Weddingbee Blog

I’m one of those people who really needs a deadline in order to get anything done. Unless I do something immediately, I’ll let it slide indefinitely until someone tells me that it needs to get done. I’ve learned this about myself over time and have found that creating my own due-dates is the best way to deal with it. I tell myself that X must be done by a certain date, and I stick to it. I’m a procrastinator, but I do get things done.

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If you recall, back in April I posted about how we were less than 5 months out and still had a big “to-do” list to tackle.

Well… guess what! With around 100 days until our wedding, we still have most of that on our plates! To be honest, I really haven’t made much of a wedding effort in the past six weeks.
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The French Bulldog invitations are off to the printers… YAY! But before we could send them out we had to answer the tricky question of when to start the ceremony, and more importantly, what to put on the invitations. If you’re reading this thinking, ‘Um Frenchie, shouldn’t they be the same time?’ I envy you for your punctual friends and family.

Papa Frenchie and I are always waiting downstairs for my Mama Frenchie and Sister Frenchie to be ready. I had a friend in high school who we’d tell something started at least an hour before it actually did, in hopes of her being on time. Although none of my current friends are that bad, I’d prefer that people don’t have to sneak in in the middle of our ceremony, or miss it entirely.

There is also the matter of traffic. The majority of our guests will most likely be driving 65 miles from Orange County to Rancho Bernardo, which, according to Google Maps, takes a little over an hour. But, that is with no traffic.

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Yes, we’ve only got about 2 months left until the big day. Sometimes I feel like our wedding day can’t come soon enough and other days I have no idea where the last 11 months of my life has gone. In general, I’m not too stressed about the planning. I feel like we’re making good progress on our long detailed to do list. There’s still a lot on that list, but nothing too crazy (so far). Mr. Joey is done with school in 2 weeks, so that will help a lot. FMIL Joey will be in town a week before the wedding, so if any sewing needs to be done, she’ll be around to help. By sewing, I mean the ring boy’s tie. I finished all 25 of the table runners a few weeks back, but as a sewing newBEE, the tie scares me.

Anyway, I was checking with Martha regarding what tasks she suggests I have done by what date, when I noticed “61 days until your wedding” plastered on my screen. What? 61 days? I haven’t consulted Martha in a while, so seeing the actual number of days left freaked me out. It left me in a panic. I started assigning Mr. Joey tasks to do out of nowhere. I consulted our to do list and immediately set out crossing items off the list like finalizing who gets which luggage tag favor and securing our tourist visas to Australia. Eventually, I settled down and went back to my not-too-stressed self.

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This week has been straight up insanity. There have been so many tears, and so many laughs, already.

It started with Mr. M catching a cold. I had to give him a shot of B-12. in. his. bum. I ain’t scared of that… Ninja please, needles don’t scare me! He’s doing much better today, thank god.

My parents and siblings are here, the loving worker bees. How lucky am I? Mom has done about 12 loads of laundry - she’s a saint among women for that duty. Dad is designing our paper goods, ‘cuz we just finalized the ceremony order yesterday. Procrastinate much? Sisters and Brother and significant others are just kicking major ass in every direction. It’s so comforting.

Major pre-wedding crisis? Check. Let’s hope it’s the first and last of the wedding. I may blog about it later, it was a dooz.

Me? I’m stuck at work. It SUCKS. Today is my last day, though. I feel horrible about it; my job is definitely suffering for my wedding-brain. They’re so nice here though; I am so lucky.
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I remember thinking over a year ago, when Mr. Ballet Flat slipped this ring on my finger, that our wedding couldn’t come soon enough! I remember gazing at a countdown that read over 400 days, then 200 days, then, oh my gosh, 99 days! A few days ago, the countdown read 9 days! Wow… where did the time go?

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When I started writing for Weddingbee, I remember reading recaps and thinking, ‘My time for these will NEVER come. I’m just planning forever, it seems.’ However, I think it’s time for me to eat my words.
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I love lists. I’m the kind of person who makes a handwritten to-do list every few days with sub-lists under each to-do item on my list. I’m also the kind of list nerd who will add an item to my to-do lists that I’ve already completed, just so I can immediately cross it off. I need to see on paper that I’ve got a lot done. I even have special notebooks just for my lists. I told you, I’m a list nerd.

Over the last week, I’ve been slowly putting together a to-do list for the wedding. We’ve only got about 75 days left until the big day, and I need a list to help me get things done.

I thought I was on top of things, but then I made this list of lists, and found that I’m on top of very little.

Here’s part of my to-do list.

Ceremony:
Order a copy of Mr. Joey’s Baptismal Certificate
Finalize ceremony participants
-Send verification for to wedding witness
Ceremony Readings
-Select readings
-Send Ceremony Coordinator selection form
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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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A wise woman once told me, “A short pencil is better than a long memory.” With exactly one month to go until our wedding, I’m quickly realizing how very true that little adage is.

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Fittings, appointments, and unfinished details are all vying for my time and attention, and I find myself worrying that I’ll inevitably forget something. In the past, I’ve had a tendency of spending way more energy fretting about getting things done than what is required to actually accomplish them. It’s one of those crazy little quirks of mine that I’ve been working on.

I’ve found that making lists helps me combat those little pangs of anxiety that creep up on me at various hours of the day and night.
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Love… waking up to a poured and mixed cup of coffee.

Don’t like… waking up.

Love… the man who brought the coffee.

Don’t like… waking up.

Love… puppy kisses and wagging tails.

Don’t like… muddy paws.

{Oh, yea, I called this the “wedding planning edition”, didn’t I? Oops.}

Love… that in a month, this will all be over.

Don’t like… the list of stuff to do in less than 20 days.

Love… that soon I’ll see my family and get to show them my home, my dogs, my ‘hood.

Don’t like… that I’m worried and nervous and full of fluttering freaking butterflies.
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{Yea, yea, my post titles suck lately. Oh, well.}

I’ve had a post brewing in my brain for a while, a post about how the best advice I could have given my newly-engaged self would have been to sit down and take an inventory of myself. Who am I? What do I know about myself? What do I love? What can’t I help but being?

I put off writing the post because I wanted to find the right words, and the particular brand of eloquence for which I’d hoped only comes along every so often. With all of our wedding details swimming in my brain, though, I’ve decided to accept good enough words for now. Perhaps eloquence will hit me some other time and I’ll rewrite this.

Sitting at dinner the other night, I looked down at my engagement ring and realized how much I loved it, a rather delayed revelation nine months after the morning he handed it to me. For heavens sake, I picked it out, but I wasn’t ever really sure that I loved it, and the pressure of choosing Something I’d Wear and Love Forever and Ever made me indecisive. I thought about all of the other loves I’ve ever had, and not one was an immediate reaction. Not one. No, not even him.

See, that’s how I am.
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With less than 30 days to go, I could no longer ignore the “what time?” questions: “What time should I be there?” “What time will they be there?” “What time will it end?” “How long will it take?” Nothing makes me feel less in control than not knowing where the pieces fit into the big picture, so during an interminable conference call, I half-*ssed a wedding day overview slide in PowerPoint. Yes, PowerPoint. Yes, a Wedding Day Slide. Shut up, it made me feel better.

I started with Mrs. Daffodil’s wedding work plan file, then customized away. Now I can see who will be where and for how long all day long… and then maybe I won’t have to answer questions on our wedding day.
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My last post was about my perspective. I am so glad that so many readers reacted so positively to my post, but I feel like I need to dive into the feelings surrounding the post and give you some background.

As I said, our wedding is next month, and this week, well, I’ve turned from Miss ’happy-go-lucky’ Peeps to Miss ’freaked out/bitchy’ PT. While others around me haven’t felt or seen my wrath, poor Mr. PT has had his hands tied as I tirade around him making demands.

It’s been a low point.
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I want to attempt to lessen the stereotype that the groom/better half/significant other’s involvement in wedding planning is little more than silent consent to the bride’s demands and a general lack of helpfulness. Also why, as brides, do we sometimes fall victim to having such feeble expectations of our grooms? Just last week, an incident with Mr. G reminded me (again) not to sell him short on the planning front.

By accident, I found out Mr. G is plotting a wedding-related surprise. I was complaining about wedding stuff (a common activity of mine these days). In particular, I was trying to figure out what we should do about addressing the invitation envelopes. Should we do it ourselves? Should we get a friend with good handwriting to address them? Then Mr. G chimed in with, “Let me ask my calligrapher.”

“Who? Wait, wha? You have a calligrapher?” Seriously, I think that was my response.
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Mr. MJ and I are now less than 5 months away from the day we’ll be married, and I’m avoiding The Knot’s planning checklist like the plague. Why? Well… let me give you a little rundown on our (non)wedding planning progress thus far. What follows is a list of what we DON’T know.

Where we’re getting married
This is kind of a biggie, am I right? As in, WE SHOULD PROBABLY KNOW THIS BY NOW! See, originally we were going to do it locally. Then my mom suggested Duluth, Minnesota, about 4 hours from here. But now we’re working on buying a home, and I think perhaps we’ll want to have it closer to home so that my parents (who live across the country and would have traveled directly to Duluth) can see the house while they’re here. Luckily, our chosen venue is a city hall, regardless of where it’s located. We don’t need a reservation 10 months in advance to go to city hall.

What I’ll be wearing
I have had two unsuccessful dress hunts and I’m running out of creativity. Wedding dresses are too fancy for what we’ve envisioned, but I’m not sure what else I would want. I do, however, have one more option (the brown suit) that I’ll be writing about soon. Hopefully I’ll be able to check this big stressor off the list within a few days.

What he’ll be wearing
No clue. We haven’t even picked him out a wedding ring.
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Mr. Joey and I are about to bust. Not in a good way, not in a bad way, and not in a financial way (yet). It’s been wedding, wedding, house, wedding, house, house, house, non-stop for the last 3 weeks. And it’s not just our wedding, but everyone else’s weddings, too. Mr Joey went to a friend’s wedding two weekends ago, and we’re headed to a wedding in San Diego this weekend. Of course, you know that a wedding isn’t just a ceremony and reception, but all the dinners and parties that go along with it. Like I said: wedding, wedding, house, wedding, house, house, house.

Take Saturday, for example. We started the day off well, with a nice long lie-in, followed by a yummy breakfast prepared by Mr. Joey. As soon as the last bite was in my mouth, my phone rang. It was my Dad asking us to meet him at Lowe’s in an hour to look at fences.

After Lowe’s, we followed my Dad to the cabinet and counter place. We’ve been going back and forth about cabinets and counters for weeks. After finalizing the cabinets and counters, we headed to a great local wine store to pick up a bottle for dinner. While we were there, we perused the their selection for possible wedding wines. We ended up there longer than we planned. We got to talking with one of their staff members about how much wine we should serve.

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