The morning of your wedding day is meant to be filled with excitement and nerves, but for Alexis Saya, it wasn’t – so she called the whole thing off, with a blunt five-word comment, while her fiance laid beside her.
Alexis, who was 23-year-old at the time, revealed that she had been “terrified” everyone would hate her after making the brave decision to put a stop to her £30,000 wedding. It was made all the harder as Alexis was actually asleep in bed with her fiance when she realised she was making a big mistake.
While it was an incredibly difficult choice to make, particularly on the morning of their wedding day, Alexis says it was the “best decision” she’s ever made.
The couple, who met at high school at the age of 16 and are parents to their four-year-old daughter, experienced an on-and-off relationship for several years. Despite Alexis knowing she wasn’t truly happy, they were due to get married in Huntington, Indiana, US, on April 16, 2023. However, when their big day arrived, Alexis, who was unemployed at the time, woke up and just “knew she had to” cancel their wedding. So she turned to her partner and said: “We can’t get married today.”
Reflecting back on the significant day, Alexis, who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, US, shares: “I don’t think that I’ve genuinely ever done anything harder. I felt like it was a decision I had just made but almost I didn’t have a say in it. I didn’t have control over it.
“It was about 6am. I said, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t get married today’. He kind of looked at me and went back to sleep. I went into another room and called my mum. My sister was on the phone with other family telling them that I wasn’t going to go through with it.
“I wanted him to go grab our daughter so that I could leave because I didn’t really want to be there when everyone woke up and realised that I wasn’t going to get married. I woke him up again and said, ‘I need you to go get her’. He was super confused, and I said, ‘We’re not getting married today’.
“He looked at me and was like ‘What are you talking about’. And I said, ‘Do you really think this is a marriage?’. He went and got her and I left. I didn’t want to but I knew that I had to. I cried that whole day. It was awful. I took it harder than him. You’re giving up everything you’ve known.
“I was a stay-at-home mum at the time so I had nothing. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have money of my own. Everything was his.” The mum-of-one took their daughter to spend time at her mum’s house before she moved back into her old apartment without her partner. While Alexis admitted to being in a “bad place after the wedding”, she now believes she made the right choice.
She says, “Right after I had wished that I’d gone through with it. I remember thinking, it was about 3pm, ‘I’d already be married now’. I got into a really bad palace after the wedding. I just couldn’t believe that I’d actually made the decision. I regretted it so badly for probably a while. Then it came to a point that I was really happy that I did it.
“I knew that I wasn’t happy in the relationship and I knew that. I just always tried to make myself believe that I was because I loved him. It’s something that I’ll always have with me, and it’s a trauma that I think I’ll always carry, but I’ve found a way to cope and deal with it better. But I think it was absolutely the best decision for me and my daughter.
“[My daughter] was probably the biggest reason I left. It came to a point where if I couldn’t do it for her, then it just isn’t fair. This is her only childhood, and I’m in charge of it. That’s the best decision I’ve ever made, even if it’s hard to accept.
“Everytime I see him it’s a reminder of why I left. I always wonder sometimes when it’s late at night, and I’m in bed, and I’m lonely, and I’m just like, ‘Oh, I wish I just had my family back’. I think of only the good times, and then I see him again, and it just reminds me all over again of the bad that outweighs all of the good. And that’s why I left.”
The couple got engaged in 2020, shortly after welcoming their first child together, but Alexis explains that their relationship had been on and off between 2019 and 2023. Alexis said: “The relationship wasn’t a good relationship. We were young, we were stupid. We purposely had a baby young, which I would never regret. He gave me the best thing ever in my life. I’m forever thankful to him for that.
“After my daughter was born we had broken up a few times and got back together a few times. I think I had in total three or four rings because of how many times we’d broken up. We’d finally in 2022 started planning the wedding. It was going to be a beautiful wedding. I was very excited. I think things kind of shifted for me.”
The mum-of-mum never planned to put an end to their relationship on her wedding day and was “terrified” of the consequences. “When you do make decisions like that you think everyone’s going to hate you. That’s how I felt. I thought I was going to lose my mum because she paid for the wedding. I was terrified,” Alexis says.
She adds, “I feel like people think just because I say I left on my wedding day ‘she must just not care or be able to do whatever’. It was terrifying, truly. It was very hard. Even my own family said, ‘Well why did you wait’. I genuinely went to bed that night, thinking I was going to wake up and get married. You also only see a snippet of the situation. I think it’s all situational.
“I would never have chosen it to be that day. I never did anything maliciously towards him. I never wanted to hurt him. We had talked on the phone that day after I left. Maybe 4pm. I was just crying ‘I didn’t want to do this to hurt you. I just couldn’t do it’.”
Alexis, now a student nurse, has since shared her story on TikTok with photos from her wedding day, accumulating 144,100 views. as the video went viral. One photo shows Alexis on the day she tearfully left her fiancé and another 16 months later as she happily beams at the camera.
Many TikTok users took to the comments to praise Alexia for her “brave” decision, as one wrote: “Congrats on putting yourself first.” A second penned: “That must have been so hard,” while a third said: “You are so brave. So any people wouldn’t do this even if they felt it.”
Others questioned the timing, as one commented: “Why the wedding day?” and another asked: “Why do people always wait for the wedding day? That’s so scary.” However, having made the right decision for herself, the single mum is now encouraging anyone else who is “questioning” their relationship to leave.
She says, “I would tell anybody that if you even have a question of if you should leave then you should. And you might go back but you might not and it might be the best decision you ever make. It is the hardest thing to do to leave. I still can’t believe I did it.
“There’s still times it’s hard but, I have to remind myself I will find somebody that loves me and my daughter. I cannot wait to get married one day. I can’t wait to have more kids.”
