Wedding Blog

I’ll be honest, I’m beat, needing a weekend to recover from the weekend, so this post might be a bit lacking in style. However, I have decided to post as often as possible in the few weeks leading up to our wedding, be those posts good or bad, up or down, exhausted or giddy.

Here’s why: lately I feel everything more than usual. I go from excited and enthusiastic to exhausted and emotional in the blink of an eye. I alternate between looking forward to the party to that butterfly thing that makes my hands tremble slightly. And I’m betting that every bride feels this way with two weeks left to go. Heck, I’m betting that any woman hosting 50 of her closest peeps feels this way.

And yet, we sometimes act as if the only acceptable non-Bridezilla emotions are calm zen and excited joy. I have high hopes for overwhelming happiness on our wedding day but realistic expectations of everything else between now and then. I feel less alone when I know I’m not alone, but bridal blogs are often lacking in emotional detail in the days leading up to the big day because brides are getting stuff done. So I will blog about them all, and I’ll limit editing. Or so I tell myself.

We had a crazy-busy weekend packed with painting (what else?), hanging with the FILs, bench-building, and other stuff I can’t remember right now. What I do remember was a beautiful moment between my guy and I: driving back from his parents’ house, he said, “You know, I really feel married now. I didn’t before, but lately I do.”

“Does that freak you out?” I asked.

“No, it just feels normal,” he replied.

That, folks, is the point of our engagement. Because lately, I feel married too. Woo hoo!

I went on a research extravaganza when we were first engaged, trying to get a handle on how long an engagement should be (yea, yea, go ahead and laugh, I’m a dork), and one of the gems of wisdom I found was that you shouldn’t be married until you felt married. ‘Yea, yea, and you get what you want when you don’t want it zen bullsh*t, blah, blah,’ I thought.

Nine months later, I get it. All of this wedding planning hasn’t really been about planning a wedding, it’s been a ritual teaching us to be a team, make decisions jointly, spend money together, be a family. Oh, the skills I’ve gained, the things I’ve learned — that’s a post for another day.

“I’m glad you’re my team,” he remarked, relieved at my dog-wrangling skills. ‘Thank goodness I have him,’ I thought, thrilled to not have to knock on neighbor’s doors myself.

I’m suddenly caring less about our lack of color coordination and the prospect of rain.

How are you feeling at this point in your engagement?