Weddingbee Blog

{Tell me you loved the movie “Adventures in Babysitting” as much as I did. Yes, the one back in the ’80s with Elizabeth Shue. When I moved to Chicago, I suddenly understood the whole drive-into-the-scary-city premise. Anyhoo…}

So, armed with my newly-married force field (ya know, the one keeping away normal frustration, at least until the word “husband” doesn’t seem so mind-blowing), I headed happily off to the Social Security Administration and DMV, armload of paperwork in hand.

Side note 1: I keep all “important documents” in a little zippy waterproof folder. When I need to do something official, I grab the whole zippy folder. Didn’t make it clear I needed an original birth certificate, Miss Snooty Government Gatekeeper? Well, here you go! Think I don’t have a copy of my very first voter registration card? HA! Proved you wrong! Yea, I’m a dork.

Side note 2: I didn’t head off to change my name as happily as I might have suggested. I’m still slightly ambivalent. But I want my kids to have the same last name as my husband and me, so I’m going with the Band-Aid Theory on this one (rip it off before you have time to dread it). On the plane home from our fabulously lazy honeymoon, I asked Mr. Cheese to indulge me by outwardly and overtly acting like this was the best darned thing I could do to show my love for him. He obliged, offering to take me out for drinks to celebrate (though we instead broke out the new blender and made our very first batch of pina coladas).

Armed with the second Twilight book, I waltzed into the Social Security Administration. In my state, you start there, and the receipt from your transaction is a requirement at the DMV. No problem. 45 minutes and a friendly chat with the helpful name-changer later, I had the slip of paper declaring my new identity:
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I hesitated before blogging this morning. My hubby and I just returned from a very fantastic 7-ish days in Puerto Rico (wonderfully cool place) to clingy animals and a house… well, let’s put it this way: the last thing we did before we left was get married in it, so in the interests of picture perfection (okay, so we wouldn’t look like total slobs), we hid crap in every available crap-hiding space. Coming home is like being in a really f’d up scavenger hunt.

I’m biting the bullet and changing my name today, spending time away from my new husband for the first time in weeks, AND in a series of super fun government office waiting rooms. Blegh. (But at least I’ll have the second Twilight novel to keep me company. I caved while on the beach and read the first one, and now I’m hooked.)

I have misplaced the cord for my camera (in the aforementioned crap-hiding extravaganza), so I can’t show you honeymoon pics, and I don’t have any wedding pics yet.

But it’s more than that. Our wedding was fantastic. Yea, yea, every bride says that, but they mean it in different ways, and I struggle to explain mine. Yes, I got to marry my favorite man. Yes, we had a great party (with really great food). Yes, his vows were just perfect and my hands were shaking and the music was very personal.

But my favorite moment of the whole night, the one I return to over and over with a lump in my throat and tears threatening to fall, happened just before I made my walk.
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AND I FINALLY GET IT!

Driving down the road today, I was unexpectedly choked up. Why? Because I had an armful of fantabulous peonies sitting in a bucket of water right next to me that made me smile, and suddenly, I got it.

I get it! A, ha!

Some things you do because you must – parking, tent rentals, chairs and tables. Other things you do because they’ll mean something later – ceremony readings, honoring family and friends, nods to your past. But the very very best things? You do those because they make the people you love the most laugh, or dance, or hug with joy.

My shoes make me smile. The peonies (that I bought at the Fresh Market from the nicest woman ever) are just happy fluffy wedding-y flowers. My family spent all sorts of money to get here, but they’re here, and my brother and sister are practicing the songs they’ll be singing at our wedding (my freaking wedding!) while lounging in my freshly painted bedroom.

Life is good.
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I haven’t posted in a few days — Chez Cheese being a rather nutty place lately — but I was composing blog posts in my head while I painted and shopped and made endless lists. I was going to come here and tell you all about how my life had become a never-ending attempt to cope with my quirks, all exacerbated by the stress of wedding + house guests + family visiting.

And then I realized: I was paying my attention in the wrong places.

Because there is a cost to attention. Doesn’t focusing your energy on one thing cost you the ability to focus on another? You decide the value of your experience by the attention costs you allocate. And doesn’t “paying attention” really mean “spend time”? When a child asks you to pay attention to them, they really mean they want your time and your energy.

I hate spending money and this last week is a flurry of writing checks and recalculating budgets. My extreme budget goals are pretty much out the window; while our wedding spending remains pretty small, our total spending keeps going up as we prepare for 50 or 60 of our closest people to tromp through our house and property. While choosing linens for our bed (because I’ll be getting ready in our master bedroom and it’s a total disaster), I found myself standing frozen with indecision. I literally could not leave OR choose from three options. I had to call my guy to pick (”Um, C”)! Uncomfortable decisions can’t be put off any longer, so my main coping mechanism is off the table (procrastination).
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We all gripe talk about the nuttiness of wedding planning, how our previously sane selves suddenly find ourselves in a heaping pile of sobs over our invitations or color schemes. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t really find wedding planning fun and I didn’t really expect it to be, and you all know that I’ve been reduced to a snotty sobbing mess more than once. How does it happen? And why?

I think I have an inkling of an answer, everything suddenly coming together for me in recent experiences involving forgotten flowers, honeymoon plans and the photography schedule. Let me explain.

You all know by now about the forgotten flower order, but I didn’t really forget, I just didn’t get around to it. Why? Don’t know, but every time I pulled up the website and my credit card, I felt weird and I’d do something else instead.

Mr. C and I spent hours and hours last night finally booking our honeymoon. We’d known where we wanted to go for a while (more on that later) but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. I’d start researching, get overwhelmed by all of the options, and do something else (now you know why I’ve been blogging so often — AVOIDANCE). Even with my excited fiance at my side, I struggled to think of it all as fun! and exciting! rather than stressful and overwhelming.
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Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)

With nine days to go, I’m ready to unveil my super-duper effective prioritization technique, the one I use when “if I remember it it’s important” isn’t working (hi, I forgot to order flowers!): Sooner or Later.

I have a thousand things floating in my head, and I find myself feeling frazzled and unable to get anything done because I’m trying to get everything done. Every bridal site and magazine tells you to make lists, but none of them tell you what to do with them. Looking at a to-do list a mile long doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel worse. And if I try to put a schedule around everything left to do, I end up losing my shit because we’re behind my schedule (yea, yea, I’m a project manager by training). As Miss Meatball would say, no bueno.

{Brief aside: I hate running, and if I have to run, I’d prefer to be on a treadmill. Why? Because I cannot handle being on a track or trail and seeing how far I have to go. At least on a treadmill, a mile is just a number.}

So I have this long long list and a headache. Now what?
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It was bound to happen. Really. If you know me, you know I obsess and freak out over details, then hit a point where I stop obsessing and start avoiding. That’s what the Oopsies begin.

I forgot to order flowers. Well, technically, I didn’t forget, I just didn’t get around to it. My plan was to order a couple hundred bucks’ worth of flowers from Sam’s Club — they sell stems of roses, daisies, carnations, and other flowers in bulk and ship them directly to you. That was the plan, and my lovely FSIL even lent me her Sam’s card.

But I couldn’t decide which flowers to order, or in which colors, or how they’d look together, so I just didn’t do it. When I logged on, full of determination to push through the discomfort (seriously, it all makes my tummy hurt), I remembered they have a 10-day advance requirement.

Oopsie.

So, new plan.
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Because I’m pretty honest about my first marriage — both good and bad — I sometimes get messages or comments from women who are marrying as young as I was the first time, wanting to know what I would have done differently (other than, I suppose, not being young). I suspect other readers have been turned off by the same topic, figuring I just made stupid decisions that had little to do with my relative youth. In my last session with my fabulous therapist, he asked me the same thing: what could I have done differently?

Thing is, I didn’t think I needed to do anything differently, not at 21. There’s not a thing you could have said to me that would have made me doubt our ability to make our marriage work. We loved each other, we’d lived together, we knew each other’s weaknesses. How could we fail?

So accepting that waiting to get married wasn’t gonna happen, I would say to myself: decide that no matter what, you won’t get divorced until you’re 31*. Wish for it, consider it, but then set it aside until your 31st birthday. On that birthday, take stock of your relationship and then decide.

Your mid-twenties are going to be turbulent years, years spent trying to figure out how to extricate the threads of your own being from the cloth of your family. You’re going to feel lost, and alone, and not very sure about anything… and you will blame your husband and your marriage for that. You’ll believe you have lost yourself in him, are alone because he’s not with you, would know yourself better if you didn’t have to worry about him, and while that may be a little bit true, it’s mostly not. Without a pact — a real, honest, boots-on-the-ground commitment — to not actually leaving until those years are behind you, you will lose a wonderful man who was a great husband. You’ll discover that your life is just as crazy without him as it was with him and you’ll suddenly realize that it wasn’t him, it was you all along.
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When we first decided to host our own outdoor “garden wedding”, I was annoyed at the lack of boots-on-the-ground information about them. I wanted a list of things to know and do so that I’d be prepared, but I couldn’t find one. Consider this my first attempt to remedy that situation; I will update this again afterward as well.

In addition to the “normal” wedding items, don’t forget:

• You’ll need to have a pet plan! We have two dogs, both of whom are very sweet but incredibly friendly. Ya know, they’ll knock you over to give you smoochies. We’ve decided to send them away for the entire wedding weekend and our honeymoon week. Don’t worry, they’re going to a fabulous doggy daycare facility that also boards. They’ll get to play with their peeps all day and sleep in the enclosed playroom overnight; they might not want to come home! As the mister said, we’ll all be on vacation, just not together. As far as the cats go, we’re going to set up a cat room with food, toys, and litter boxes and try to keep them there. Their stress levels will stay low and we won’t have to worry about cat hair everywhere. {Though I suspect Frank the cat will make at least one appearance.}

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That’s how I feel all the time. With just over 10 days to go, the proverbial shit is hitting the fan. Our house is trashed, owing to trying to get things done without stopping to breathe. Paint this, clean that, run to Hell Depot for the nineteenth time.

But it’s okay. Really. It’ll all turn out okay. I’m sitting on a chair under a tree blogging working in a slight breeze and brilliant sunshine on the green, green lawn. Even the dogs are cooperating, having taken a break from wrestling to lay in the sun. I’m taking nice deep breaths and starting to believe that it’ll all be just fine.

Last night, though, was a rough one. I was bone tired. Instead of taking a 30 minute nap like a smart girl should, I dragged myself around with a coffee cup in hand, going and going and going until I realized I was on the verge of tears for no good reason. And then suddenly I was on the verge no more, tears streaming down my face and “I just wanna give uuuuuppppp” in my head. This whole wedding thing can do that to the laziest most balanced of souls.

Take my advice: suggest to your man that when you hit this Suddenly I’m Crying For No Good Reason stage, telling you that Nothing Is That Important Or Worth All of This is not the way to go.
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This post has been brewing since long before I was a Weddingbee blogger, and it bubbled up to the front of my mind while listening to the radio this weekend. You know that song, “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colby Callait? “I’m lucky I’m in love with my best friend…” Yea, that one. That song’s not for me.

My fiance is not my best friend.

My first husband was my best friend; he was my everything. When I was with him, I depended on him completely for emotional support. He helped me carry the burdens of my job, my stress and my dramas. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you there could be no other way. How could you be loyal wife if you had another best friend? Was I supposed to talk about him to other people? No way.

Times have changed, lessons have been learned. I have a best friend — who is my MOH — upon whom I rely when my eyes are puffy from crying and I can’t see where I screwed up. I have a mom who has a knack for sifting through the crap and pulling out the important stuff. I have a dad who can always be counted on as an example of how to do it; he doesn’t even need to say anything. My brother fields frantic phone calls over petty crap (even wedding stuff… he will be a perfect groom someday) and my sister dispenses relationship advice with her particular brand of directness. Oh, yea, and I have a therapist. I’m a very intense person, and it takes a village to get me through life, but I’m lucky enough to have a whole host of people who are willing to do that for me. Because it’s about me.

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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.
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I am officially nervous. Completely nervous. Nervous to the tips of my fingers nervous. Fluttering freaking butterflies have moved into my tummy nervous. Can’t believe it’s happening but afraid to get any closer nervous. I feel like I’ve had three cups of coffee — all the time. When I think about OUR WEDDING (ohmygodohmygodohshit), my heart races and my hands feel weak and my stomach churns.

I talked to Mr. C for a long time last night about being nervous and it helped (can you hear the angels singing? This is a big deal). I wasn’t nervous the first time I got married. People would ask and I kind of didn’t get it. Why would I be nervous? I already lived with him. I loved him. He loved me. What was there to be nervous about?

At 21, I didn’t have much to give up in exchange for a lifelong partner. At 29, I do. I have lived alone and done pretty well. I can build shit if I have to; I can deal with life alone; I can move furniture out of an apartment and into a moving van all by myself. I suppose you can say that I’ve earned the right to be nervous about giving up some autonomy. The point, at least, is that my lack of nervousness the first time wasn’t about age, it was about understanding my choice.

So many event details, walls to paint, rooms to clean, linens to purchase. So many things still undone because that’s how we roll. I have very little hope that we won’t be up until four in the morning trying to paint the bathroom and clean the darned kitchen at some point. I know it. We’ll get through it.
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This all-wedding-all-the-time thing kinda sucks. Every moment I’m not working, I’m painting or sewing or haphazardly throwing things on a long to-do list that has long since taken a vacation from organization. “Paint bathroom ceiling” sits right below “decide on importance of wedding programs”. Little things mix with big things. I’m prioritizing via this little trick called memory - if I remember it, it must be important. If not, meh.

I’m totally sick of it and it’s only been this way for a few weeks.

With less than 20 days to go (ARGH!!! ohcrapohcrapohcrap), we are plugging through a thousand things, and luckily, they’re not strictly wedding-ish… or I’d probably say screw it, and not do them. But emptying random stuff from the guest suite can’t be avoided. Picking up and laundering the ever-growing piles of clothes must be done. Slipcovering the stupid couch — because we’re suckers and let the dogs sleep (and wrestle, argh) on the other slipcover, which now looks completely disgusting — has gotta happen.

And then there’s the list of real wedding tasks: finish writing ceremony, meet with preacher, send road closure paperwork to city, invite neighbors, plan ceremony situation, finish song list, pick a first dance song, etc, etc, ETCETERA. *deep breaths*
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It’s freaking hard to find inspiration photos for those of us who lack long luscious locks (you like that alliteration, you know you do).

Now, my hair’s not super short anymore, but it is just past chin length in an inverse bob, which is code for IT’S NOT VERY LONG IN THE BACK and MY PONYTAILS LOOK VERY TWO-YEAR-OLD-ISH. As a funny aside, the mister, when asked for his opinion on my wedding day ‘do, suggested that I wear it just like I normally do - uncombed, wet, in little pigtails generally secured with the rubber bands I got off the celery. Now that’s love.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

Not knowing how to find a hairstylist who could meet my enormously nitpicky expectations, I did what any procrastinator would: I put it off. Then, one day, with the 30-days-until milestone looming, I walked into a salon, pointed to the woman with hair most like mine, and asked if she did bridals. One week later, I had a hair trial.

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