A No-Destination Wedding

I can honestly say that I never actually thought I would find a man I loved enough to marry.  After all, forever is a long time.  I couldn’t ever imagine liking someone enough to want to spend years, let alone forever, with him.  I never felt that marriage was in the cards for me, and I guess, that turned out to be true, just not for the reasons I imagined. 

The fact is, that I did find someone I wanted to spend forever with, he just didn’t want to spend forever with me.  Either way, armed with the misconceived notion that he actually loved me, we began wedding planning.  Actually, I began wedding planning.   As an event planner, I had some idea of what I wanted.  Even though I never thought I would get married, like most girls, I had vague dreams of what it would look like.  What I really wanted was to be surrounded by all of my family, the people that matter most to me.  Only, most of my family lived far away….a place I will not name.

When we finally decided to move forward with wedding planning, I knew I wanted a destination wedding.  Nothing big, or expensive, just a small celebration with all the people WE cared about.  That was my second mistake.  The first was thinking he actually loved me, the second was thinking he gave a damn about those most important to me.  That should have been a deal breaker, but like I said before, he was great at making me feel guilty and saying the right thing in those moments.  He was a damn good liar, and I was a naive fool.   The only people he actually cared about were himself and his family. 

So, when I presented the idea of a destination wedding, and painted what I thought was a picture no sane person would shoot down, he did.  He explained that my wonderful scenario was selfish and unrealistic, but he would entertain it only if we could pay for HIS family to fly and stay there.  His “compromise” didn’t account for my family at all.  They had to pay their own way.  Talk about being UNFAIR!  So again, feeling guilty, and being the unselfish person that I am, I gave up what I wanted for him.  You might think that it was the right thing to do and the only fair solution, and at that particular point in time, I would have agreed.  BUT, you don’t know how this story ends, and I do.  Keep reading and you’ll understand just how unfair things turned out to be for me.