Well, my wedding was Saturday. The days leading up to were madness, the morning/day-of was insane, but we made it, walked down the aisle, and are very happy together. But I can't get over all of the things that went wrong.
First of all, the entire time I had been working on DIY-ing this thing from the ground up, my bridesmaids and MOH were mostly absent. My mother and I constantly battle, so she wasn't any help at all. So, I sat mostly on my own doing everything. A few other friends stepped in eventually and said they would help out. We had meetings, made notes, and I made sure to write detailed instructions for the day-of when I couldn't be there.
Well, being the anti-Bridezilla completely backfired. I eventually had to call in the assistance of my future husband and groomsmen because nothing was getting done. One of my bridesmaids was hungover and barfed in my bathroom that morning, my MOH was barking orders at me to help her after I had had a total of 10 hours of sleep in the previous 3 days, and I still had a ton of stuff that needed to be finished at home.
Upon arriving at the venue nearly an hour and a half after we had planned (we were going to do pre-ceremony photos), I noticed so many things that were not done correctly. Balloons that were strung up outside had shrunken to shriveled up sacks, the lights inside of them were not turned on, the picnic tables were not spaced correctly, and many of them were bunched up together after we had made blueprints for where to put them, the after-ceremony confetti was by the front door and we would not be leaving the venue, the chalkboard ceremony sign was smeared and no one had bothered to tidy it up, the favors were on the cake table and hardly anyone bothered to take any, our toasting glasses were not on our table and eventually went missing, and our table backdrop was never placed behind our table. And I'm still missing our $25 cake knife (the serving knife broke) beacuse instead of following my instructions and putting important items in our car, people took it upon themselves to take home what they thought was important, or public guests (we had a live concert at a club) took them before no one packed up our stuff in time. And my MOH left early to go a birthday party.
So, while I had a good time, and feedback was positive, I still can't get it out of my head that people let me down. It wasn't until the groomsmen arrived that someone finally looked at my instruction list. "Oh, you mean she left explicitly detailed instructions with pictures? Why isn't anyone looking at this?!" And they were the primary ones to make sure our stuff was secured, even though this was not necessarily their responsiblity.
But now everyone (my girlfriends) thinks they worked SOOO hard, and that I'm being selfish and unappreciative because I'm disappointed. My sadness has been met with resounding opposition and anger, and I feel like I'm going to lose a few "friends" over this. I'm also quite succeptible to slipping into depression, and I feel like that has a lot to do with it. But no one is letting me grieve. I'm now a terrible person because I'm not happy. (Fortunately, my husband is supportive, and a better man that I could've ever hoped for.)
I'm seriously at a loss for what to do. Yes, I married by best friend and the love of my life, but that doesn't mean that I have to be thrilled with the way everything went. Yes, these people helped me, but they sure as hell didn't listen to me.