Fans of two-time Dancing with the Stars champion Cheryl Burke know exactly what they’re going to get when they watch her compete on Monday nights: a strict, dedicated coach who demands her partners give it their all and then some. Off the dance floor, Burke demands the same of herself. “I’m the same person you see on [the show],” she says. “I have an addictive personality and I’m addicted to work.”

That’s why it should come as no surprise that when planning her May 23 wedding to actor Matthew Lawrence, Burke knew exactly what she wanted. She proudly owns up to the many sleepless nights she spent making sure every last detail was checked off. But unlike most brides who cringe at the word bridezilla, Burke says she’s a proud member of the club. A day after returning from her honeymoon with Lawrence, she tells Glamour’s Jessica Radloff what she learned from the experience, and why it’s perfectly OK to embrace your inner bridezilla.

Growing up, I never thought about my wedding. I was not that girl. To be honest, I didn’t believe in it. Fast forward a few decades and I’m bringing my laptop and 200 thank you notes with me on my honeymoon because I wanted to get a head start. Funny how things change.

I didn’t start to even think about my actual wedding until Matthew proposed. And then things really amped up when I hired the incredible Mindy Weiss as my wedding planner. But before that? Nope.

And now? I say embrace your inner bridezilla. I sure did. But there’s a way of doing it without having people hate you. A bridezilla can either be bitchy [to the point where] friends ghost them after the wedding or there’s a bridezilla like me that expected perfection from myself, not from anyone else. It’s the same thing when I’m on Dancing with the Stars. If I know I didn’t do my best, I won’t be able to sleep at night. It’s important for me to follow through with whatever expectations I have for myself.

Everyone says ‘You’re going to forget something on your wedding day,’ and it makes me proud to say I did not forget one thing. I was like, ‘I deserve an award for this!’ It’s so important to me for things to run smoothly and on time. I went to a wedding once that started an hour late, and I don’t appreciate that. I think it’s really rude. Honestly, now that my wedding is done, I’m pretty sure Mindy Weiss would hire me.

I knew we’d get along because she didn’t roll her eyes when I presented a PowerPoint presentation at our first meeting. She was like, ‘It makes my job easier because you know what you want and I can make whatever vision you want come to life.’ She said it’s when clients are indecisive that the process gets frustrating. I get that. If you leave people with options, then there’s too many cooks in the kitchen.

Listen, I’m not telling people to do backflips down the aisle. This isn’t a circus act. I’ve been to enough weddings to know what works and what doesn’t. And what doesn’t work is when you tell your bridal party, ‘Do whatever you want or wear whatever you want,’ when you actually have an opinion. I think it’s rude to give people that freedom if you’re just going to judge them afterward.

But I’ll be the first one to say that choosing a dress was a nightmare. It wasn’t so much the choosing as it was working with the design companies. Oddly enough, I knew it was going to be a nightmare. I play dress-up every single day on Dancing with the Stars, so for me, the goal was to feel like a bride and not like I’m about to put on a show. I just knew what I wanted.

I went through two wedding dress designers who quit. To be honest, I think some of that had to do with the crazy contracts they wanted me to sign. Who signs a contract for a dress? When the first designer quit, I was like, ‘That’s rude, but moving on.’ Also, I’m so used to the turnaround being so quick with dresses, that when you don’t send me the sketch and it’s been three months, there’s a problem. Not communicating with me is the worst thing you can possibly do, whether it’s an email or a text. Just respond, even if the response is, ‘Sorry, I can’t right now.’ Otherwise you leave me and my wedding party out to dry. So when it happened again, I was like, ‘Whatever, it wasn’t meant to be.’ And in the end, I’m so happy because my eventual wedding designer, Romona Keveza, was the best.

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