I Knew My Marriage Would Fail When I Saw My Bride Walk Down the Aisle

Deep down, everyone knows if their marriage will succeed or die.

bride and groom

I could see my future, and I hated what I saw.

Though it wasn’t in front of me. It was inside of me. A feeling. An understanding. A voice. It was something I didn’t want to believe and had spent the last two weeks running from.

But standing there, I had nowhere else to run, and my future came more into focus with every step she took.

As I blinked away tears, the woman I loved, adorned in her wedding dress, stopped in front of me. It all became clear.

We would not make it.

---

I once heard someone say that everyone knows during their wedding whether they will make it as a couple, or whether they will fail.

There’s something deep down, a feeling, a whisper, that speaks up. Maybe it’s while walking toward the pulpit. Or it’s trapped in glances while exchanging vows. But at some point, that little whisper reveals the future.

Those couples who have lasted and aged together like fine leather heard one thing. Couples that crumbled and turned to ash heard something else.

I can’t speak for anyone else. I’ve never asked anyone if something inside of them spoke up.

But the moment the woman I was to marry stepped between the two doors on the far end of the room, revealing herself to me, I heard the voice.

Only it wasn’t a whisper.

---

There was no Canon in D or Bridal Chorus when she entered. She didn’t want traditional. Maybe that’s why she was sleeping with someone else until two weeks before the wedding.

Faithfulness was too traditional.

She told me what song would play. It was a string quartet rendition of some popular tune. A classical-sounding Lady Gaga or John Mellencamp. Poker Face would make sense, though the moment the song began and those in attendance stood, I instantly forgot.

All I could hear was the voice from within.

The voice that told me the future.

The two doors were far away. A lifetime away. I saw her dress. She wore white. Her father held one arm. Her step-father the other. Ushered by two father figures.

It had been two weeks since I picked up the wrong iPhone when a text came in. When I read the wrong message. A message from a lover telling her not to marry me.

I wondered if either her dad or stepdad knew.

The voice inside of me knew.

Reality was shared with few. I didn’t tell my sisters. I didn’t tell my mom, though she knew something was going on.

My father died a year earlier, so I was her best guy friend. Even with my father living, I might have held that title. Mothers have a way of knowing.

I didn’t say anything, because I wanted the marriage to work, and I didn’t want anyone to hate her.

She stepped closer, though she was still far away.

She walked slowly, though it was still too fast.

I looked over the faces of friends and family in attendance. None of them knew. I saw my old roommate who had moved to D.C. My old neighbor who moved to Florida. Friends who lived in L.A. and N.Y. The couple from Boston who I met in Georgia. The minister — a family friend — flew up from Jamaica.

None of them knew. But they were reasons I did not postpone.

If I told them the wedding was postponed, they, like my mom, would know something happened. And if a new date was decided why would they return? They had already spent money to fly across the country. Why spend more?

I had already paid for the entire wedding. Two weeks out I couldn’t cancel. Unless I wanted to pay for a second, should things work out.

Why spend more?

So, like the bride’s steps toward me, we continued on.

Halfway to me. The noose tightened. The tears came.

Those who didn’t know likely believed them to be tears of joy. From the moment. From bubbling anticipation. From seeing my beautiful bride-to-be and my approaching future. But those that did know, the voice that did know, knew the tears were for anything but joy.

They were for the moment’s theft of joy. For the lack of every single thing everyone must have assumed I shed tears for. For not being allowed to experience my wedding in a way everyone else experienced theirs. For my own decision to continue and stand there.

For her being half-way to me.

There was no place to run. No place to escape. There was only me and that little voice that knew the future.

If only I’d listened.

But I did what I could to not hear the voice and ignore the tears. They were just things trying to get in the way of my happiness. At least that’s what I told myself. They were feelings — doubts — that any normal person felt. Every normal person had to have been terrified on their wedding day. They had to have had second thoughts standing there. They had to have questioned their sanity and what they were doing and why they were there and whether they loved the person and whether they wanted to always be with them.

Didn’t they?

The last time the feeling, the voice, crept into the bottom of my stomach like a weed sprouting in a sunless void, was when I began to question whether my bride-to-be was really working late every night. When I started to second guess the excuses and reasons, or why she remained in her car for so long before opening the front door.

The voice, the future, warned me, but I chose not to listen. Nothing but cold feet, I convinced myself. Every normal person had it before their wedding.

The voice remained as she finished her walk toward me, her gown glistening and slick like greased hair combed behind her. It wasn’t the only thing being dragged to the alter.

I regarded the crowd, friends, and those who gathered. None of them knew.

Finally, I reached out my arm and took my bride-to-be’s hand. We walked the final steps together, then turned and faced one another.

I looked at her and saw her face.

She knew.

As did the voice inside of her.

We both knew the future.

Yet continued anyway.