I’m stepping into my bridal era, a chapter I never rushed toward, one I once thought might not belong to me. By the time I walk down the aisle on 21 June 2026, I’ll be 38. And somehow, that feels exactly right. My life has never followed the typical route, so it makes sense that my wedding wouldn’t either.
For years, I assumed weddings meant what everyone else seemed to do: big bridal parties, elaborate hen’s nights, dawn gate crashes, and a carefully curated sequence of events designed for aesthetics. But none of that ever felt like me.
Choosing a Different Kind of Wedding
This season is about letting go; not as rebellion, but as relief. As love. As honouring who I’ve become.
No bridal party.
No “will you be my bridesmaid?” gifts.
No rituals that ask my friends to spend money, wake up before sunrise, or perform roles that don’t reflect the reality of how we show up for each other.
My friendships are built from the real stuff: moving homes together, weathering heartbreaks, late-night talks, unexpected crises, growth, and support that has never needed ceremony to be valid. Those traditions are meaningful for others, but they don’t belong in my story.
What This Day Truly Means
When you strip away everything performative, you’re left with what’s real: the commitment, the love, the life you’re choosing to build.
It’s about something simple and sacred: a celebration of finally having a home and finding a partner I choose to build a life with.
After years of instability, illness, childhood wounds, and 7+ years of rental hopping, this season feels like a soft landing. A quiet exhale. A moment of arrival I fought very hard for.
More than anything, I want a wedding that reflects the quiet, steady strength of the relationships I’ve built with my chosen family. They’ve been the ones to hold me through every season, and I want them to stand with me as I celebrate choosing a partner who embodies that same depth, someone who can weather storms, meet hard truths, hold space, and build a life alongside mine.
Walking Myself Down the Aisle
One tender truth of this journey is that my parents and my two younger sisters will not be attending.
This isn’t a dramatic decision; it’s simply the reality of a family system that was never safe or nurturing enough to support closeness. And I already know there will be questions from the older generation:
“Why isn’t the bride inviting her parents?”
“Shouldn’t they be here?”
“But they’re your parents, surely they want the best for you?”
They mean well, but those assumptions do not apply to my life. And the truth is gentle but firm:
No.. they do not want the best for me, at least not in a way that would justify their presence on my wedding day.
As for my sisters, our bond never had the chance to grow in a healthy or reciprocal way. Our parents’ patterns (the comparisons, the emotional manipulation, the constant pitting us against one another) made sisterhood impossible to build.
What hurts isn’t the distance now, but the truth that I genuinely tried. I wasn’t just the eldest daughter, I was a secondary caretaker. I showed up for them in every way I knew how, loving them as if they were my own children. I was the one they called dajie, the one who held responsibility far beyond my years.
I tutored my youngest sister after school. I chased her around the playground with her tiny shoes in my hands. I protected and guided them long before I learned how to protect myself.
There were beautiful moments, and I honour them. But love cannot grow where harm keeps repeating and repair never comes.
Held, Not Alone
So yes, I will walk myself down the aisle. But I won’t be doing it alone.
I will be held by the people who actually showed up. The friends who supported me through illness, through instability, through the quiet devastations of life, through every painful and hopeful version of myself.
These are the people who saw me grow into who I am today. These are the ones who deserve to witness my next chapter.
For once, I get to build a milestone without pretending. Without forcing a narrative that was never mine.
A Wedding That Belongs to Me
This wedding isn’t a performance. It’s a marker of survival, of healing, of arriving home after years of instability and hurt.
It’s choosing the partner who stood by me, and the friends who became family when my own couldn’t.
It’s walking myself down the aisle; not alone, but held by every version of me that kept going.
This is my bridal era.
Quiet. Courageous. True.
And entirely mine.