Dream weddings - literally!

thousandtrees

So, recently I've started to have a long string of dreams about weddings or relationships - and all of them involve men other than my FI! They follow a predictable pattern: I'm with a male friend or former love interest (these have ranged from completely platonic friend to primary school crush to my only other long term boyfriend), we're doing couple-y things or in fact actually getting married and everything is wrong. I'm always aware that I'm dreaming, but can't wake up and I'm always really upset that I'm not with my FI (I should also say that I'm really excited about our wedding and we have a great relationship).

Last night I actually had two separate ones. In one I was reunited with an old flame, and feeling trapped because he worked at Subway and didn't do anything but watch TV (a pretty accurate representation of our relationship at the time). In the dream, I spent a lot of time staring out the window into rainy weather, willing myself to wake up and feeling sad and lonely/missing my FI. In the other, I was going to my  wedding ceremony wearing Princess Di's wedding dress (you know the one, huge sleeves, massive satin skirt). At the door of the church, the heel of my shoe caught in the hem of the dress and as I tried to free it, the dress began to tear, until the top layers of it came right off and I walked up the aisle in just the underlayers and crinoline. At the altar I discovered I was marrying a longtime friend whom I kissed once at a party years ago, and was heartbroken about it. We're not even having a church wedding!!

Does anyone else experience bizarre wedding related dreams? Do any amateur dream interpreters have any insign into what my mental housekeeping processes are spitting out at me? After these dreams I always wake feeling sad. My FI are living apart at the moment because of my job so it's a really lonely way to spend the last few hours of a night. I have experienced minor cold feet a few times, but from what I've read, it's nothing out of the ordinary and always passes after a few hours.

Anyway, I just wanted to put all of that into writing and see if anyone else had experienced this. I've always been an unusually vivid dreamer, and these ones really take the (wedding) cake.

alynne1113

OMG I had the exact problem. In my dream I was ALWAYS marrying someone other than my DH, either an old bf, coworker, friend, and I always would get so upset in my dream because I didn't want to marry the person I was going to. And it always felt like there was someone else I should be marrying, sometimes I would remember DH and run out of the wedding in the dream sometimes not and I would be so devistated.

I don't know what it means but I understand how upsetting it is! Mine went away a few days prior to the wedding.

thousandtrees

Oh, thank you so much for telling me I'm not the only one!! I have been afraid to talk about it because I was worried someone would tell me I subconsiously wanted to marry someone else, which is so not true!

alynne1113

I actually told H about them when I was having them, cause I knew it didn't mean that I didn't want to marry him. He thought it was funny because, like you, the guys were always way out there (like a friend from jr. high that I haven't seen in 6 years) 

Phoenixashes

I too have had similar dreams and like PP's, I always feel that something is not right. I'm no dream expert, but the way I look at it is that my mind is playing out the 'would be's" with these other guys in less than perfect situations. It is as if the mind is reassuring me that my FI is the only one a real wedding will work out with. This has been my interpretation, and I hope it helps at least a little.

SilverSarahB

I, too, have had weird wedding dreams.  I think my weirdest one was that my fiance and my mom and planned the entire wedding so instead of going paintballing he drove me to the church and told me to put on my dress.   Then I yelled at him for depriving me of having the journey of figuring out what our wedding should be like and that there was no way in hell I was getting married by surprise in a octogonal shaped chapel in an orange dress.  Actually pretty entertaining.   Fiance didn't think so, until I prattled on about dream science...  (segue)

From my psych classes, it's not completely understood the different reasons that we dream, however, it is generally accepted that our minds are churning on things that we've experienced or thought about "recently" and kind of plugging them together without larger intention to it.  (Some believe that this is because our mind is playing out hypothetical scenarios so we know how to (or how to not) react if it ever happens in real life...I remember reading an article about an experiment on this theory that was interesting.)  While some psychologists and psychotherapists have hailed dreams some sort of unaltered gateway to the subconscious (I"m looking at you, Jung), most people KNOW that dreams are not quite that straght forward.  

So, from a research-based standpoint, it's SO not a big deal.  It would only be concerning if you woke up from such a dream and felt unease or anxiety with the thought that your dreams might be right and that it's telling you not to get married.  THEN you might have an argument for you subconscious trying to tell you something, not with your dream but with the way you feel after the dream. 

murtleturtle

I have dreamt that my brother, who has type 1 diabetes, was hypoglycemic and ate the entire wedding cake before we got to the reception. My sencond dream involved FI an dI driving to our wedding on the highway but it was gone due to a landslide and we slept in orange tents. Some woman showed up and said she could marry us. As I was walking to FI, this obese Mexican man had a heart attack and we were told that it was impossible for us to get married because it was a bad sign and after we got back to civilization, no one would marry us!