Inside The Mind Of A Perfectionist Bride #NuptialNarratives
“Ma’am, can you please rest back and close your eyes? Also, please try not to talk?”, the beautician told me strictly this time. I did as I was told to. I’ve been going on and on since the time we had arrived in the salon. I had been discussing what all still needed to be done. I could guarantee by my beautician’s looks which she gave me that she hadn’t seen such a chatty bride planning her wedding until the last moment. Yes, here I was focusing on if the decoration turned out to be, how I had finalized a month ago in detail. Because the journey to perfection doesn’t come easy, does it?
As I closed my eyes, I could see my friend giving me a wicked smile with a wink. And as everything went silent, the world of thoughts emerged that I haven’t had the time to process yet. The flashes of yesterday’s Mehendi ceremony surfaced. How everyone had sang and danced on the local folk songs and then shifted to the latest Bollywood mixes… How my mom and dad had looked at me with all the love in their eyes… How my sister and friends kept running around to pacify the needs of a perfectionist bride.
The scene soon changed to this morning’s ceremonies one after the other, hardly knowing what I was doing. It felt like I was on autopilot mode, doing as I was asked too. But my mind seemed elsewhere calculating if everything will happen on time as my punctual perfectionist husband-to-be wanted it… With a clock on my mind, I had navigated my day through the ceremonies, hardly letting the feeling of getting married sink in.
As the quietness lingered on, feelings took the stage of heart. There was pure happiness of being one with the love of my life, mixed with a pinch of sadness of leaving the carefree days of maidenhood behind and a lot of anxiousness of being part of a new family. The certainty of the uncertainty of the new ahead started to make me restless and suddenly… I could sense the clouds of self-doubt approaching. Now is not the time, I told myself. I wondered how even a beautiful future ahead can be a little scary sometimes.
“Ma’am you can open your eyes now”, her words broke my reverie as I landed from the flight of my thoughts. As I asked her to make a few changes in the make-up here and there, I felt so different looking in the mirror at my bride-version. It felt like a different person who stared back at me from the mirror.
Another lady came in to help to drape the Saree and Dupatta around and I could feel the perfectionist in me jumping back in action. I kept looking in the mirror and the smile kept coming back to visit my eyes again and again. The bridal-look I had finalized months ago was becoming a reality. I couldn’t help but feel even more nervous because this meant that show was going to begin soon.
The photographer has already taken some getting-ready shots and he was now hovering again to capture some fresh looks of the bride. I have never been much of photogenic and photo-crazy person but when it came to wedding photography, I plead guilty to researching every unique look for my wedding album. Talking about perfectionist brides, eh? But this didn’t make posing for those clicks any easier!
Who said being bride is easy and too if one is a perfectionist!!
Above mentioned thoughts are merely an expression out of various experiences of many married women including myself. This is not to offend/demean anyone’s views about married life.
You naughty smart girl of Mom n Daddy becoming bride is life time pleasure searching words to express.Me saw unique brightness on face defining beauty on that specific time…… another good blog to me….