I did not smile on my wedding day

Editors’ Note: Happy 10th anniversary, Aisha & Kashif!

Unlike most girls, I never daydreamed about my wedding day. The marriage, yes, but the actual choosing the dress, cakes and caterers never appealed to me. Once I met Kashif, I daydreamed about the trips we would take, the dinners I might botch and the things we would discuss on our journey through life.

But the wedding? Not so much.

The thought of sitting on a raised stage with a velvet veil and 200 pairs of eyes staring at me, discussing my clothes, the groom, and whether the food was better than the wedding last weekend or the bride prettier or uglier than the one before, was not my idea of a romantic and beautiful ceremony. Me? I’d rather have stood on a beach, the ocean waves lapping in the distance with my close family and dear friends by my side while we committed to one another for life.

But at 21, raised in a tight-knit and far-flung Pakistani-American family I knew there was no point in trying to persuade my parents of a wedding any other way than the way they had always dreamed of. Besides, however I got married was irrelevant to me; I was marrying Kashif, this was what mattered most. If my parents found joy in the traditional, lavish wedding, I could give this to them as my joy lay in the marriage this wedding would give me.

Weeks after we got married, the wedding pictures arrived. I grinned as I popped open the box, and then promptly stared in horror as picture after picture showed not a bashful bride grinning on her wedding day, but instead, a girl in a lovely red grown, a beautiful groom by her side – and a frown the size of Montana.
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