Before you start your married adventure, take a pre-wedding adventure. Who says the honeymoon has to happen only once and after the wedding? Bryan and I escaped with our Best Man and Maid of Honor three days before the wedding and it was one of our favorite memories about the big week of “I do.”
As it’s been said many times on The Wedding Yentas, your wedding is like the Olympics. With so many events revolving around the big day, it’s a crazy time with a packed schedule. You may choose to have a bridal luncheon, a Shabbat dinner, a rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and a day-after brunch, plus additional events that might be unique to your family’s traditions. Either way, it is a busy time full of wonderful events, but still, before it all starts, I highly suggest taking a day to focus on fun that’s anything other than wedding-related.
A couple weeks before our wedding day, we called Brian and Annie and put them on reserve. They didn’t know the details, but we indicated it would be a day of fun. So on the Thursday morning before our Sunday wedding, we whisked them away and off we went to Disneyland. Yes, grown adults, pairs of old friends, an almost-married couple — random location — but we didn’t talk wedding talk and we just focused on our friendships, the very reasons why they were our Best Man and Maid of Honor.
Brian the Best Man met me early on when my husband and I started dating. And Annie, my Maid of Honor had been in my inner circle for years and years, and she was there for the big proposal just 15 months earlier. But Annie and Brian had never spent a great amount of time together, and as the right hand man and woman of our wedding day, it was fun to provide an opportunity for everyone to bond and get on board with Team Wedding.
We spent the day frolicking around the park, going on rides, forgoing wedding diets, and not doing any wedding work at all. Halfway through the day, the skies opened up and poured the heaviest rain! We were drenched in our clothes walking around the park, and wedidn’tevencare. It was heavenly. We knew if we told our families that we were taking off for Disneyland 72 hours before tying the knot they’d think we were crazy because of all the things left on the to-do list, so our getaway was a secret one.
And really, one day off the wedding train wasn’t such a big mistake. The chaos would begin the following day, so having the Disneyland escape was a great way to clear the mind and just remember why the four of us were so special to one another.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the stress of wedding planning and the pressure from family members. The Disney detox was just what the doctor ordered for going back to the basics: friendship, fun, and forever. We created new inside jokes and experienced a common bond. On the wedding day, the four of us were a unit and Bryan and I felt confident that our Best Man and Maid of Honor were truly the best and most honorable; the Best of Honor, if you will.
We all still talk about this day and we may never have anything like it again, but it was something we were so glad to have given our best friends as a thank you for their loyalty to us during our very special time.
So whether it’s a day trip to the beach to relax, a hike through your favorite patches of nature, or a trip to the ball game for some peanuts and Cracker Jack, you can also create some pre-wedding memories to take with you to the chuppah.
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