AWP: Lessons #16-19

Lesson #16: I have a life outside of wedding planning

Seems logical enough, but I would do well to remember it.  Work right now (and by right now, I mean for the last two months) is incredibly slow, so I spend a good portion of my days on the computer playing around with wedding such.  I go home in the evening and think "Okay, what wedding task can I work on right now?"  It makes me incredibly anxious to always feel like I should be doing something, and it's a familiar feeling I used to get at the end of a semester.  I could never give myself a break from studying until after the last final was turned in- surely, there was something more I could cram into my head, more editing to do on that paper, more practice in counseling skills to do.  At the same time right now, though, I am remodeling the walls of the bathroom and, well, living.  You know, crazy stuff, like grocery shopping, cleaning the bathroom, working out, sleeping, all of which has fallen by the wayside due to WEDDING PLANNING.  I'm having to talk myself out of this feeling of constant pressure in order to manage my life and my house, and it's incredibly difficult at times.

Lesson #17: RSVP cards are fantastic

I love getting mail that's not bills, credit card offers, or addressed to people who aren't me.  Typically ALL the mail at our house is for Bobby, and boy does he get a lot of mail.  For the last two weeks though, little RSVP cards are waiting for me almost every afternoon, and I just plain love them.  It's so exciting to see that tiny off-white envelope and run inside to open and see who it's from.  They are a good reminder that, yes, I have actually accomplished things so far and I did actually finish some big thing in wedding planning.  Which brings me to my next lesson...

Lesson #18: "Will you forget the head-slicing thing?!"

If you grew up a child of the 1990's, you probably remember this:

If you weren't a child of the 1990's but had more Greek literature than I did, you probably still remember the monster Hydra, the beast who grew three heads for every one that was cut off.  That's how I feel about wedding planning this week.  I mentioned this in a previous blog about how things that should theoretically be simple are not, but now we've taken it a step further into "Why is this continuing to get more complicated as we go along?"

Let's use ordering flowers as an example.  My thought was, "Okay, walk into Whole Foods, I need this many this and that many that, here's a check, we'll pick them up on said date."  This is an excerpt from the email I received from the lovely Ally, head of floral in the Mountain Brook Whole Foods:

My deep blue single stem hydrangea comes in an assortment box with blue, lavender and purple.  The cost each box of 13 count hydrangea stems would be $81.78.  The price is price per case minus a case discount of 10% (90.87-9.09) for buying the whole case.  The problem is these hydrangeas would be an assortment of blue/lavender/purple.

I have not heard back from my wholesaler of flowers in Atlanta as of yet.  They offer the blue hydrangea “masja purple” retail is $8.69 a stem,  minimum of 40 stems, no case discount.. total of $343.60.  I will not know for certain on the hydrangeas until next Monday as my sales person at our wholesaler is unavailable right now but it is on their availability listings they send me.

I am well aware that the majority of this problem is my inexperience in anything to do with flower ordering.  But holy cow, how unaware of the world around me I feel as I try to knock things out only to make them more complicated.   Every so often there will be a break in the clouds and I will accomplish something (insert fanfare) but it is the planning equivalent of driving from Birmingham to Atlanta with a stop at Starbucks, stop for gas, stop for potty break at the state line, hit traffic on I-285, take a phone call from my mom, arrive at location, and turn around and go pick up food and then back to place of sleeping.  However, I will continue to attempt to stab this thing through the heart.

Lesson #19: I will never appreciate four walls and a bed the way I'll appreciate the one in Beach Cottage #4

I always knew I'd be excited about the honeymoon- the first week with my new husband, enjoying each other's company, being on vacation.  The reasons that I'm now excited, however, have taken me completely by surprise:

1.  We. will. be. alone.  Bobby lives in Troy; I live in Birmingham with a roommate.  We are never alone unless I visit him in Troy, which is usually once a month or less, and when I'm there, we only get about 4-5 hours a night together because he's working during the day.  I cannot wait to sleep, eat, watch movies in the cottage, and sit on the beach alone with Bobby.

2.  I can haz the sleep.  That pretty much sums it up.

3.  We will be in a private cottage and will be alone and isolated in order to, well, "be married."  That's detailed enough.

4.  We have one thing planned for the week, and that is to play with the baby tigers at the Gulf Shores Zoo.  It was completely intentional that we have no obligations other than arriving at the cottage, for reasons listed above.

I mean, come on, would *you* want to leave?

Seaside, Florida

Twenty-nine days.  Twenty-nine days.

AWP: Lessons #10 and 11

Lesson #10: Wedding Planning has absconded with my living room floor

It's equal parts amusing and annoying what wedding planning has wreaked on my living room.  Every once in a while, I'll take my wedding planning objects and stack them up neatly and move them back onto the loveseat they've taken over in our library.  That's where the wedding magazines and scrapbooking supplies are for the time being, and when I'm trying to make the living room look presentable again, the invitations and cardstock will make their way there also.  We've made this journey two or three times now, and someone they keep ending up back in the living room.  Right now there's a stack of invitations waiting to be painted, a stack of invitations already painted, a lapdesk with the paint stencil taped to it, a bag of $90 worth of envelopes (eek!), a paper cutter, and two shoe boxes of paint supplies, cardstock, sticky dots, and scissors.  I think I've given up on moving them until they get mailed.  At least their presence in the living room reminds me that they do need attention.

Lesson #11: Wedding Planning is like taking a class
When the initial joyful bliss of getting engaged subsided, the enormity of wedding planning loomed before me.  I've never been married.  I'm the oldest daughter, the oldest cousin, the oldest daughter of the oldest son and daughter.  My best friend is married, but all my other friends are unmarried.  I've been a bridesmaid only twice; once for my best friend and once for my dad's wedding.   I was a bridesmaid for my da when I was 15, and, being 15, I was completely self-absorbed and unaware of any wedding planning being done around me.  My best friend was married when I was 21, and surprisingly enough, I was still rather self-absorbed and didn't help as much as I feel I should have.  (We'll consider this my virtual apology, and I'll spend the next 60 years with her doing a better job.)  All in all, I didn't know how to plan a wedding, so I did what I knew I could- I studied.  I may not can fix a leaky toilet, I may not can tell you how to buy a house, and I may not know how to program a computer, but what I *can* do is study.  Oh, boy, can I study.  Between high school and six years of college, I can find information and figure out a way to organize in my head so that it stays there.  To study for wedding planning, I bought and read wedding magazines; I have perused almost every section of theknot.com; I listened to what other people had to say, including  my best friend and ladies from church; I made a notebook and wrote lists of things I had learned and things I still had to learn.  I have never utilized google quite to this extent; I might get flagged on the watch list if "songs to play at wedding reception" and "purple bridesmaid dresses" end up as terrorist language.  I have learned a lot, and while I'll end up being rushed to do some things I still don't know, I am confident that my wedding won't be a total disaster.

AWP Numero Tres

Lesson #7: Who's designing bridesmaid dresses these days?  Hannah Montana?

I have recently entertained the thought that picking out bridesmaid dresses will be more difficult than picking out the actual wedding dress.  And not without reason.  What in the world is *this*?

Or *this*?

Why is it so hard to find bridesmaid dresses that have sleeves?  Are we assuming that all bridesmaids are now 17 years old and a size 2?  My bridesmaids are women, not girls and not sorority sisters that traipse around in cotton minis and Ugg boots.  I wouldn't wear these shiny pastel strapless frocks.  Give me *this* for less than $150.

Specifically second from the right.  A woman's dress.  A dress with structure and character, a dress to wear to church, work, a date, another wedding.  A dress that says summer, semi-casual and fits all body shapes.  I was told recently of a bride who picked out dresses from a particular store (starts with "J" and ends with "Crew") that didn't make dresses over a particular size, a size that disqualified one of her bridesmaids.  I am very familiar with both the bride and bridesmaid, who have been friends for well over 10 years.  I was appalled that this store doesn't make above this size, and even more appalled that the bride gave little thought to her friend of a decade when picking out dresses.  I would like to avoid this and other such pitfalls when making my best friends buy and wear dresses in pictures that will hang on my wall for 50 years.

Lesson #8: Slow and steady wins the race

My darling fiancee has been confused as of late.  He's been baffled at my "hit the ground running" approach to wedding planning.  When I first starting writing this, it had been exactly 33 days since the proposal , and we have already secured a ceremony site, reception site, and a photographer.  Early this month, I got *the dress*.  I have a wedding planning notebook with divided sections and lots of graph paper with lots and lots of lists.  Maybe the lots and lots of lists are a little overboard, but there's a reason behind the madness.  I attended a wedding recently in which my roommate was a bridesmaid and best friend to the bride, and the wedding planning was total chaos.  There were so many small details to which she hadn't attended that the day before the wedding was madness.  I really want to enjoy my wedding, to enjoy the showers and RSVP's and building excitement without worrying that the programs haven't been printed until the day of the wedding (no kidding).  For now, six months before the wedding, I am at a lull in planning.  I'd much rather be in the lull than in a panic two weeks before.

Lesson #9: Sometimes I can actually get tired of wedding planning
Part of the reason I hit the planning so hard to begin with was that I was so excited.  I couldn't wait to play with paper and dresses and all such, so I went ahead and did it.  I am so glad that I did, because a couple weeks ago I hit a wall and wanted nothing to do with my lists and notebook.  I still don't want much to do with such.  At the moment I am much more concerned with other "things" to do and be done besides wedding planning, so much so, that I actually started this post, oh, a month ago and have just now gotten around to finishing it.  More posts to come about what sneaky somethings have been occurring at Windchase.

AWP Episode 2

Another several days and another round of lessons.

Lesson #4: "I" don't want to plan "my" wedding; "I" want "us" to plan "our" wedding

By virtue of being raised in the South, getting married has always been in the cards and led to many a hour daydreaming of precisely how it would all go down.  I have seen several brides plan their weddings without much a contribution of the groom.  Given, some men don't have opinions about the wedding, which is fine.  My groom has requested only that there be no cocktail wieners at the reception ("They just don't say 'wedding'.") and his sister be a bridesmaid.  Since he has asked so little and been so accommodating to my requests, I have made a commitment to grant each of his.  In the same breath, however, I don't want to spend the next 7 months and 5 days agonizing over exactly how I want my wedding to be.  We chose to pick out the ring together, we picked the honeymoon together, and we'll do the wedding together.  While I know he won't make the 49th trip to Hobby Lobby with me, he will browse through photographers websites, look at dresses online, and sign his name patiently and carefully (so that people can, oh, I don't know, read it) to the save-the-date cards.  The trips to Hobby Lobby can be reserved for the Bestie and the Roomie, as long as he's there to watch me cut out 60 pieces of purple cardstock afterwards.

Lesson #5: Cost is inversely proportional to time

I decided long ago I wanted to make my own invitations.  I am incredibly picky about paper products and don't want to pay a lot of money for something I could have done better myself.  However.  This also means I have already spent several hours picking out cardstock,  researching envelopes, and cutting out cardstock to attach to the back of pictures for save-the-dates.  For the most part I don't mind doing these things- I love craft projects and wedding planning is a perfect excuse to play at Hobby Lobby.  It's just an interesting fact of life, and I will continue to purchase my cardstock and spend every afternoon cutting, glueing, painting, and researching envelopes.

Lesson #6: I'm still in shock

I'm not sure how other brides-to-be feel after receiving the ring, but I have officially diagnosed myself with a state of shock.  I am still as distracted as a 9-year-old boy with 14 Mountain Dews while trying to accomplish anything requiring my hands palms-down; my dear Amy has caught me looking at it while trying to do things around the house.  ("Yes, Heather, it's shiny."  Gentle tones, as always.)  We became engagement 19 days ago, and words like "fiancee", "bride", "groom", "married", "husband", "wife", etc. confuse my conscious.  I'm down with "wedding", now- that one I understand.  But to call Bobby my "fiancee" feels a little snotty and attention-seeking, as if the use of that word compels people to ask when the "date" is.  That word is especially strange since we both agreed long ago that "boy/girlfriend" weren't appropriate labels enough for how we felt.  Speaking of Bobby as my "husband" sounds so old to me, as if on August 14th I'll suddenly be transported to slowing metabolism and retirement accounts.  To me, it also sometimes sounds like all the joy and excitement is gone, like those couples I fear who tolerate and ignore each other, numb and fabric-worn from the years of anniversaries and coffee and "what do you want for dinner tonight?"'s.  It appears and is quite fair to say I'm afraid of being numb and fabric-worn; I don't want the heart-racing every moment of the day, but at the end of our lives together I want to say that all my years I loved him more than I did the day he became my "husband".  I'm sure the further I get into AWP, these words and planner schedules and shoe comparisons will ease me into the water.  For now I'll just hold my left hand out and drift off for the rest of my lunch break.

Adventures in Wedding Planning

Let's start this like a cheesy romance novel: December 23rd my life changed forever...

Well, it started with my left hand ring-finger changing forever, but that also entails some life changes. He liked it so he went and put a ring on it, and after all the well-wishes, facebook comments, and gasps of delight, before us looms...
(cue dramatic minor chord)
Wedding Planning.
I would be lying through my smiling teeth if I said I have just now started wedding planning- the best friend and I pulled out the wedding magazines in September and I picked the venue in October. But now the real Planning begins, and I thought my dear abandoned blog would be a good place to make note of all the little things I'm learning about wedding planning, my life, and our future life together along the way.

Lesson #1: Guests have opinions
As soon as I threw out my sparkly, sparkly finger out to the world, people have been giving me their opinions and demands for my wedding and married life. I have already had two people threaten to not attend my wedding because we have chosen not to serve alcohol, one friend aghast that I won't be serving white wedding cake, and my highly inappropriate mother instruct my fiancee to "throw out her birth control" (direct quote). It's not so much that I'm irritated by these opinions (except for the birth control comment, that was insane) but fascinated by the indiscretionary way in which they were thrown at me 7 minutes after announcing my engagement. Our wedding will be a wedding, not a frat party; I want strawberry, not white; and when we choose to bring forth fruit from my womb is a personal decision, not a democratic reproduction. I've been told this is common, but I'm still fascinated.

Lesson #2: Males have the best ring comments
My 13-year-old cousin: "Heather got a rock!"
My grandfather: "Whoa!"
My uncle: "Holy cow, let me see that."
My fiancee's brother: "Man, that's nice." (Add +5 ranking to all compliments from this guy; they are few and far between.)
My friend: "Heather, I believe you have something to show me." (looks at ring) "What color rating is that?" /drop jaw
However, winning reaction goes to 14-year-old sister: Me- "Guess what I did last night?" Jody- "What?" Me- "Got engaged" /fling left hand out. Jody- /gasp mightily and fling backwards against passenger side door, as if ring sent shock waves through the car

Lesson #3: Wedding Planning = Decision-Making + Organization
Fortunately, I am a fairly decisive person. I know what I want when I see it, dinner choices notwithstanding (I can't pick a restaurant to save my life). I knew the ring was It after seeing 25+ others. I can't imagine having to chose: a ceremony venue, a reception venue, a photographer, a dress, a catering menu, wedding favors, my shoes, my hairstyle, my makeup, bridesmaid dresses, flowers, ceremony time, flower girl, bridesmaids, groomsmen, wedding cake design, wedding cake flavor, grooms cake design, grooms cake flavor, invitation list, invitation color, invitation envelopes, save-the-date designs, calligraphy pens, and 1567 other items without having a very good sense of self, knowledge of my style, knowledge of what my fiancee wants, and a prioritized list of what is needed/wanted/not necessary. The list of decision are absolutely overwhelming, and I am happy to report we have made decisions about the ceremony site, date, attendants, color scheme, officiant, wedding cake design and flavor, baker for cakes, and a desperate *need* for some flower/feather/sparkly decoration for the side of my head.

More lessons to come- stay tuned.