As the wedding draws closer, you begin to feel more anxious, you find yourself worrying more about all of the little details. Will I remember my vows? Is everyone going to arrive on time? Am I going to fit into that suit/dress? Weddings are momentous, and unfortunately, the bigger the occasion, the more stress that comes along with it. If you’re prone to anxiety attacks, this can get downright out of hand rather quickly.
This gets more complicated when people equate getting anxiety attacks over their upcoming wedding to cold feet. It is entirely possible for the two to be mutually exclusive. You can be having anxiety attacks as the wedding draws closer and your brain will trick you into thinking it’s cold feet. Elli Thompson Purtell shared her own experiences parsing these two concepts over at Offbeat Bride. We highly recommend the insightful read.
One of the “lightbulb” moments that Elli had is when she spoke with her father about her anxiety. She then came to realize that, like it or not, the wedding was happening so there was no use in fighting it. Feelings of anxiety won’t necessarily help or hurt anything but yourself.
Like many wedding tropes, we can thank Hollywood and modern media for equating cold feet to the mass of anxiety that hits both men and women as a wedding draws closer. Think about it. How many films have you seen where the bride realizes they’re not meant to be with the person they’re marrying or (usually in the case of the groom) realize that the women getting married “is the one” and leads to a final moment of high drama right at the wedding.
In seeing these images, we’re taught that any stress before or during a wedding is tied to our subconscious trying to hint to us that we’re making a mistake. This isn’t always true. In fact, the anxiety could (and probably is) directly related to any number of stressors that encompass a wedding. Things like fear of public speaking, fear that something will go wrong during the ceremony or even just trying to digest the magnitude that something this big is happening here and now can get scary. Not everyone is built to handle these in a cavalier manner, and more importantly, that’s okay.
We’ve talked about tips for handling wedding days nerves in the past. We hope those tips and Mrs. Purtell’s personal tips are able to help in any way they can.
