in the midst of a throng of wedding deadlines and budgets interspersed with the rigors of daily life, family needs, personal hopes, and the ups and downs of relationships with your spouse to be and others.
If we can't muster up a little patience for the short window of time surrounding one of life's most noble events - marriage - how will we ever find it again? It surely will not find us in more difficult times, when it is truly needed. But it's not as simple as that.
Patience or impatience is merely a symptom of a larger condition. The person that does not show patience with others or circumstances is a person that is putting himself or herself first. The person that shows patience is putting someone else first. It's as simple as that same thing we've been taught, if not shown, since childhood. And a marriage can't last past the first turn without tons and tons of it.
We have a tendency to compartmentalize our flaws. We let ourselves believe that we can display patience to one person that means something to us but not to the stranger at the grocery store checkout register or to the customer service person on the phone. Over the short term, we can even find examples that bolster this claim.
But the truth is far different. If your fiancé or spouse hears you behave this way towards others, he or she knows that the day may come that he or she will fall out of favor with you and be subject to the same treatment, even if it's temporary. Worse, he or she might be getting the idea/fear that no one means more to you than you, even if that leads to divorce. Right there, you've broken the vows to love, honor, and cherish that you made or will make on that wedding day.
If it seems like I'm making a big deal out of a small detail, it's probably true. Most problems start small and grow bigger unless checked. If you don't check impatience, and more importantly self, early in the wedding planning process it will grow. You'll find yourself lashing out at family, friends, vendors, planners, and ultimately your fiancé. Masked as the desire to "make everything perfect" or "get what I want, paid for, etc.", this nasty disease called impatience will tarnish your wedding memories and at worst, ruin them and a relationship or two along the way. People will learn to steer clear of you and deep down inside, you'll know why.
If you've already gone down this road, turn your back on it and head the other way. Forgive, forget, and if you were wronged, don't require anyone that's offended you to fix anything. Let your forgiveness be pure. If you're not a Christian, this may be foreign to you. If you are a Christian, it shouldn't be foreign at all. In either circumstance, the behavior advice still applies. It applies because it's the only way that a wedding (from planning to celebration) can be an example of what the marriage it's showcasing is supposed to be - an example of pure, unselfish, patient, sacrificing, honoring, cherishing until death do us part….love.
