Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Gone Prompt Stupid

So, I'm not really keen on the term "Bridal Brain". It sounds simultaneously like a justification for doing whatever you want (but I'm the BRIDE!!!!) and condescending.

Unfortunately, I find myself in the curious state of having gone stupid. In the last two weeks I have tried to mail a box I did not put a new address on, texted the totally wrong Jen - even though one I texted lists her last name in my phone, and now opened a shower present my sister had shipped to my office. It went like this: I returned from lunch to find a soft package on my desk. I looked at it for a minute trying to remember what the hell I had ordered. When I couldn't figure it out, I opened it. So I'm looking at this apron trying to figure out if I ordered it or what happened. Then I'm looking at the packing slip and am really confused as to why my sister's name is on it. Literally wondering how something she ordered for herself ended up at my office. Duuuhhhhh.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Strangely Calm

I'm a little weirded out by how calm I'm feeling. It almost worries me that I'm not more worried. Yeah, there's plenty to keep me busy still but I'm not stressed out about it.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

My Dress...

Is spectacular.

I went for the final fitting last night and brought it home. It was always very pretty, but now that it fits... Wow. I love it.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Things are Coming Together!

After some brutal bachelorette recovery, I was feeling pretty bad about wasting Sunday.

But, I still feel like things are coming together and like things aren't just going to be fine but great. I'm really getting excited!

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Update on Grant

My friend's little boy who had heart surgery this week is doing awesome. He's certainly still pretty sedated and on a lot of pain medication but things are going as well as can be expected. They're steadily removing lines and tubes and he's looking more like a regular sleeping child each day. And, the Ronald McDonald House organization and all of its supporters are taking great care of his parents.

It warms my heart to know that they're doing okay.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

No One is Coming to Our Party

I just had the cold, cold realization that we invited 205 people and only 110 people are coming. Kind of makes me feel like a fool for working so hard on all of this and spending all of this money and going through all of the stress for so many people to not care to come. Well here's a little secret: it's going to be so kickass. If you didn't want to be there, we didn't want you anyways.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Perspective

After the kind of weekend that left me in a frustrated, "For crying out loud people, you're adults, act like it and handle it!" mess (For example: one person in a certain couple has a 50/50 chance of being able to make it so they would like to RSVP as one because 'he doesn't eat much' and then I'm supposed to remember that one means two and I should save him a seat. People, I can't keep track of 200 people's crazy business. Decide if you're coming or not and stick with it.), I'm working on remembering that this is small change in the grand scheme. A friend of mine from high school had a son born with a slew of medical issues - essentially, his body simply duplicated the right side of all of his organs. He essentially has two right lungs, no spleen, etc. The worst of it is that his heart duplicated the right side. He has defied the odds and after something like five surgeries in his first two years, he's now in the last major planned surgery until he gets much older.

Now, I've never been the type to say that just because other people have mountains you don't have molehills and you should feel bad about being upset over your molehills but still, reading her blog about preparing for the surgery and the anticipated recovery for a poor little kid who's too small to really understand why and today's updates as the surgery progresses really reminds me that while, yes, this other stuff of mine needs to get done, dealing with all of it is super small change compared to the really hard stuff.

Monday, May 2, 2011

I Miss My Grandma

Throughout the planning process, I've been painfully aware of the people I haven't had around me. My mom and sisters, for three. I was alone when I found the dress. Then I remembered that I wouldn't be able to show it to my grandma. Ever.

Five years ago today, she passed away. Just as she was getting ready for summer visits. Literally. She was making TV crunch (chex mix).

As much as I continue to mourn her death, I mourn especially this year as I keep wanting to tell her about wedding plans and show them to her as best I could (she had macular degeneration - wear your sunglasses!). Most of all, I'm truly sorry she and my fiance never met. She would love him for the same reasons I do but especially for how good he is to me and the way he looks at me. She's always missed but especially this year and especially today.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Finally Invitations and What People Can Do To Help

Fingers crossed, the invitations should arrive today and I can keep my wits about me until late enough into the night to assemble them all and stick them in the mail tomorrow. Note to self: assemble invitations first and tuck the pieces into the envelopes later. That part's harder to screw up.

A number of people have asked what they can do to help. I've figured out the #1 thing I need and that is forgiveness for being absentee and flaky recently and for the upcoming month. (Um, holy s*** one month). Just let me know that I can turn down plans and forgive me if I don't get back to you in a timely fashion and remind me if it's past time to get back to you. Seriously, I can't find my butt with both hands right now. But I'm having nightmares about people hating me for being selfish, so I just need your promise of understanding.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Getting Stuff Done!

With my Good Friday holiday, we accomplished a lot. We went from engagement photos to lunch to a meeting with the officiant to getting our marriage license, and booking our ceremony cellist. After a long day, we celebrated with beer and wings. (Can it be Friday again?) It really was a spectacular day.

Saturday was gym, gym, shower, then coffee and going over the to-do list. I don't know if we really accomplished much besides him finally saying that he totally hates the idea of a mad libs guest book. Ohhhkay. Back to the drawing board. It was a beautiful day. My first of the year in capris. After we got home, we spent a couple hours on cleaning and organizing. Mine was mostly in the shed moving stuff around to make more room and taking pictures of stuff we're going to offer to friends and then sell what's left. Some of it I'm sad to see go but by now, I'm just happy about the prospect of not climbing over it anymore.

After a couple hours of that, we went to his brother's house to hang out a while. My wedding accomplishment pride was short-lived when I asked his brother's wife about her sister's wedding plans. "Oh, it's over a year away and she has all of this and that and that done and she's hired a planner that she's BFFs with and talks to her every day and she found the perfect dress on Craigslist but it was off-white and, and, and." My mind translated that to, "I'm a giant failure" and I juusst about got really unhappy. Luckily I figured out a quip, "Sometimes things just fall right into place. Glad it's like that for her!" Because it's been effing hell for me.

All in all though, we had a really fun night and I was happy that I was able to hang out with his brother's wife solo for at least a little while and find stuff to talk about.

Sunday was okay. This whole getting married and making concessions on holidays stuff stinks. I always just get home feeling like I missed the holiday because it wasn't "right". But, of all the holidays, Easter's one of the ones I can give up most easily.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Like I've Said Before...

I rarely force the time to write when I have happy news to report. But maybe I'll start with the happy now and it will help me scrounge up some rose-colored glasses.

Progress:
Received the flower girls' necklaces I ordered for them. They were about$15 each off of Amazon for some type of pearls. Not sure how genuine or what grade or whatever. I do know that they were listed as original price being about $50. While I think I got a decent deal, I think I'd be kind of pissed if I had spent $50. But, pearl necklaces for eight for $15 each that they can wear plenty and their moms won't stress about damaging them: Good deal.

Received all of the stamps I ordered. Our address, the logo two ways, and "A Toast!". For anyone shopping for custom stamps, I know Etsy is awesome and I like supporting small businesses but, obviously, I also like supporting manufacturing (and they definitely used a CNC to make these) and, while the Etsy turnaround time is longer, I had to pay overnight shipping but otherwise, I got them all super fast and the base price was something like $15, each, tops. I highly recommend Simon Stamps. However, the smell in my office after smoked salmon for lunch and then receiving a brand new rubber stamp... P.U.

I also found a stamp that I was able to cut the middle out of and use the border to make a border around the mail to address.

Received the coasters. Unfortunately, the one stamp with the huge stamped area, doesn't work well with the textured coaster. I need to find new ink (I think this stuff will run when wet anyways) and maybe new coasters. Crap. However, when they're done right, they're going to really great. I like them a lot.

Spent the weekend stamping envelopes. 130 envelopes with one stamp on them and 130 with three stamps. That's a lot of stamping. But now I'm getting a little stressed that the USPS will have a freakout over the white on gray writing. That's just crazy, though, right? Surely people will get their invitations and we'll get the RSVPs, right???

Then I spent the last two nights addressing envelopes. Glad we ordered more than we needed. I burned about seven of them. For instance: one I addressed to my cousin's family: Mark, Cindy, kids, etc. and then her maiden name. Don't know why I'm obsessed with her maiden name. They've been married something like ten years, I like him... don't know. I addressed her birthday card to her maiden name, too.

Figured out how to make a thing so that I can assemble the invitations perfectly and quickly. Duh. That took forever. I work for a company that makes CAM software. We'll make one here. Stupid. And, since I'm not spending $70 for the envelopments Jigster, and it's a computer program, we can make two of them and assemble simultaneously. It will go by quicker, we'll both be pleased by the perfection, and then we can put stamps on them, put them in the mail and get hot dogs and celebrate our behinds off.

Fiance's ACL can wait for surgery. Downside: it's that much longer until we can do some of the things we like to do together. Also, as his schedule worked out he has this week off. Downside of that: he keeps talking about how much he needed this time off and how he's going to do something fun. Okay, Hi, I've reached a breaking point with half the people I work with and I've been sick three weeks of the last six and when I'm not at work I'm at the gym, cleaning, working on wedding stuff, or being guilted into social events because I turn everything down because I have mad s*** to do. Which makes me an a-hole for turning every social invite down and I don't want to be 'that girl' so I go and then when I get home I feel guilty for spending the time that way and for the calories in what I ate/drank. But if I get a salad and iced tea, people say, "Oh, come on, you're not going to become one of those calorie-obsessed people." Because they don't understand that even in the last week when I worked out six times (total of about 2,000 calorie burn) and didn't eat all crazy, I gained four pounds.

Oh, and not only are some of people I work with driving me nuts but I'm scattered, depressed, and unable to focus. = seriously decreased productivity. = I suck.

Bottom line: I have to get back to work. Haven't yet found my rose-colored glasses.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Negative Nellies

Unfortunately, this has gotten away from my initial idea which was to have this great history of all of the fun I had planning and what a great era the engagement was. But, I rarely have time to write and only seem to force time to write when I'm feeling crappy and need an outlet for my toxic. Sorry.

I'm in a bad state of stupids and uglies. It's sunny today and maybe some good weather will help the issues. Or maybe not. I'm just all sorts of sick of the world right now. Sick of this stupid wedding, sick of super stupid work, sick of trying to diet and always feeling like crap about it no matter what. If I'm eating well I'm well aware of the good stuff I'm missing, sick of the social pressure to not diet but be magically skinny, if I'm not eating perfect then I feel guilty for having fun and eating things that taste good.

I really want to hop a plane to anywhere but here.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Boring. Supremely boring.

Life has become a mind-numbingly predictable cycle. Monday-Friday. Go to work during the day, go to the gym when I can, run around doing wedding crap, maybe meet a friend for happy hour, feel guilty for drinking and eating unnecessary calories. Saturday - get up early and spend entire day doing worky type things. Go to the gym, wedding stuff, housework, yardwork. Fiance' gets home any time from 6:30-10:30 p.m. Fall into bed exhausted. Sunday, get up and go to Starbucks. Work on stupid wedding stuff. Go home and work on the house some more. Which still continuously looks like shit. Figure out what of my stuff will have to be boxed up and stay that way. Look around, calculating the hours I've put in, what's left to be done, and feel hopeless. Repeat. I've got a bad case of the stupids and uglies. I want to start driving to somewhere far far away.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Another Sleepless Night

For the last week, I've been waking up in panic over invitations. Now, I realize that it isn't rational and even though my rational part is saying, "Things are fine. They're good. They'll be okay. Everything that can be done right now is. Now go to sleep. That's the top of your to do list right now." I can't.

Or I'll dream that X,X, and X major things didn't get done and two months disappeared on me in a flash and no one else seems to think it's a big deal. I'll be freaking out because we forgot to send invitations or something that really is important - not just 'we don't have programs!' and everyone's just going, "So? It's not a big deal. Chill out."

Last night I went to happy hour instead of the gym and proceeded to eat wings, have four cocktails, and part of an order of fish tacos. I went to bed at 10:00 with the startings of another cold (last one was March 17), trying to get a jump on it and kill it with sleep. Instead, I woke up at 12:30, tossed and turned for an hour, stressed out about the damn invites and guilt over the calories I both consumed and did not burn, and then gave up and tried to watch TV until I was sleepy. It was 4:30 before I got back to sleep and I feel like crap. Maybe I should just give up and take a vacation day to get some stuff done.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Just When I'd Labeled the Day: It got way better

Remember Tuesday? Things were looking up and then crashed? Well Tuesday turned out great. No, I did not make it to the gym for my class.

But I did:
  • Get an email saying that the new graphic designer would work with our budget. Awesome!
  • Get my mitts on not just one dress of a size that would work but also got another bigger size for one girl who was going to need her dress fixed to fit (an 8yo in a 6X). When my fiance struck out at JCPenney, the girl who was helping him suggested we try Burlington Coat Factory. He called them, the did, indeed have the dress and held a couple for me. AWESOME!
  • Come home to find an envelope from my former landlord. I held my breath and opened it - to find a HUGE deposit return. I literally jumped for joy at how the day turned out.
What a relief the day turned out to be. Now to just start crossing other things off our insane to do list. :)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Don't Even Know Where to Start

This whole thing has turned into such a disaster. Friday the graphic designer we've been dealing with for months kind of added the last straw. Then I posted a thing on The Rot (my new name for a popular wedding site with a rhyming name) about it and I should have known better. There's a band of bitches that just like to be bitches and think that they're just 'being blunt' and really they're mean. So I left work sobbing. Happy Friday.

Now I have great dresses for all of the flower girls but one. The one that it would be the worst to have her in an 'odd girl out' dress. And I can't find another dress like the others in the right size anywhere. Hours on the internet, multiple store visits in multiple areas... have all come up empty handed. TJ Maxx has its drawbacks.

Then the person I thought would be my new graphic design solution... yeah, WAY out of the budget. Stop my heart and make me think that I'm on candid camera style out of my budget.

It's looking like my evening will not be spent at the gym but instead going to more stores on a dress hunt that is likely a wild goose chase, searching etsy (and cursing their information overload), and the cheaper invitations sites. Oh, and I think I may be getting sick.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Two Days to Portland!

In two days, we're actually going to take a vacation. I can't wait. We both need this as individuals and as a couple. It's not a big deal vacation - just driving down to Portland to stay in a hotel I had a Groupon for and maybe going to a movie and just hanging around the hotel but we're going to turn our phones off and just be a couple for two days. Not a couple that is planning (and paying for - oy vey) a wedding or moving or anything. Just two people who love each other.

It's desperately needed. I've been mildly-moderately dizzy for a week. Generally it's not too bad. Sometimes it's just looking at the computer screen and thinking that they curved the lettering when they didn't but a couple times it was enough to start thinking that I should pull over until it passed. We've both been snippy.

Should I stay home to work on moving in so the house is a little less like an episode of Hoarders (minus the opossums and other vermin)? That might be a good idea but I haven't had a real day off - just doing what I want to do - not work or wedding. Next week, I'll go gangbusters on the house and garage and shed and then, I'll finally be able to get back to some semblance of routine - regular mealtimes and time at the gym.

Sadly, the times I most need to write to chill myself out are when I can't find time. Perhaps there will be more on moving in later. Or not.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Weddings = AISLE. Geography = ISLE

FYI. I just saw somewhere else that a wedding professional used 'isle'. Bonkers, I tell you.

In other news, I sent out the bridesmaids bomb a few hours ago and I'm on pins and needles for reactions. Boiled down, it said that I couldn't find a way to like one of the cheaper brands. But I really thought about it and with 5-10% off from the manufacturer for ordering more than three, plus the 10% coupon I got from the store at the wedding expo plus the credit I had applied to their accounts, it's normal. I said to look at the two brands I like, send me votes for the one that you like best (I'm doing individual styles within the same general idea) and we'll go from there. Really it wasn't bad but it feels really strange to say, "Now if you could hop to and spend your money on this dress I'm dictating, that'd be greeeeeaaaaat."

I hope they like them and everyone's happy.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Such High Highs, Such Low Lows

It's been a rollercoaster of a week that has left me thrilled to see Friday. Except that the weekend doesn't mean what it used to anymore.

To catch you up, it's now about T-4 months. I've been dress shopping all over the greater Seattle area, been to Portland and Vancouver, and stores at home. While I've found some things I like plenty, I've been unable to find anything that was LOVE. Certainly no waterworks and hugs all around. Saturday I went to one of the fancy pants places in Seattle, skipped the gym because it was too late, did back in angle parking in Seattle, and paid for parking. Only to work my way clear around the store and find nothing that I could afford and wanted to try on. Desperate, as I worked my way home, I stopped at DSW to see if they had wedding shoes I wanted, and at TJ Maxx to see if they had anything that would work, and then on to Nordstrom to see if they had anything that would work or the right shoes. By the time I got home, it was close to 7pm.

By my estimates, I've made at least 20 store visits and have tried on over 100 dresses. I'm whitewashed and wedding fatigued. I couldn't give less of a s*** at this point.

Tuesday, my fiance and I went to lunch. I was looking forward to this lunch. It's been gray, gray, gray and my office is harder to deal with these days. I had a gyro coupon and was all jazzed. Instead we got into this big thing on how he's finally starting to understand that we're in crunch time. Somehow in his mind that just because I have lady bits I should a) love wedding planning and b) be good at it. But he has no idea how much things cost versus what we have to spend. In his mind, we should be further along by now and it's my fault. Because it's all my job. It was ugly. Like I considered not coming home ugly. I was so mad and so hurt (oh yeah, it started with - so you have to order the dress for the size you are now?).

Wednesday, I went back to a store I had been to previously and found what may be the one. It's the first one that I've wanted to send pictures to everyone and ask them, "Isn't it amazing??" It's close enough that if I don't find something even better at the place I'm going to on Saturday, I'm ordering it, done deal.

Thursday I was on cloud 9. Completely refreshed for wedding planning. We can do this! Look at all of these pretty things on Etsy! Now I can do bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses and then menswear! The ugly invitations aren't insurmountable! I can somehow sort through the incredible amount of stuff on Etsy and find amazing things! I can do all of this and work out two hours a day!

By today, I went in the kitchen to make BM dress appointments (one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of... give me the books, swatches, and price lists and leave me be!) and went to book one with a place I had tried dresses on at. They had told me that all parties of three or more get their dresses at 20% off and that made them pretty reasonable. When I called she asked if I had bought my dress there (which, really, maybe I didn't are you going to spit on me? Or maybe I found my dress elsewhere but you were so nice when I was trying on dresses, I wanted to throw you a bone. Buzz off!) when I told her I hadn't bought one yet you would have thought I told her I kick puppies. She starts in on me about how a lot of their delivery dates are well into June at this point and, "What style are you looking for?!?!" and snap, snap, snap. It was surprisingly nasty. Then my fiance got back to me about the appointment I was trying to make with the planner for Monday. He's going skiing (and I was supposed to be psychic and know this) and how he needs his time off and how he doesn't want to just do wedding stuff and more wedding stuff and then have to go back to work.

But I'm supposed to spend my entire weekends doing wedding stuff and then my evenings doing wedding stuff, all while working out all the time, keeping his house clean, and moving? Oh, and putting in extra time at work so that I can make good performance bonuses. And, best of all, I can't even say what I want because all of my coworkers can hear. "No, no, I understand, your relaxation time is important. Don't mind me. I'll work on our wedding while you go skiing. Just like I spent Labor Day working on wedding stuff while you partied in Spokane. No problem."

And, I was supposed to get to play a game of Plants vs. Zombies as a reward for getting some stuff done but suddenly the kitchen was full of people and it was not the relaxing break I had been hoping for. Suddenly I'm back to hating weddings.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

kind of le screwed

It's time to freak out. We're t minus four months and so far it looks like I'll be wearing either a burlap sack or jeans and a t-shirt. Shit, shit, shit. It's not for lack of trying. Just considering the math, I've made at least a solid fifteen dress shop visits. Now, even if you just figure five dresses per visit (which I know many of them have been more like twelve), that's at least 75 dresses I've actually put on. And while there are a number that I've really liked, none of them made me cry then force $1,000 on them so they'll give me one of my own.

I'm running out of stores and hope.