6 Life Events That Are Just As Important As The Day You Get Married

I'm not against weddings. They're beautiful days, both for the happy couple and everybody surrounding them. They can be great stories, and they're certainly great memories.

But to say your wedding is the most important day of your life is a little extreme, don't you think? Isn't that selling all the other days short?

Here are six other momentous occasions that are just as worthy of the "most important day" label:

1. Graduation

After decades of groaning and swearing through school and then university, they finally give you that piece of paper that says, “You did it. You made it. You get to call yourself a master.”

Now that's a masterful feeling. It's an accomplishment you achieved completely on your own. That wasn't some team effort. That was by the sweat off your brow, and is most definitely a contender for the best say of someone's life.

2. One Million Readers

For those of us who write a blog, hitting the one million reader mark is pretty damn awesome. You've worked hard to create the best content, you've sweated over social media, and you've finally got a six-figure number of readers.

It doesn't have to be a blog, either. It can really be any achievement. You sold a painting, watched your daughter do amazingly well in a play after you coached her through her lines, cooked the best Thanksgiving dinner ever and then some. It's about achieving something that has put you a cut above the rest, even if nobody else necessarily notices.

Something that lets you say, “That's me. That couldn't have happened without me.” Most of us get to have a wedding day, but how many of us get to notice that we're special? And how can that experience not be in the running for the best day of our lives?

3. Getting Engaged

And why is it the wedding day that's the most important? That's just the culmination of a lot of planning. Many of us are utterly exhausted when it rolls around. And besides, there are so many ways it can go wrong. You could even end up disappointed. Do you really want to preemptively label it the "best" day? Aren't you courting disaster by doing so?

There's another day, much earlier, that sets it all off. The day you get engaged might be far more special than your actual wedding. When you pop the question and he says yes (hey, I'm a modern girl), that feels pretty fantastic. So, why is the wedding the more coveted day?

4. Bringing Life Into The World

And then there's that special something we women get to do: We get to bring life into the world. Yes, it hurts. It's accompanied with nine months of suffering, but that's all compensated for when that little one looks up at you.

It's an incredible moment that many women (and men) refer to as second to none. This definitely deserves recognition as one of the best days of a person's life.

5. A Random Sunny Day

A day that's completely unplanned, where everything just clicked and you felt your heart bursting with joy is the best kind of day. The day when you hitchhiked through France with your best friend, the day in the park where you went for a picnic with the boy who was so nervous he didn't know what to say, the day when the wind was whipping the rain through the trees outside and you all collected in front of the fireplace ... these are all unforgettable memories.

Those days should be in the running, shouldn't they? They should at least have a shot, rather than be dismissed out of hand.

6. The Second Most Important Day

Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why.” Now, for some of us, our wedding day is when we find out why we've been put on this little ball made of mud and water. And there's no shame in that.

But to say it's a forgone conclusion that it will undoubtedly be the best day of your life, closes yourself off to so much of the beauty of the other moments. To me, that's selling the great big adventure of life far too short.

So, don't let the commercialized wedding industry predetermine what day matters to you the most. Let's instead embrace each day as it comes, and try to make the most of it.

And then, we can sit down at the end of it all and decide which were the greatest days of our lives.