The Night Before?

I think the tradition of the bride and groom (or bride and bride or groom and groom!) spending the night before their wedding apart is really sweet. Even if the couple has been living together, I think there's something really sweetly symbolic about spending their last night as an unmarried person with their family or close friends. For me, it would have been a great way of acknowledging the ties I have with my family. I'm sure it would have also heightened my anticipation for the next day.

However, for us this was not to be. I briefly considered this idea and then realized logistically it wouldn't really work for us, but more importantly, emotionally there was no way I could deal with that. Despite how much I loved our wedding and how much fun I had working on it, our wedding and the lead up to it was really stressful for me to the extent that I feel I've almost recovered now two months later. I was by no means a crazy stress monster, but I was definitely feeling a slow build up of stress, as well as night before jitters.

Mr. Knitting is my absolute best emotional support and to have spent the night before our wedding without him would have been a terrible idea for me. I don't think he would have been too happy about it either, although he might have been a bit more stoic about it than I would have been. We really needed each other there to keep each other calm and happy. I also had the sense that even though lots of other people have been married, he was really the only person would understood what I was experiencing (which is sort of true in that we were the only bride and groom of our wedding!).

Two months later, I have no idea what we did the night before our wedding after we got home from our yoga class, but I definitely know that spending the night together was the right choice for us. We may have watched an episode of the Daily Show, complained about family members (not any of you who read this!), played on our computers separately (because we're really romantic), or spent some time talking about the next day. Whatever it was, it was a good idea. I would have felt very alone and probably a bit scared if I had spent the night away from him, no matter who I had stayed with.

How did/do you plan to spend the night before your wedding?