We were warned it would happen.

The closer that the wedding gets, the more the dream becomes reality, and as every little girl fantasy of silky dresses, pretty flowers, and perfect moments materializes before my eyes, the nightmares intensify. Not, mind you, any involving James. He is merely The Groom, and all of these nightmares involve The Wedding, an entity that sadly is often thought of not in conjunction with The Groom.

No, I mean The Wedding Nightmares, the ones where everything goes wrong and you wake up in a sweat with the sheets twisted around your head because all of the roses were lime green and the bridesmaids refused to do anything other than dance the polka down the aisle. The Wedding Nightmares usually bear no semblance with The Wedding Dream that is being realized in my waking moments.  Here are some of my top Wedding Nightmares, broken down into what I think are typical categories.

The Location Swap: Instead of finding myself at my reception in the lovely park as planned, I was in an endless Victorian house, but with no furniture. I was running through the house in my poufy dress but couldn’t find any way out, which was torture because the caterer was trying to get in, so as a result, all of my guests starved to death. Yes, this is kind of like Sartre’s No Exit meets one of those horrible wedding planning shows. This is what happens when French grad students plan weddings during the semester.

The Decoration Disaster: My mother and I have very few altercations overall during this wedding process. However, we did have several…. differences of stylistic opinion…. over the reception decorations. I wanted floral table arrangements, she wanted bowls of fish swimming around. I wanted absolutely no decorations in the ceremony, she would wrap everything stationary in tulle if she could. Now ultimately, we worked everything out and are both super thrilled with the décor now, but in the midst of these discussions, I dreamt that I showed up at the reception only to find that she had decorated – and made all of the tables and chairs – out of book boxes. Book boxes, for those not in the know, fill our basement, as my mother manages selling my grandfather’s books from there. As kids, we built them into forts and paraded around in dressups, as is seen in the photo below (and yes, I went through a particularly ugly spell for about 8 years, during which all together too many photos were taken and are now reappearing as we prepare a wedding slideshow):

In the Decoration Disaster Nightmare, I showed up and the reception was decorated like that. And I might have thrown something.

The Vendor Failure: We are blessed with fantastic vendors, from hair, to makeup, to photography, to food. Remember, these dreams do not correlate with reality. I want to emphasize this in case my dear sweet photographer reads this and is too scared to come to the wedding. This nightmare was on the part of my mother, who has never even met our photographer. But in her dream, the photographer didn’t show up. However, my mother is a problem solver, and not only did her dream spiral into madness, she fixed the problem in her sleep. First, she rallied my brother and dad to take photos. Next, when the photographer did show up, my mother TOOK HER CAMERA and then said she could have it back once our entire deposit was returned. That’s right, my mother stole in her sleep and was proud of it.

The Dress Debacle: After receiving the call that my dress was in, I dreamt that I went in to get it but no one could find it. They kept on putting me in dress after dress, insisting that each was the one I had ordered, and ignoring my pleas to the contrary. I kept on trying to text Rachel to email a picture so I could prove them wrong, but with no success. Finally they strapped me into a hot pink gown covered in black sequins and I fled the salon weeping. I woke up ACTUALLY CRYING (go ahead and judge) and crawled over into Liz’ room to have her remind me it was just a dream.

Any brides out there have any crazy wedding planning nightmares? Or am I alone in my sleep freak-outs?