I looked up at my little sister. I had my wedding dress bunched up around my thighs and I was squatting on the toilet in my aunt’s house.

“Don’t ever do this,” I said.

Getting married, the actual wedding part, was painful for me.

Maybe it was because I was marrying the wrong man or maybe it’s because I planned my wedding in three days (a must to meet my French Canadian boyfriend’s expiration date for his time in the US.)

I was only 25-years-old. One year later I would be pregnant at just 26-years-old and wishing I had never done what I was about to do.

“Ever,” I said sternly.

She looked at me with her mouth gaping and nodded.

Inseparable when we were younger and only one year apart, I often call my little sister my soul mate. Destined to be together, cast here in tandem to be friends for life, we often take each other’s words as gospel.

Fortunately she didn’t listen to me and two years later I was standing beside her, looking on as her bridesmaid, listening to her nervous breaths and seeing the tears in her husband’s eyes as they exchanged their vows on the steps of a hallowed building on the campus of the University of Virginia where the two had met.

Anna and Ryan, have been in love since they met. Anna used to sneak away from a night with her friends to surprise Ryan in his dorm room, just a few doors down from Edgar Allen Poe’s room.

When the walls of my marriage started crumbling I called Anna more than anyone.

“It just shouldn’t be that hard Alaina, you should just love each other,” she would tell me over and over again.

Like this… it should be like this -

—–

I have four weddings to go to this summer. Four.

Weddings are usually a blur of bad music, bad food and lots of confused driving to and from – all to watch a couple make the most solemn of vows which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, like a voyeur or something.

I hate weddings. I do. I do. So that’s why I’m surprising myself because I’m actually excited about each and every one of these weddings. Just thinking about them all gives me butterflies in my stomach. Happy little love butterflies.

I’m becoming a ball of cheese.

Just roll me up and send me on my way. But before that, let me explain…

The first is this weekend. The Bear is taking me to his cousin’s wedding. I don’t know his cousin or anyone in the Bear’s family but I can’t wait . We’re going to have a blast because we’ll be together and I get to meet his family – the people who had a hand in molding him into the awesome, pure man he is today.

The second wedding is next weekend in Lexington, Kentucky where Morgan (aka Modern Single Momma) will become Modern Married Momma. Look out for her live Skype Bachelorette Party on Thursday night featuring Miss Ive. I may or may not be there depending on whether or not I can find a sitter for Benjamin. But I’ll definitely be there for the ceremony.

The third is my littlest brother’s this August and finally in September my best friend, a former single mom herself, is going to re-marry her ex-husband. I’ll save those stories for later…

Right now – tell me yours… leave a story about your wedding, a good memory, a bad memory – did you know it was right? or wrong?

Everyone who leaves a comment will be entered to win one of five copies of the Successful Single Mom by Honoree Corpron. She’s been happily married for one year now but Honoree is still tireless in her desire to empower single moms.

Can’t wait to be a guest on her new radio talk show just for single moms. Check that out here.

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