Wedding cake disaster.

With so many different elements to pull together, your wedding offers plenty of opportunity for disaster to strike. I’ve heard some real doozies – florists skipping town, priests breaking into hour-long sermons on a hot summer’s day, fistfights between the groomsmen and wedding dress alterations from hell.

It’s inevitable that something, somehow, will go wrong with your wedding plans. You’ve invested too much energy, emotion; time and money for the universe to let it all run smoothly.

I’m not being a defeatist here – simply pointing out accidents happen, people forget, people value different things than you, people mess up, disasters occur, the universe throws a middle finger, people have other things on their mind and your wedding isn’t anyone else’s first priority.

One of my life’s mottos (which I get from my mother) is “Everything turns out okay in the end.” That may sound overly simplistic when you’re knee deep in frosting because the cat knocked your hand-decorated DIY cupcake favors off the bench. But it’s true.

We had a few minor and some major wedding disasters, including a friend who stressed us out with angry behavior, a failed ironing attempt that wasted a $100 roll of velvet, and a jeweler who disappeared for several months with our heirloom gold. So I know from whence I speak.

Don’t feel bad about getting upset. If I’d labored for hours lovingly decorating my own cupcakes only to have the destroyed before everyone could oooh over them, I’d be GUTTED. Likewise if my dress came back from the seamstress with a big hole in the skirt. Cry, scream, punch a pillow – whatever you have to do to mourn the passing of the cupcakes. Eat lots of chocolate.

After you’ve mourned the passing of your cupcakes, you need to concentrate on the good times ahead, because you don’t want to look back on your wedding and cry about everything that went wrong. Your wedding should be a happy memory.

I say this often enough – the difference between a “normal” wedding and a “skully” wedding is perspective. When disaster strikes, you need to step back, take a deep breath and look at your situation objectively.

Most of the wedding disasters we encounter relate to the wedding “stuff” – the cake we ordered that didn’t arrive, the dress that will not be, the flowers that wilted before you even got into the limo. Some of that stuff – like our wedding rings made of gold from CDH’s great-grandmother which – carries strong sentimental values. But most of this stuff carries sentimental value that we’ve placed on it because it’s part of our wedding.

Do you know what I mean? You wouldn’t normally get so upset over a mishap with flowers, right? You wouldn’t normally cry up a storm and wail about the end of the world over the napkins not matching the chair covers. Hell, you wouldn’t normally care about chair covers AT ALL?

When “stuff” goes wrong, it matters to us SO MUCH MORE because we’ve tied that stuff up with our wedding dream – and we shouldn’t do that. We can’t let the stuff mask what’s really important, what the wedding dream is all about – celebrating your commitment to your wonderful, long-suffering partner.

Reconcile yourself that after the wedding, you’ll look back on those disasters and laugh. Embrace the humor of the situation – take photographs of the cupcake disaster and add them to your wedding blog. Better yet, start of food-fight with the leftover frosting.

I’m a big Dr. Phil fan, and he offers some great advice on his website about dealing with wedding disasters. Basically, you have to allot only a certain amount of emotions tied to the wedding stuff, to allow yourself the freedom to take a zen approach to disasters.

Skully readers, have you encountered any disasters? If so, how did you avert them? Can you offer any other advice?