Please Forgive Me

for not updating this long, long ago.  Let me just say that the wedding L E V E L E D me.  I didn't feel like it was taking that much out of me at the time, but the last few weeks have proved otherwise.  So in lieu of a lengthy, wordy update, I'll just let these lovelies speak for themselves.  And I'll write a more thorough update soon!

my two besties.

practically angelic, we are. 

serious stuff

hello husband.  have some pie.

Croup Was Not on the List

I just caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I have the biggest, puffiest, darkest circles under my eyes I think I've ever seen.  This will not do for wedding day pictures.

You see,  last week, The Wee One had this little fever.  Nothing to really worry about because it's happened a few times this spring already.  He sneezes a couple times, rubs his eyes, I break out the Benadryl and we're all good in a day or two.  But this time the fever came and went and came again. Then this cough.  Just a tickle at first, and then a gasping, wheezing, barking cough that got worse at night. I didn't need the pediatrician to tell me it was croup, but we went anyway, just to be on the safe side. 

Sure enough, a quick trip to the doc and two prescriptions later, we're home bound.  We've done all our puzzles and coloring books and stickers and markers and stamps and used up all our bubbles and tormented the dog and built a tent in the kitchen and made all the J-E-L-L-O we can stand and rocked and rocked and rocked and rocked and stood in the steamy bathroom and if I have to watch Mary Poppins one more time I'm going to lose it. Really and truly. (BTW, Redbox, you saved our weekend.)

I can't stand seeing my baby sick. No parent can; it just breaks your heart right down the middle. There is never a good time for a sick child.  No matter what the circumstances, it's exhausting. You're up and down all night: comforting, getting drinks of water, refilling the humidifier, administering medicine taking temperatures.  The fact that we are also trying to orchestrate a wedding and live our normal day to day lives has completely drained my reserves.  I'm depleted. Hence the bags.  Heck, the bags under my eyes have bags under them.

Since I can't his the pause button on life, we don't have any choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Today while our son napped I got as organized as humanly possible.  I have a To Do list broken down day by day until The Big Day.  Thankfully, starting Tuesday, help arrives.  And first on the roster: my parents.  My mom is pretty handy with a glue gun (That's a gross understatement by the way. With nothing more than a pile of Styrofoam peanuts and some floral wire my mom could pretty much reconstruct a life-size model of the Titanic. And do it better) and my dad is the type of guy that doesn't know what it means to put your feet up and relax.  

Next through the door will be my BFF of twenty-two years. That doesn't even seem possible, but we've both got the mortgages, kids and gray hairs to prove it.  She is my rock, my voice of reason, and my breath of fresh air, all rolled in one. She makes me laugh when no one else can, and laughs with me when no one else will. 

And last but certainly not least, my soon to be father-in-law will arrive, followed shortly by my soon to be mother-in-law and her BFF, a.k.a. 'the other mom'. Thankfully, they all already know their way around our house blindfolded, and are ready and willing to roll up their sleeves and help.  My mother in law cleaned our entire house, top to bottom when our son was born.  She vacuumed the base boards.  Not to mention the jillion loads of laundry and MONTHS worth of food she cooked and and froze for us.  In one weekend.  I will never forget that. 

We've got a LOT of ground to cover, a lot of yard to tidy up, a lot of lights to string and tables to set up and food to prepare. The next six days are going to be kind of nutty, but I am so, so looking forward to everyone that is so near and dear to us being here.  It isn't every day that family and friends come together like this, and I plan to soak in every minute of it.   

Eleven Days!

And I've got a sick kiddo on my hands.  So in lieu of a long winded update, how are these for cute?

I'm quite proud of how the invites and favors turned out. 








Next up on the To Do List, order flowers.  I STILL haven't done that.  That will happen Wednesday morning when the flower lady gets back from her vacation. 

There are still a small handful of things to be done here and there, namely, assembling the music play list, but aside from that everything has to either happen the day before or the day of, or has been delegated to someone else.  Love you, babe!

We Have Pie!

And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. I was starting to really wonder if there would be any food at this wedding at all.  The sweet little lady that sits outside the general store and sells baked goods has agreed to make ten pies for our wedding reception.  All that leaves to get ready are the drinks and maybe some fruit trays to round out the food table.  Totally doable. 

Last week I made a trip to my local grocery for some barbecuing supplies, and I took a lap through the flower department.  Lo and behold, I was impressed.  They had a nice assortment of really lovely, bright, reasonably priced bouquets. Just the sort I'd been looking for, in fact. Why had I not noticed this before?  Or, a better question would be, why did I overlook the grocery store that's five minutes away?  The woman working in the floral department was incredibly nice and helpful, and when I asked what would be available in a few weeks she was very reassuring that I could get the same assortments.  She said making a hand-tied bouquet for me would be no problem and they could do a simple one in the neighborhood of $20.  Twenty dollars! The people at Central Market wanted $65 just to talk about it....

Having those two details taken care of feels really good.  People will eat, I'll have something to hold on to.  The other big things we took care of this last week were finding My Love's suit and ordering our rings.  We found the suit Monday night on a marathon trip from mall to mall to mall, and in the end all our trouble paid off, because he got the whole thing for $80.  That's unheard of for a suit. I'd fully expected to blow the better half of the budget on his outfit.  He still needs some accessories, but that part is easy.  The rings we found online, from the comfort of our own home.  His is here, and absolutely perfect. Mine is in transit. 

We have 23 days to go, and so far, have only spent a little more than half our budget.  Can you believe it?  My little calculator thingy on theknot.com says we have just under $500 left to spend.  Which is good, because we still need to pay for those pies and flowers,  buy some beer and wine, get the marriage license......

Almost a Mrs.

I'm sure you've all probably been wondering what I've been up to. Well, worry  no further, my minions.  All is well in the land of SoontobeWed.  We've just been very, very busy.  First, a weekend on the coast to unwind in the sand and surf.  Ahh, it's good to be a mom and command at least one day of total worship and appreciation.  See how he hard he works to make me feel appreciated?  He didn't even expect me to clean or cook that thing.

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Then, back to reality where I wrapped up the semester and handed in my final papers.  Woot! Feels really good to have that done.  And then, holy crap, I'm getting married in THIRTY EIGHT DAYS so I'd better get moving.

Things are definitely starting to look up since my last post.

The shoes that didn't fit have been returned, and a cuter pair arrived a few days ago.  I didn't think it was possible, but I found shoes I love even more.  They are so adorable I sometimes confuse them with candy and want to take a bite.  I stashed them in the box on the top shelf, because walking down the aisle with teeth marks in my shoes would be weird.

The wedding invitations are done and mailed. Thank you, to the lovely and talented Mrs. Tuck.

The pies, well, I'm still working on the pies.  I left a message with a local 'pie lady' and I'm paaaatiently waiting to hear back.  (taptaptaptaptap)

We have a field trip to a farm planned for Saturday morning to go (hopefully) make arrangements for flowers.  The rest of the weekend is allotted for suit and ring shopping.

Tomorrow is Girl's Night and we'll be assembling favors.

The photographer has been coerced, er, confirmed.  We are so very, very lucky to have such talented and generous friends!

We met with another one of our dear friends (see above, about luckiness) who will officiate and have started a draft of the ceremony and vows. 

And so it goes.  Little by little, we're making it happen.

The Storm Before the Calm

Naturally, right after I wrote that last post about love and everlasting sparkle and all that feely good stuff, s**t started falling apart. 

First, the cafe that was going to make the pies called and said they can't.  The cafe is for sale, and because they don't know when they might be closing their doors for good, they don't want to make a commitment they may not be able to keep.  I understand, and I'm grateful that they didn't tell me this a week before the wedding.  But still.  Now what am I supposed to do?

Second, the ONE florist in town turned me away.  I went in hoping to have a conversation about my ideas (big bouquets of whatever is in season, like you might find at a farmer's market) see if that might be something she could source for me, or at the very least, see about having her make my bouquet. Before I finished describing the look I was going for, she told me there are no local farmer's markets with flowers, I'd have to go to Dallas to find them, but I could try one wholesale outlet that might or might not have what I want.  Oh, but go early on the day of the wedding or they might be out of flowers already.  At that point she turned her attention away from me to someone else, and that was the end of that.  I stood there with my mouth gaping open for a minute before I realized we were done, and then I left. 

Third, after playing phone tag with someone at the hotel nearest us, I finally got to talk to a live person about blocking rooms for guests.  Wouldn't you know it, she had all sorts of questions for me that I didn't have answers for; like how many double occupancy rooms I need, how many single king rooms, and how many kids are coming.  On top of it, my phone was breaking up and I could only get about every other word, and she was saying important things like 'contract' and 'deadline.'

Lastly, the shoes I ordered to wear on the big day arrived.  They are too small.  The size I need is out of stock. 

So Friday afternoon I had a little meltdown.  It didn't help that my loving and supportive Husband to Be responded to my frustrations with "See, this is why I didn't want to have the wedding so soon...." Which was met with a look that turned our 85 degree day a bit cooler.  But I just had to have a June wedding, didn't I?   If you've ever seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, you understand why.  What can I say?  I'm a sucker for a musical.

Since I have no choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other,  (one sad, naked foot) we move onward.

For the pies, I have a couple of ideas. One of them involves a rolling pin, ten pounds of flour, a couple of friends and probably a bottle of tequila. 

Flowers, well, I guess I'll start scoping out the grocery stores.  Not exactly my first choice, but definitely more affordable than having professional arrangements made.  Or, there's always the easement behind our house. It seems to be putting off something lovely and yellow.  I think it's called ragweed. 

Tomorrow, when I am fresh, I'll take a deep breath and peruse the contract for the hotel rooms. It can't be that complicated, right?

As for the shoes, at least piperlime.com has free shipping, both ways.  I'll return them, and start looking again.  (After I have a teeny weeny whiny tantrum because they were the only shoes I really really really loved and they would have been perfect and no other shoes will ever be just as perfect as they are.)

Thankfully, my dear, sweet (patient) and what-would-I-do-without-her Best Friend called today to offer up her pie making/flower arranging/shoe shopping services.  During the conversation she reminded me of a very important point:  None of that stuff matters.  It will all be perfect, however it turns out, no one will be the wiser if the shoes aren't my first choice or the pies are Sara Lee.  At the end of the day we will be husband and wife, and that's the only important thing.  It's funny, because I feel like I've heard that exact same thing somewhere else recently.....

Sparkle and Stuff

I had a tiny little epiphany this evening while perusing through some wedding porn.  In the back of my mind a little wheel has been turning that has been having second thoughts.  No, not those kind of second thoughts.  The kind of second thoughts you have when you see weddings like the ones here: http://www.stylemepretty.com/. 

I started to wonder if we should have planned this whole thing differently.  I started to wonder if we'll regret not pulling out all the stops.  You know, a really fancy venue with big round tables and crisp white tablecloths, carefully constructed floral arrangements, sparkly crystal candle things, an elaborate menu printed on fancy paper with loopy script, a big flowing dress and a three piece suit, limousines, rows of attendants, a DJ, and champagne fountains.

I have to admit, when I look at photographs of other people's weddings I think "Wow. Amazing. So beautiful! Look how they're glowing! So in love!" And then the "I wish we could do that....." or the "I wish I would have thought of that's" start to filter through.  And our own little backyard wedding starts to feel.....little.

So you want to know what the epiphany was?  While looking at all those pictures of those glowing brides in their thousand dollar gowns, and their fancy up-do's and elaborate table settings, I realized that 1) A lot of these couples are starting their marriages in serious debt to have been able to pull it all off 2) Guests don't usually remember things like the chandeliers or the bows on the chairs,  or what font the menu was printed in or what kind of flowers were in the centerpiece. (They remember what they gave you, how much it cost, and if they got a thank you note or not. ) And 3) All of that fancy sparkly glittery stuff? That's all it does; sparkle and glitter.  It's a visual cue to the observer that this day means something. Well, duh.  You don't need tulle and a 12 piece band to make that clear.

Here is what I know.  Our wedding day will be beautiful and meaningful.  When it's over, the flowers will wither, the dress will be hung in the closet and the lights will be taken down.  But the things that made our wedding day special will remain: our son, our vows, our families, our friends and our home. Those things are the real sparkle in our lives, and they're the things that last.  Nothing makes me happier than seeing our son smile, watching my man walk through the door at the end of the day,  spending time with friends and laughing until we cry or pee or both, and making time to be together as a family.  How very lucky we are.