Planning a wedding has its own stresses and each Bride is triggered by different things. (9 times out of 10 it’s normally the Bride!)
The ‘planning’ of our wedding didn’t stress me/us. It was fun! Of course tricky at times having no wedding planner and contacting various people overseas. In Latin America everything is relaxed, so people did take a while to respond, said yes to pretty much anything and no deposits were ever needed but ultimately once we got used to it, we felt we didn’t need to worry. We both thought if the DJ or Band didn’t show, we had Spotify. If the photographer didn’t turn up, iPhone cameras are great and we all have them. And If the decoration didn’t go to plan, we were going to be in paradise so who even cares?! All we cared about was getting us, our family and friends there, the rest was just all part of the journey of planning a Wedding abroad.
So what did stress me? COVID. Rules changing. Taking on other peoples worries and stresses. Constantly worrying what others were thinking. And the thought of cancelling Wedding Party attempt number 3. Well, that was just another whole load of emotion.
November came and we were in Brazil finally! It had been two and half years since we had been and it had started to feel like we wouldn’t ever get to go again. Brazil was hit really hard with Covid! We had plans to get married there initially and sadly had to cancel twice. Ironically two months after cancelling Wedding attempt number two we were on a plane to Brazil! But I guess that’s just life at the moment, unpredictable and living each day week by week.
As soon as I stepped foot in São Paulo I felt free. I felt the tears fill my eyes as we had finally escaped England after what felt like we were trapped for far too long. In Brazil our diaries were full. Family visits, friend visits, dentist visit, beach visits, tattoo visit, shopping visits for mikes wedding attire, followed by a huge amount of eating and drinking (there was no wedding diet that was for sure!). Mikes nan was also turning 98, so we planned to see her a lot, which we did and of course we thought we would have loads of spare time to Wedding plan and make any finishing touches. We had moved our wedding to January, but this time in Belize (yes it was never going to be somewhere easy!). However, we found that every spare moment we had when in Brazil, we were either drunk, grabbing an hour in the sun or my head was hitting the pillow from exhaustion of listening and trying to understand all of the Portuguese.
So instead of wedding planning we embraced our time with family and friends and we said we would knuckle down on things when we got home… a month before the trip!
One morning in Brazil, Mike was scrolling the news and softly mentioned to me that there was a new Covid variant in the UK and most of Africa had been put on the red list. This then followed with a very negative phone call from my mum who seemed sure things were going to get bad again! My heart sunk… Selfishly, I couldn’t help but only focus on the wedding. And I felt so sick, thinking “I’m not sure if I can go through all of this again”. I scrolled the news constantly…”please tell me something positive” I prayed! Mikes mum kept telling me, if I think positively only positive things would happen. But I was so distracted and I couldn’t understand how we could possibly be back here again?!
After two amazing weeks in Brazil, I felt sad to leave but also anxious to get back to the UK and live in reality so I could be proven wrong about all my worries and concerns. But then we came back to a shit show! Omicron had spread like wildfire in the UK. People were panicking again, death rates were low but it was everywhere. I had frustratingly left Brazil where things seemed to be getting better to return to a country where fear had struck and being here was unbelievably depressing.
As weeks passed, Mike kept telling me we needed to finalise all the wedding planning. But even the mention of the word made me feel like I would burst into tears. Every morning I opened my eyes, my heart raced and I had these visions of projectile vomiting. It started to get worse. I couldn’t get through the day without imagining myself being sick and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I felt riddled with anxiety, extremely emotional and like nothing could make me feel better. And every time someone said to me “I’m sure it will all be ok”… I wanted to run away. I tried to focus on work and kept telling myself what will be will be, that nothing matters and we are officially married anyway. But to me, it did matter. Inside all I felt was fear, disappointment and the worry of letting everyone down and letting ourselves down. Everyone who was coming had booked their flights, planned their trip and put trust in us that we were going to give them this wedding.
Thankfully, by Christmas some positive news arrived. Omicron, although spreading vigorously didn’t seem to be hospitalising people as much. They pushed everyone to have a booster so things were looking up! Christmas wasn’t cancelled and new rules were not introduced, so we started finalising. The anxiety and imaginary vomiting seemed to ease off over a few days and all the plans were going pretty well. We had booked hotels, planned our route from Mexico to Belize and we both started to feel really excited.
One night I was out for dinner for my friends 30th when we received the news about Belize shutting their borders from Mexico. Instantly I felt a gut wrenching feeling, but tried to remain positive. I went to the bathroom, called Mike in tears and he calmed me down and told me to forget about it for tonight. So I did. I wasn’t going to let the rest of the evening be about me and our wedding dramas as we were celebrating her 30th and all and having such a nice time. I put on my brave face, enjoyed the rest of the evening (maybe a little too much!?) and all the worries I would deal with the following day.
Two weeks before the wedding I was told I was going to lose my front tooth. I was put on 2 sets of antibiotics to maintain the infection as I was going to be away for a month. I was feeling extremely stressed. Mike and I were not only trying to finalise a wedding and organise ourselves but we also had to organise everything for my dad (as he’s useless) and on top of that my period was really late so I started to worry I could be pregnant (terrible timing!)
In the same week, news started flying in on our Belize group chat about more rules and more changes. Prices going up, boats not running, flights not running and suddenly I felt myself feeling like just couldn’t cope. Weeks of anxiety caught up with me and I was taking on everyone’s worries and anxieties too. I felt responsible for it all. The more I looked at my phone the worse I felt which led me to having a panic attack at work, I felt I couldn’t breath, I just had to escape and run away! And the gushing of vomit came back to me almost instantly. I felt out of control, I felt exhausted and overwhelmed.
Later that evening, Mike decided to remove me from the group chat to give me head-space to focus on the positives and the finishing touches for the wedding, which actually helped a lot. On reflection, I wish I had just kept a positive mind set, and held my head high but at the time I just couldn’t. I’m a perfectionist, a control freak. And the thing was, I so desperately wanted everyone to feel excited and positive about coming to our wedding that we had put so much time and energy into planning, but that was completely out of my control. Each person understandably, had their own worries, concerns, time and money they had spent or were spending, to come to our wedding and make it worth it for themselves.
Eventually things started to get sorted. A few stressful changes had to be made. One being that mostly everyone had to arrive to our venue a day before schedule due to no boats or flights running at weekends but luckily we managed to get the people at La Perla to help us out and sleep everyone for an extra night at a reduced cost. Mike kept me going with encouragement. He was amazing! I felt so drained and negative and he just took over and made me feel at ease.
The week before we left we were both worried about getting Covid and Mexico seemed to be the place everyone was going on holiday! We had the pressure of people telling us we had to be careful as the ‘Bride and Groom’ couldn’t not be at their own wedding. Annoyingly they were right. After all of this, all the stress, just imagine…it would have been a nightmare. We cooped up at home as much as we could and cancelled our plans to go to Mexico at the beginning of the trip as there was now testing by the government at the Belize border if you went via Mexico. So instead we booked to do a home test before our flight so we could head pretty much straight to Belize. We booked a Hotel in a place called Placencia for 5 days to relax (the opposite side of the country to where the wedding was being held.) That way we knew we were safe, covid free and could really de stress before the wedding. Although we felt sad missing out on the few days in Mexico beforehand with a few of our friends, we ended up being so pleased with how it all came together. The hotel and area we stayed in was incredible and just what the doctor ordered. We got to spend some well needed family time with my Mum, Ollie and Dad as they were staying in the area too, which was really lovely and looking back, really connecting. We also had 3 weeks planned in Mexico for after the wedding for our honeymoon, so we would make the most of it then.
The minute my foot hit the Belizean ground I felt free again! Stress levels dropped to almost zero. I had stress blisters on my hands, but it didn’t matter we were there. And apart from the next step, which was to get all of our friends and rest of family to Belize safe and Covid free, nothing else mattered anymore. Margarita in hand, sunshine and peace from all the negativity.
Everything seemed to be going well, we were relaxed and feeling extremely de stressed. Mike and I the day before everyone was due to arrive spent a night in San Pedro town half hour away from the venue. We had our wedding tasting, which was great and we stuffed ourselves with delicious food and beer. We then spent the afternoon shopping and organising the last few things. All was going well and then La Perla, (the Venue) told us that we didn’t have a free collection service to collect everyone from the airport the following day when we thought we did. It caused a little stress as it was extremely last minute, the venue was 30 minutes from San Pedro and taxi fares were extortionate. We raced around the town aimlessly thinking of a solution and finally made an agreement with the venue. We decided to hire a golf buggy for 5 days so we could collect those that were still arriving on the Saturday by buggy. And for those arriving early on the Friday, La Perla agreed to collect everyone by boat at various times at a reduced price. “Phew! It was frustrating, there was only one more step…but at least it was sorted. Mike and I drove to the Venue the following day with all of our luggage, lanterns, booze, Fruit from the market and wedding accessories piled up and strapped onto the back of a golf buggy. The roads were extremely bumpy but it was an adventure and we were finally nearly there! When we arrived at the venue I cried. It was paradise! The Villas were huge, all with hammocks, kitchens, different rooms and oversized beds. It was all incredible and so much better and grander than we ever had imagined. We spent the morning rushing around organising crates of beer for everyone’s arrival and putting hand written notes tied to a bottle of tequila in everyone’s Vilas, making sure that they would all know the details of the next 5 days and where they were staying when they arrived. As time drew close we stood at the port and waited anxiously for everyone to arrive. Boat by boat they all made it, the relief!! No one had covid, no one was thrown out of Belize by testing posItive at the border, I couldn’t quite believe it. Half the group turned up having not slept for two days from partying in Tulum and they all seemed in shock from the journey that they had just about managed to accomplish whilst nursing the world’s worst hangover BUT they had two days before the wedding to recover. I had to pinch myself this was actually finally happening! We were there, everyone was there all 27 of us.
So was all the stress worth it? Well, I think it was.
To be continued…
PeaceLove&Avocados 