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.