I’m scared. Not because the girl standing under the chuppah in a puffy white dress has left me, but for her

Dear Sympathetic Wedding Guest,

She called me and told me he was going to propose

You saw me crying at her chuppah and rubbed my arm. You told me not to worry, my time will come.

You even told me that instead of crying, I should just choose a guy and marry him and not make the whole thing so complicated.

Okay, you didn’t actually say that, but your eyes did.

You stood there, feeling bad for the best friend of the kallah who at the ripe old age of “older singleness” finally found her other half — while little, equally old me, gets tossed to the side and becomes the scary last one standing.

I hope I’m not scary, but I’m scared. Not because the girl standing under the chuppah in a puffy white dress has left me, but for her.

I’m scared for the girl who’s been giving glittering smiles all morning, because I know her almost better than I know myself. Behind all the makeup and hairspray, there’s a kallah quaking with nerves, full of doubts.

I know there is.

She told me.

She told me about her concerns after each date, how it was going okay, but she didn’t like this or that. He was such a big personality, and she was scared of him. She told me things were going so fast, too fast. Then she called me one morning and told me he was going to propose, and she was going to say yes.

I panicked.

Not because she’s my last friend to join the elite club of diamond ring wearers, not because I was jealous, not because I wanted it to be me who would smile in high heels while holding a huge bunch of roses.

But because my best friend was sick of it all, sick of the dating, and the comments, and the pressure, and the résumés, and the decisions, and the fear, and the davening, and and and…  so she decided that if he ticked the beautiful square boxes on the beautiful piece of paper, she’d do what everyone told her to do, and just say yes.

I never davened so hard for someone for so long. Every day of their engagement, I begged Hashem to make this be the right decision, to make her happy, to make sure he looked after her, that they’d understand each other and connect. I begged for all the warning signs to disappear, or for them to be big enough that she couldn’t ignore them anymore.

She was nervous. So nervous. And every day it got worse. She was a shell of the person she used to be.

So you saw me crying at her chuppah? This is why I was crying.

She’s going to be okay, I tell myself. He does make her laugh, and he’ll take her on fancy vacations. Hashem doesn’t fit into our plans, we fit ourselves into His. This is the life she was destined to; she’ll make it work, she’ll grow from it, she’ll be okay.

Sometimes I wish I could just say yes to the next boy I meet, because I’m also so sick of it all. Then I imagine my chuppah, with someone crying for me, with fear in her stomach, and I reassess, realign, and regroup. I promise myself I’ll say yes to the right guy at the right time, and not a second before or after.

The Kallah’s Friend Crying at the Chuppah

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 972)