Emotional Stages Of Realizing It's Wedding Season

Wedding season is upon us, and before you know it, your mailbox will likely be filling up with invites to the most memorable days of your friends' lives. It's going to be a busy couple of months, and despite your happiness for the brides and grooms to be, the emotional stages of realizing it's wedding season can hit hard and fast — so it's best to be prepared for them.

While there is a lot of excitement filling the air, and you know the actual wedding dates will be filled with tears of joy, glasses of champagne, and handfuls of rice, there is still a lot of prep work to be done before the big days. Wedding season calls for lots of traveling, lots of wardrobe changes, and lots of planning. You may not be responsible for setting up the wedding, but you're definitely responsible for making sure you're there — which isn't always as easy as it should be, especially if you have save the dates coming in left and right.

Spring and summer are seasons of new beginnings and joy. Get happy, get pumped, get ready to cry your eyes out and dance the nights away... but also get ready to handle all the arrangements that go into celebrating in style. Here are all the feelings you'll have this wedding season.

1. Excitement when the first save the date arrives

It's always exciting to get something in the mail that isn't a bill... and when your name is handwritten on the envelope, you know it's bound to be good news.

2. Self-satisfaction when the second save the date arrives

Not only do Steve and Julie want you at their wedding, but Ben and Lisa want you at their's too! Hey, you can't help that you're friends with everybody.

3. Slight annoyance when the third save the date arrives

Don't these people realize you only have a limited amount of paid vacation days?!? Couldn't they all have coordinated a little bit better?

4. Anxiety as you prepare to ask your employer for time off

You technically don't have as many vacation days as you thought you did, but you're determined to make it work. You spend an hour drafting up an email to send your employer.

5. Stress as you try to get ahead at work to make up for the days you have to miss

Your boss says you can take the time off, but you're going to have to make up for it in the coming weeks. Your workload magically seems to double, and you've decided that your engaged friends are going to owe you big time.

6. Concern for your quickly depleting bank account

Plane flights, wedding attire, and gifts for the bride and groom aren't free, people.

7. Extreme uneasiness about who to bring as your date, or whether to go stag

You checked "plus one" on your invite, but as the day gets closer, you're starting to realize your options are limited. (How were you supposed to know that last guy would be a dud?)

8. Mounting jitters as the big days begin to approach

You have so many pre-wedding jitters, people think you're the one getting married.

9. Pure bliss when the first wedding actually takes place

The first wedding of the season arrives, vows are exchanged, and you instantly forget about all the extra work, excess budgets, and lost vacation days. Your happy roll has just begun, and it's going to be a long, long trip. After all, you're now sure that true love really does exist.

10. Exhaustion as you realize you still have three more of these to attend before June is over

Love is beautiful, but it's exhausting.

Images: Francesca Guadagnini/Flickr; Giphy (10)