And for the US pop singer Ashe, that included her wedding day. Last October, she was getting ready to tie the knot at a gorgeous hilltop ceremony in Nashville when inspiration struck. As she watched her family gather, the musician flashed back to her first wedding, almost a decade earlier.
She's called that first marriage "horrifying". Her ex, who she met in college, was, she says, emotionally manipulative and psychologically abusive. He had insisted on a beachfront wedding, which sounds romantic until you learn that Ashe has a fear of the ocean.
In the run-up, she had been tempted to call it off, but felt powerless to stand up for herself. On her second wedding day, she realised the opposite was true. "I'm in a happy, healthy relationship and I have total autonomy over my own life," says the singer, now in her early 30s.
"I thought, if this didn't feel right, I could totally put a halt to the whole thing. I definitely didn't have that first time around." As she adjusted her veil and prepared to walk down the aisle, she filed that feeling away. Two months later, and back at work, the idea resurfaced and a song spilled out.
It unfolds like a movie scene. Ashe pleads with her younger self to trust her instincts. "You know how you really feel / You don't have to waste your life," she sings, as the wedding band stutters to an uncertain halt.
"Do I wish I'd had that advice at the time? 1,000 per cent," Ashe says. "If someone had given me the insight that I was not stuck, and that I could run, I could have changed things sooner. Maybe weeks before – but it was something I really could have used." What about the line where she pledges to "burn the wedding dress and run away"?
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