Anyone who has ever helped plan a wedding has most likely used the term “Bridezilla” to describe the demanding, emotional and irrational attitude of the bride-to-be.

When my older sister accepted her boyfriend’s proposal this summer, I officially used the word for the first time. Don’t get me wrong. I love my sister and compared to other Bridezilla horror stories I’ve heard and seen on that reality TV show, I consider myself lucky. Still, my sister had some definite Bridezilla tendencies.

However, I noticed I made plenty of emotional mistakes myself.

Like most sisters of the bride, I experienced my fair share of bitterness and jealousy over the six-month engagement. I always told people I was happy for them, which I was – I just left out the part about wishing I was the one getting all the attention.

I completed my duties as maid of honor as best I could. I threw a shower, recorded gifts in her wedding book, reassured her about all the wedding decisions she was making, and smiled as I told her how much I adored the bridesmaids’ dresses. I was not always happy inside, but I did my very best to act happy on the outside.

My jealousy hit an all-time high last week – the week of her wedding. She was married in Abilene so she and my parents stayed in town at my grandparents’ house the entire week to take care of the final details. Unfortunately, last week just happened to be one of the worst weeks of my academic career. At that point, I was less jealous of her wedding and more jealous of her happiness. I was trying to balance 13 hours of class, three jobs and friendships, while she was having the best week of her life planning the last details of her wedding with my mom and grandmother.

So, I was selfishly unexcited for her wedding until something unexpected happened.

I was walking down the hall of the church building the morning of her wedding, and an overwhelming feeling of happiness suddenly came over me. The realization of what this day meant for my sister filled my soul with joy. I no longer thought about the reading I had to complete or the article I had not yet polished. I thought about my sister. I really thought about her and her fiance and how happy they would both soon be. I thought about them being together forever, and I thought about finally having a brother.

Standing on stage, watching her and my dad walk down the aisle we had walked down as kids, pretending it was our wedding while we waited for our parents to quit talking and take us home from church, was a surreal and joyful experience. She was no longer a Bridezilla, and I was no longer jealous. Instead, we were both happy and hopeful.