Jessica Buchanan was blindsided when her fiancé called off their costly wedding weeks before the big day.
The Toronto-based makeup artist and content creator had been eagerly planning what should have been the happiest day of her life, splurging on a $5,000 dress and splashing thousands more on deposits.
Then Adam, her hubby-to-be whose name she has changed for anonymity, called it off.
“He couldn’t give any specific reasons – he just kept saying how terrible he felt, how he hated doing this,” she recalled in a personal essay for The Sun. “We knew our relationship was over.”
Buchanan and her ex met back in 2010 while attending college, staying friends for five years until they finally went on a proper date. Their entire relationship seemed nearly perfect, she recounted, and they never argued.
“But as the years passed, I did sometimes ask myself: ‘Is this how finding The One is supposed to feel?’” she said.
Adam proposed in 2022 with a grand gesture, filling a warehouse with candles and making a heart out of flowers while Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” blared in the background like “a scene from a movie.”
“I’d never pushed to get married – but seeing how much Adam loved me, the effort he’d made, was the greatest feeling in the world,” she continued.
“The euphoria didn’t last, though. From the start, Adam didn’t seem to me to be interested in wedding planning. I thought that was normal, and as a creative person, I threw myself into it.”
She booked a converted greenhouse as the venue, fit for their 130 guests, and chose “five themed buffets,” forking over $5,000 for the deposit.
“But as everything came together, I sensed something wasn’t right,” she said. “Adam and I started arguing, which we’d never done before. I loved him deeply and wanted him to be happy.”
She “doubled down on planning” as Adam assured her he was fine, trying to “push away my worries,” she recalled.
Buchanan hosted her bridal shower in April 2023 and partied with her loved ones, despite a “growing feeling of dread.”
“A couple of days later, I’d had a bad feeling all morning and was still trying to calm my nerves when Adam walked in. The second I saw his face, I just knew,” she said.
“But hearing him say that he couldn’t get married, I lost it. A wave of anger and humiliation hit me. As I shouted, Adam stood there looking broken.”
She remembered throwing a photo of the two of them against a wall as she “burst into tears.”
“Adam went to stay at his dad’s, and I was left at home, surrounded by wedding stuff. I couldn’t stop crying,” she said, adding that she spent more than $38,000 after planning the wedding and was forced to inform all of their guests there would be no nuptials.
But she couldn’t just wallow in her sadness and anger. So what’s “Better Than Revenge?” Splurging on a Taylor Swift concert — on the day of her would-be wedding.
She spent more than $2,000 for a ticket to the Eras Tour, flying from Toronto to Texas for the show, a whopping 1,300 miles from home.
“On April 21, instead of floating down the aisle in my wedding gown – which is still in my wardrobe – I was in a packed stadium in a sparkly jacket, singing my heart out,” she said. “It was amazing.”
Looking back now, not only is Buchanan dating “a lovely guy,” but has also realized her and Adam “would have never worked.”
“On what would have been our wedding anniversary, I threw a Taylor Swift party for my girlfriends and felt nothing but joy,” she said.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get married. But I’ve learned how important it is to be honest with the person you love. No relationship can survive without it.”