The Perfect Wedding Planner With the Failing Marriage

Attending a wedding while your own marriage falls apart is one of the most emotionally conflicted experiences possible. Now imagine doing that every weekend.

Illustrations by Danielle Chenette

It’s sophomore year of college and the air is full of possibility in Pittsburgh. I spent the summer healing from a breakup by stuffing whole muffins into my mouth at three a.m. and watching “Love Actually” on repeat. I’m ready for a fresh start.

I’ve arrived on campus with a head full of dreams and a notebook full of resolutions. I’m going to steer clear of the heartbreaking frat boy type who filled my foolish freshman year, and I’m going to embrace life. Live in the moment! Be spontaneous! Say yes! I’m wearing my first pair of expensive shoes, army green boxing kicks, and I feel like a fighter on my walk to class. On the sidewalk, I step on the chalked outline of an exclamation point. I moonwalk to read, “free bubble tea!” and immediately detour to follow a path of colorful chalk arrows. Yes!

The arrows bring me to the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen: tall, reserved, with hair like an anime character. He holds out a bubble tea, and I smile from ear to ear. He is not the heartbreaking type. He’s the caring, giving, love-you-till-you-die type. With truly great hair.

We will spend every day together. When he’s down, I’ll tirelessly work to make him smile. When I’m sick, he’ll make me honey-ginger water and watch “Love Actually” with me. He will ask me to marry him. I will say yes.

I adjust my lemon yellow dress and teeter through the church doors. I’m the first of five bridesmaids to go down the aisle, and I smile from ear to ear. I hope it will distract from the fact that I am not gifted at walking in heels. Behind my smile is a nagging question, and not just about whether or not I will face-plant before I reach the altar: I am also wondering if anyone sees my presence here as bad luck. I wonder if I do. I can’t help but feel that I have no business participating so intimately in the union of two people, when my own union is in the process of falling apart.

A month ago I hosted a bridal shower for today’s starry-eyed bride. It ended in a hurry, because my husband and I had to have a talk that day. He wanted to know if I was in love with someone else. The talk exploded into an outpouring of all the problems that had been quietly hiding in the past eight years of togetherness. After an emotional few hours, I decided it would be best for me to sleep elsewhere that night. I haphazardly packed a bag and went to stay in a nearby Marriott. I approached the hotel’s front desk still in my bridal shower hostess attire: black ballerina skirt, pink top, and pompadour up-do, mascara streaks running from eyelashes to collarbone. When they asked how many nights I planned to stay, the words “I don’t know” caught in my throat.

Walking with the other bridesmaids, I shake my head like an Etch A Sketch. I need to focus on the bride. The violinist switches from Bach to Pachelbel. All eyes to the back: My friend in blush pink gown and long veil steps carefully down the aisle, flushed cheeks and romance hair. At the altar, the groom’s eyes fill with nothing but his bride’s face. He looks like he can hardly keep still; I half expect him to leap out of place to accompany her and her father for the remainder of the processional.

I remember walking down a church aisle with my dad once too, towards the boy I had spent six years with, and with whom I expected to spend sixty more. “Something” by the Beatles was playing, and my groom made this cute face, a kind of exaggerated purse of the mouth that made his lips disappear. We laughed when we saw it in photos later. He said it was his way of trying not to cry. We called it his “Tria’s Walking Down the Aisle” Face, and made a Facebook album dedicated to imitating it all over the world. We hung a photo of it in the house we bought in Cupertino, our sunny, idyllic Northern California suburb, chock-full of bubble tea. The world seemed made for us.

That was just shy of two years ago. Now it’s another couple’s turn to exchange vows – the bride’s voice, even and sure, the groom choking up on “as long as we both shall live.” They are looking into each other’s eyes and seeing forever. They are making promises, harder to keep than they can possibly know. Promises that I haven’t been able to uphold. My heart is heavy with guilt, but today is not about me.