two hundred days

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

My consultation w/the florist was the most fun I've had W-planning since the day I selected my dress. We sat down, envisioned, planned loosely, jotted notes, and suddenly I had my first Authoritative Bride moment. I had a list. I had a plan. I had a vision of ... Gerbera daisies?

I surprise myself sometimes.

I wish I could post more details.

I think I'm sort of the opposite of the cautionary tale, the girl who spends so much energy planning a wedding that the marriage part falls to the wayside, and, subsequently, sucks. I have put all my heart into our relationship and just sort of neglected the wedding part, and am just waking up to how fun it can be.

P.S. OK I had no visions of Gerbera daisies, which is why I am convinced that this is the floral designer for me. I threw out adjectives, she suggested specifics. Some surprising, most spot-on. I love her already. I hope we don't break up when she hits me with the estimate tomorrow.

expolicious

It turns out that I have up till one month before the wedding before the first gown fitting. Oh sure, that's practically tomorrow, but uh ... at least it's not today?

Yee ha!

Speaking of fittings and gowns, I need a dress for my Peahen's wedding. My BEST FRIEND from high school is getting married next week ... and I am following suit with the ball-and-chain action, it's finally all sinking in. I need to find a dress and some decent shoes, write the speech, try like hell to get the day of her shower off. Suddenly I am uncomfortably busy.

I think I remember doing this a couple of months ago: sitting down and writing out a tentative schedule for the wedding day itself. Now that more of those spaces, faces, and places are being filled in, the picture is slowly coming into focus.

It is a little bit scary.

First of all, we're going to need a freakin' BUS to transport the entire wedding party from place to place. (Not just any bus, a freakin' bus. You got that?) Where am I gonna get a wedding bus? (I said two groomsmen and two bridesmaids were all we needed; Everyone Else said that was kind of smallish for a wedding the size of ours. It's a fine day to start playing the Blame Game.) I'm kidding, of course - I don't regret the decisions we made regarding our bridal party; we love our friends. But I'm not kidding about the Freakin' Bus.

Second. The honeymoon concept is not even on the horizon. Let's get this wedding shindig planned, executed, and paid for before we throw around the H-word, methinks.

Third, now seems like a good time to reiterate (with updates) the cake caveat. It used to be that cake-in-face equaled on-the-spot annulment. Now that we are beginning to invest actual time and actual money in the planning of this endeavor, that seems like a waste (but so does $100+ for makeup being upset by red velvet) ... so now cake-in-face = year-long bedroom lockout. Oh sure, he can still use the bathroom, but the bed is strictly off-limits.

Hee.

For now though, we have yet to order the cake, style his groomsmen, decide on centerpieces and favors, blah etc. blah.

So, off to the Expo I go.

BTW, happy one-year engagement anniversary to us. Um, back on the 13th of this month. Hope we're better at remembering our wedding anniversary!

---

A short list of Expo successes:

Favors
Centerpieces
A flower contact
Cake

YAY.

Still to figure: Limo. Apparently I wasn't all that far off on the bus thing. The only one that would seat our entire bridal party was ... a VAN. No vans, thanks. I think stretch Hummers are preposterous but I'd ride in one of those before booking a VAN.

forward movement!

... What a foreign sensation.

I actually cracked open my organizer this week. Several times. Made tables. Made labels. Visited stables in Babel.

The invitations are done. I keep looking them over with extreme fear that I missed something, screwed up the date, misspelled my fiance's middle name, got the hotel address wrong, etc.

So far we have spent $___ on the stationery, gems, and adhesive, which means, without disclosing how many guests we are inviting, $0.60 per invitation, not counting postage. Sweet.

In the frenzy of invitation-making, I forgot that Peahen's wedding is next weekend. She's somehow created an affair that is both high-class and low-key, and I am looking forward to it. The rest of this week and all of next are going to be completely insane. Bridal Expo and continued planning for me; mini-shower, family dinner, mani-pedi sessions for her; wedding for her.

Work has been a little harder on S. lately, which means that I need to give him more breaks at home and take care of more wedding stuff. Which is really fine with me, because he was starting to take charge of stuff in a way that bewildered me. I mean yes, we did need to light a fire and get going on this stuff, but he was starting to chime in on things like invitation designs, for corn's sake. Before you say "Aw, how sweet that he wants to be involved in things like that," may I just say no? There is no Bridezilla in the house, but one can leave a girly thing or two up to the girl, right?

I may have displayed little to no interest in the aesthetic details of our wedding up till recently, but now I have time, energy and the will to rectify that. I gave up the dress of my dreams to satisfy others' sensibilities, and let it be said that from here on out - what the Cat beautifies, let no mother, man, or bystander put asunder.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAh

Printed invites. Need to embellish them. Need to print RSVP cards. Need to address invites. Need to ... omg.

Bridal Expo coming up in a couple of weeks (or is it next weekend?) ... going with MOH, and I WILL SECURE:

- Cake
- Limo
- exactly one billion other things I can't even think of right now.

Here's an invitation sample. Kind of fuzzy so you'll have to click on it: