What Weddings Taught Me About Leadership (and Why I Wrote Right Lane Must Exit)

Owning a wedding and event center teaches you something very quickly:
people don't lose their minds on the big day — they reveal them.

I didn't set out to write a book because I wanted to be an author. I wrote Right Lane Must Exit because after enough weekends watching otherwise reasonable adults unravel over napkin colors and chair spacing, I realized something deeper was happening.

This wasn't about weddings.
It was about control.

The term bridezilla gets thrown around casually, almost jokingly. But underneath it is a cultural issue we don't really want to examine: we've trained people to believe perfection equals worth. That if everything isn't flawless, they somehow failed — publicly.

Multiply that pressure by family expectations, money, social media, and unresolved emotional patterns, and suddenly the wedding becomes the stage where all of it explodes.

Running an event center forced me into leadership whether I liked it or not. I wasn't just managing logistics — I was managing nervous systems. Calming parents. Grounding couples. Translating fantasy into reality without letting it consume the people involved.

That's where Right Lane Must Exit came from.
It wasn't written from theory. It was written from the quiet back hallway moments when someone realized they were chasing an idea instead of living a life.

The hardest lesson?
Most people don't want guidance — they want validation. And leadership isn't about giving people what they want in the moment. It's about helping them see what they're doing before it costs them something they can't replace.

Weddings are beautiful.
They're also mirrors.

If we don't learn how to regulate ourselves under pressure, we carry that chaos into marriage, business, parenting, and community. We laugh about bridezillas — but we should be asking why so many people feel they have to become one to feel seen.

That question is why I wrote the book.
And why I still believe leadership starts long before the ceremony ever does.