I get some pretty good ideas from nightmares--not about becoming a serial-killing-monster-with-quicksand-squirting vision, but more like how to deal with day-to-day sort of problems that you weren't even aware were bothering you.
Say you were getting married and your mother was going to make you a cake. For whatever reason, you'd rather buy a cake, but you know you could never tell your mother not to make you one. Maybe you can't even think of any good reason at all, maybe you know that everyone at the reception would love her cake, but that you just want to lavish in the extravagance of buying one. Now this doesn't torment your every waking thought, probably you don't think about it consciously at all. But if you'd have a nightmare about it. It would go something like this. . ..
No matter where you are actually going to have your wedding and reception, in your dream you're walking down a spiraling staircase with your thirty foot satin train and your kazillion bridesmaids trailing. Everyone is lined up and waiting in folding chairs below, and the cake is prominently displayed on a table by itself along the far wall. Well, right as you reach the bottom, one of your bridesmaids trips on your train, falls over the rail, and lands in the middle of the cake. Even if this is a nightmare, no one gets hurt, the tragedy is that you end up not having a cake at all, and for a minute you feel pretty reprehensible that you didn't appreciate your mother's cake. But then the idea part sinks in.
It's the realization that accidents happen, and no one would really call off a wedding because of this, no matter how nightmarish it might be for a sitcom bride or how humiliating in the Funniest Home Video world. Actually, someone would just make a few phone calls while the wedding went on, and somehow would arrange a fast substitute cake from a local grocery store bakery. Oh yeah, they would clean off your bridesmaid and rush her to the hospital if need be. We are talking reality now and in reality when people fly over staircase railing into cakes they sometimes break their arms and such. Now you might think that this would still be a truly awful thing (even if nothing was broken), because no matter what you thought of your mother's cake, it would just have to be better than a thrown-together-grocery-store-bakery cake. But the idea part isn't complete.
You see, now that you realize a substitution could be made, you could plan to make it to your specifications. You could have the perfect cake waiting for just the right moment. (Probably you wouldn't be able to cross your fingers and make a bridesmaid fly into your cake, but a small bribe might be all you would need.) And what is even more perfect is that since everyone would be expecting a pretty awful cake at this point, everyone would be amazed. Of course everyone for the rest of the evening would be telling you how well you were taking everything, but with the perfect cake sitting on the far table, I'm sure you could live with the little lies.
That brings me to another little thought on this whole dream inspired wedding topic. I had an actual dream the other night about my wedding. I dreamt that all my friends and family got together and threw me a surprise wedding. No, this was not a nightmare, although I suspect that it would have been quite a nightmare for all my friends and relatives. . .. It was the perfect dream. No hassles, no worries, and I never once had to smooth over any of the little irreconcilable demands from each and every relative with all their various religions and expectations. I wish I could see our families duke it out over the color of the napkins, especially knowing that I would never be called in as the final judge to settle what has escalated into a personal vendetta, or possibly a political conspiracy by the persons involved. I could afford two weddings just by selling tickets.
Unfortunately, there is no practical way to translate this dream into reality. What priest or justice of the peace would come out to marry a couple for a surprise wedding? How could this person know the couple meant to get married at all? No, a surprise wedding would never work, but it does bring up a good point. It seems to me that if I'm worrying about having to make all the decisions and preparations for my wedding enough to have this dream, and to be so wistful that it could never be, this says something about the true beneficiaries of weddings. Certainly the bride and groom would benefit more from a quick and easy elopement. Why are the bride and groom so easily reduced to miniature, painted cake decorations? Why are they the silenced insignificant figurines that family members are so fascinated with taking pictures of? What does a wedding mean anyway? Maybe weddings have always been like this, but I find myself wishing to be more than a posing doll at the start of my marriage. I think marriage is more than appearances, more than the standardizing and marketing of traditions. Certainly it is more than having the perfect cake, but perhaps that is a good place to start.