The best advice I can give

Five months ago, I took my most important step yet as a bride-to-be, and I wanted to share it with you all.

Shortly after I got engaged, I developed a dangerous habit that soon became an all-encompassing addiction. It only took a few months for me to realise I was a junkie, but going cold turkey was still tough. However, I am happy to announce that I have now kicked the habit. I can say with total confidence that wedding magazines are out of my life for good.

Since I took this step, wedding planning has become a far more peaceful (mundane) process where I do not wake in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat and worrying that I haven’t sent my final design to the local carpenter for them to whittle it into a garden chess game. With each piece modelled on the members of me and D’s famillies, obvs.

This weekend, a friend sent me a link to Victoria Coren’s column in The Guardian, in which she acknowledges the danger that lies within the pages of bridal magazines:

“When the time comes for your one-off purchase of bridal advice, you will find the magazines are light years ahead of you, filled with twists you didn’t know you needed. This month’s You and Your Wedding, for example, asks the question: ‘What’s hot in wedding biscuits right now?'”

In fact, the whole wedding industry is built on twists you didn’t know you needed.

I once advised any brides-to-be to give wedding fayres (fairs?) a wide berth, after my one visit to such a jamboree left me wanting to curl up in the foetal position and hide behind a rail displaying chair sashes in 600 almost identical shades of green. During this visit, an exhibitor specialising in wedding entertainment was unable to hide his disgust when we told him that, as evil brides, we would not be paying to hire one of his magicians, jazz singers, palm readers or even his chocolate fountain. Prior to attending, I had no idea such things were even expected at a wedding, but by the time I left I felt I was letting everyone – including myself – down.

Wedding magazines proved to have much the same impact, although the effect was a slow drip, each page subtly informing you that you must buck up your act, with subliminal headlines like “Top 10 things every bride MUST have for her wedding this year”. And all I had wanted was to look at pictures of pretty dresses.

It wasn’t long before the panic levels started to rise. There were the features about flowers, which, as I’m getting married in February may as well have just read “don’t bother”. There were the pages about cake, with buffets of homemade sponges and professionally-baked works of culinary art both held up as THE cake for 2012. There was advice on hair and makeup that used pictures of glowing brides, some of whom were lavished with additional praise in the form of a caption screeching: “LOVE THIS LOOK”. There was no explanation as to why some brides were worthy of this shout-out and others weren’t. Then there were the 30 pages of dresses that quickly start to look the same and that are broken down to nonsensical categories like “Bubble-gum pop with a sweetheart neckline”, “City chic in elegant silk” and “Embrace you inner Edwardian lady in lace”. So much choice and so much pressure to get it right.

Even the advice articles, which are supposed to reduce stress, actually caused it to rise. Everything you thought was simple about wedding planning you soon learn is the opposite. For instance, I had assumed sorting a guestbook was easy – you know, just buy a guestbook. However, instead the friendly writers gently informed me that guestbooks are sooo 1999 and that to really make sure people remember my day I should bake an old fashioned rural village out of gingerbread with icing sugar snow and a post box at the centre, through which guests could post hollowed-out Smarties shells with a tiny scroll inside, upon which was etched their message.

One feature on how to pose for official photographs told me to stand at a 45 degree angle to the camera, stick my arms out slightly to avoid bulging, tip my face to the sky to banish a double chin, cross my legs to make them look slimmer, put one hand on my hip, hold the bouquet in the other at my waist, while also clasping my hands together (without gripping), keep my spine straight but slouch my shoulders, smile at the camera while looking at my groom – and all so I can look natural. If I actually do all of these at once I fear I’ll end up looking like this:

Finally, and most terrifyingly, there were the pages and pages of real weddings. These are the worst, as they’re the examples that prove the rule that if you do not release 60 white doves at your ceremony YOU HAVE FAILED AS A BRIDE AND AS A WOMAN.

It’s easy to read these magazines without getting dragged into the propaganda at first, but before long you’re like the girl who went to the races just so she could wear a pretty hat but returned home broke after spending her life savings backing a horse called Maythehorsebewithyou. What I mean is, it’s all too easy to get sucked in. As Coren points out: “The loud message, broadcast directly from these authoritative voices to [a bride-to-be’s] nervous and suggestible little heart, is that her wedding is supposed to be original, creative and different from everyone else’s.”

She’s right. Essentially, what all the articles in these magazines suggest, albeit in different ways and with different glossy pictures, is that there are things every bride must have at her wedding but that, equally, her wedding must be completely unique. It means that the things “every bride MUST have” you can’t have because someone else has already had them and your wedding has to be different, but if you don’t have them your day will suffer for it, so you should have them but people will think you’re a thought thief if you do. And so it spirals.

Of course, it’s not a competition. But, if you already have such a competitive nature you’ve had to stop playing Monopoly as someone always gets hurt, it’s impossible not to feel the green-eyed monster’s influence when you’ve just flipped through 40 real wedding stories, all proclaiming to be the best ever and all peppered with editorial captions reading: “Swoon”, “LOVE this””, “OMG” and “I just died!” My competitive side has been roused, and yet my defeatist side knows I can never win against a wedding that took place in a circus big top.

There was only one way to end this vicious circle – remove wedding magazines from my life. So, I have put the glossies down and stepped away from the women’s lifestyle section.

I no longer know what’s hot in weddings. I have no idea whether next year I should have wool pompoms or garden pinwheels, caged doves or miniature ponies, cake pops or a Cajun finger buffet. More importantly, I don’t care. Stopping reading these magazines has made me feel like me again, and not just a bride-to-be.