As much as I remember my wedding day being one of the best days of my life it also brings back extremely painful memories. The year I got married was also the year that my health took a serious turn for the worst and only weeks before my wedding I was lying in intensive care. Most people would probably have postponed the wedding but we were getting married on the 10 year anniversary of us being together so I was determined that the wedding would go ahead. I remember friends and family coming into hospital with my wedding planning folder and we would hold meetings around the bed with me dishing jobs out to everyone. I had ordered my wedding and bridesmaid dresses in Nottingham and one friend even drove down from Nottingham to collect Big Girl, drive her up to Nottingham for her bridesmaid dress fitting and then bring her back down to Hertfordshire (where we lived at the time).
I was supposed to have my hen do in Spain and of course that went out of the window but my friends threw me a hen night at home. I couldn’t drink but remember having such a wonderful time and laughing so much. Tough times really do show you who your real friends are and I was lucky to be surrounded by plenty.
I had undergone not one, but two emergency surgeries just weeks before the wedding. The first operation was as a result of my Ulcerative Colitis being so bad that my bowel perforated and left me with a stoma and the second was a week later when I got septicaemia in the rectal stump. On both occasions I very nearly died and even today I still suffer from awful flashbacks from that time.
Because I had a stoma I was worried that it would show through the material of my wedding dress and terrified that it would leak. Could you imagine looking down to see your gorgeous white wedding dress covered in poo? I was also still in a lot of pain from the surgeries and wasn’t sure if I would be able to wear my wedding dress or if it would be too sore across my wound. I didn’t try my dress on until the day before the wedding cause I was so nervous and couldn’t face the thought of having to make a dash to the shops to get a floaty white number from Monsoon or somewhere similar. Having been so unwell I had lost a lot of weight so that gave me some breathing room and I remember feeling grateful that I had asked the seamstress to cut off most of the huge train that was in the dress originally as it would have been way too heavy for me to wear otherwise.
I was married in my local Catholic Church and it was very small as churches go but this meant that I didn’t have a huge aisle to walk down. I was determined to walk down the aisle with my Dad but even doing that was exhausting and I was glad that the priest let us sit down for the ceremony instead of standing throughout as is tradition. When we took our vows and said the “in sickness and in health” sentence there wasn’t a dry eye in the church!
After the ceremony we went to a local park which had beautiful scenery and where we spent a lot of time as a family to have pictures taken. Halfway through the photos I grew too tired to stand so the rest of the photos were taken with me sat on a bench with everyone around me.
When we got to the reception we had pre-empted the fact that I wouldn’t make it through the whole day without a sleep so had taken a folding camp bed down and put it in one of the side rooms. After the meal (which I didn’t eat) I went for a sleep for an hour to make sure I had the energy to last through to the evening. I also commandeered the disabled toilet so I could put all of my stoma supplies in there incase I needed to do a bag change. Luckily nobody else was disabled at the wedding and I put a sign up saying it was only for my use. Going to the toilet was a bloody palaver! Most brides struggle to use the loo when they’re in their wedding dress and take someone with them to hold their dress up out of the way. I needed two people though- one to hold the dress and one to pass me my stoma supplies so it was extra tricky. All I can say is that my Mum and a friend were amazing at making sure it wasn’t embarrassing for me. As the day went on Hubby was getting drunker snd drunker- I think it was the first time in months he was able to relax and let his hair down. But it meant that when we got to the hotel for the night he pretty much passed out and I couldn’t undo my wedding dress as I was laced in and it also had a million buttons so I ended up going to bed in it! You would have thought I would have crashed out too but I was in so much pain I couldn’t sleep and ended up ordering room service at 3am. When the guy delivered it he got a right shock to see me open the door in my dress!
Overall it was an amazing day and of course I have lots of great memories but still to this day I haven’t been able to watch my wedding video. Even looking at the wedding photos took me years as to begin with all I could see was how sick I was on the day. We had a wedding photographer but my health remained poor after the wedding so we never got round to choosing the photos and getting an official album which was part of the package we paid for. It was probably almost two years later when I got in touch with the photographer and luckily he still had the photos on file and was able to send them to me via Dropbox. All these years they’ve just been sat there in the cloud and I still don’t have an album. But I finally feel ready to go through them and I will probably make one on printerpix or a similar site maybe by the time we celebrate our 15th anniversary!
I know I’m very lucky that over the last 12 years Hubby has stuck by me and been an absolute rock. I know from talking to other women I was in hospital with that this isn’t always the case; lots of men leave because it wasn’t ‘what they signed up for’ or it all becomes too much. And to be fair I wouldn’t blame Hubby if he did. The amount of times I’ve told him I would understand if he wanted to leave and I wouldn’t hold it against him because what we have been through and continue to go through is a lot. If the roles were reversed I’m not sure I would be able to cope the way Hubby has. Our lives are made so much more difficult by my illness. We have to make lots of decisions based around what I’m well enough to do and around hospital stays and treatments. This last 18 months I’ve pretty much been bed bound and Hubby has had to cope with Covid, homeschooling, working from home, not being able to having the cleaner or family help around the house and with the kids and so much more and he’s done it without complaining. I honestly don’t know what I would do without him and I love him as much today as I did when we said “I do”. His hand is the only hand I want to hold when I’m lying in bed in agony or walking the dog in the park. His is the hand I will reach for until the day I die.
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