The Women Who “Stopped the Wedding”—and Never Looked Back

“I'd already bought my wedding dress, asked my bridesmaids, and started imagining what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life,” 27-year-old Sacha Smith tells me. “I just didn't know that the relationship I believed I was in wasn't the reality.”After discovering her fiancé had been cheating on her for the entirety of their engagement, Smith called off the wedding. She is one of hundreds of women who—as part of a viral TikTok trend—shared their story of coming to their senses and ending their relationship right before a wedding.In these TikTok videos, women share photos and videos of themselves in their previous relationships—sometimes even trying their wedding dresses on—with the words of Ashe’s viral song “Stop the Wedding!” playing in the background. In the song, Ashe sings, “Even though the table's set, the guests are waiting, you can burn the dress and run away. Stop the wedding.” The song is catchy, but it’s also a warning cry to women that it’s never too late to save yourself from a lifetime of misery tied to the wrong person.And it often actually takes something as monuments as an impending wedding to figure out a relationship isn’t working. “When you've spent years overriding your own feelings to maintain relationships, it can become really difficult to recognize what you actually want,” Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT tells Cosmopolitan. “A wedding makes everything feel real and tangible because now you're facing the possibility of committing to this dynamic for the rest of your life. And sometimes that forces you to confront something you've been trying really hard to avoid.”This was the case for Katherine Woller, 39. There was no cheating partner or big fallout—just a gut feeling she couldn’t ignore. The feeling started the moment her boyfriend got down on one knee. Even with the gorgeous backdrop of Champagne, France, she couldn’t shake the thought that she was making a mistake by saying yes.It was only two weeks before her wedding when Woller stood in front of the mirror wearing her would-be wedding dress during a fitting, feeling utterly detached. “I felt completely out of control and lost, as if I were watching someone else’s life,” she says. “At that moment, I couldn’t ignore my inner voice any longer and knew it was time to make a big, hard choice.”Despite the magnitude of an “I shouldn’t be doing this” feeling, a wedding can make it seem impossible to walk away. This is called a Sunk Cost Fallacy. And even though, via its label you understand it isn’t true, in the moment, it feels like you’ve put too much in to the relationship to leave it. Therapist Justena Kavanagh, LCSW explains that once you’re engaged, the deposits, the guest list, and other people’s expectations build momentum. “Stopping can feel harder than going through with it.”Tishayla Williams was 30 years old when she was engaged. She had bought the dress, finalized the venue, and was the only woman in her family who wasn’t married or a mother. The pressure was very real.But, when she had been followed out of a cafe by a strange man and called her fiancé crying, his first response had been, “What were you wearing?”“I told him to come collect his two-carat engagement ring,” she says.When your gut is screaming at you that you’re with the wrong person, ignoring it feels like abandoning yourself. This is why so many women stop the wedding—and why Ashe wants to remind us that despite our fears of letting others down, it’s always better to walk away.“I realized that the money spent and the embarrassment of cancelling a wedding were nothing compared to the cost of marrying someone who had betrayed my trust,” Smith says. “I’d much rather have a wedding dress I never wore than enter a marriage that was false.”What’s the Hardest Part of Walking Away?Women who call off a wedding usually think that facing their family and friends will be the most difficult part. But Smith, Woller, and Williams all agree that their loved ones met them with grace and understanding. Woller even says that confiding in her friends and family led to closer connections and more vulnerability.“I think the hardest part was accepting that the future I'd imagined wasn't going to happen,” Smith says. “I think people underestimate how much emotion goes into that. You picture the day, the people who will be there, the life you'll build afterwards, and even the family you might have together.”And despite knowing that the relationship is wrong or that calling the wedding off is the right decision, it doesn’t make ending the relationship any easier. “Even when you’re certain, you’re still human,” Williams says. “I spent the first few days sad, wondering if I’d walked away from my one chance at a fairy tale.”The Difference Between Cold Feet and a Bad Gut FeelingIn the part of the audio that doesn’t usually make it to the TikTok videos, Ashe sings, “This isn't cold feet, these aren't fireworks. The sky is menacing and that's an iceberg.”But nerves and wedding day jitters are always advertised to us as a normal part of your big day. How do you tell when it’s something more?“Cold feet are usually about the commitment itself: the finality, the change in identity, the idea of ‘forever,’” Kavanagh explains. “A bad gut feeling is about the person: how they treat you, whether you feel safe and respected, and patterns you’ve been explaining away.”Psychologist Dr. Karen Stewart explains that anxiety alone isn’t typically proof that something is wrong in the relationship. Instead, if you feel like you can’t trust them, don’t feel emotionally safe with them, or have unresolved patterns of conflict, these are all typically signs that the relationship isn’t sturdy enough to support a marriage. She also emphasizes that foundational issues in a relationship will not magically improve after a wedding. In fact, they’ll typically only get worse.Some people are just anxious, and it can be hard to trust their gut feelings. But when you analyze where your anxiety is coming from, you can typically pinpoint whether it’s just your body reacting to a huge life choice or something deeper about your relationship.“Sometimes we know far more than we are willing to admit,” Woller says.It always comes back to thinking about the connection and compatibility you have with your partner. “If you can picture yourself five years from now, crying in the bathroom at 3 a.m., wondering why the hell you married this person—there’s your answer,” Williams says.Will I Ever Be Okay Again? Calling a wedding off can be devastating. You’ve often spent months (or even years) planning a day, telling everyone you know, and picturing a future with this person that you love. Losing all of that at once can feel like something you’ll never get over.But this is why Ashe sings over and over again that none of it matters. Everything is secondary to your happiness and emotional safety. And as you can see through the countless TikTok videos, deciding to call off a wedding can save your life.“I genuinely believe it was both the worst and best thing that's ever happened to me,” Smith says. Since calling off her wedding, she’s traveled extensively, made strides in her career, and learned more about herself than ever before.Williams feels the same: “I’ve spent the years since investing in myself and my career, and I’ve learned that life doesn’t begin with a proposal or end with a canceled wedding.”Although Woller regrets how she handled certain things in that season of her life—and is even sorry for the pain she caused her former partner—she’s learned to move on from the guilt and shame she felt in the aftermath of breaking her engagement.“I still feel 100 percent confident that it was the right decision for both of us, and I am thankful every day that I dared to make such a life-altering choice.”