I didn't expect to this soon, but...

Guess who bought a wedding gown!

Pity Party

It’s funny, just two years I remember lamenting what a bitch I was. I was depressed at being in law school, and I wanted nothing to do with it or anyone around me. After I left law school I wished I had been kinder and more compassionate. Now, I kinda miss the bitch.

I think it just might be possible to be assertive without being aggression. I’d like to be sure of myself without being arrogant. It will be a challenge, and it’s even more difficult trying to do these things while being a woman. It’s too bad I can’t talk about my coworkers or my boss because I’d have a lot to say. I will say that I hate the environment. But since fiancé and I plan on moving either shortly before or after the wedding to a different city, and because on Friday I just got promoted, I made the decision to stay in this job until we move. As fiancé once told me, I could either change my attitude about my job or change my job. Well, it’s time to work on my attitude.

I’m not sure how to go about this. I still have a few things to get done before I’ll be able to spend some time on myself… it’s going to take a good bit of thought.

How do each of you deal with your own personal shitstorms?

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Yesterday I went positively bonkers with wedding vendors. I was emailing back and forth with my friend who is having her wedding at the same location in May 2008, and I was telling her about my upcoming appointments with vendors.

I mentioned something about meeting a particular wedding cake maker next Sunday and sampling a bunch of her cakes. My friend told me she’d heard bad things about this place. She didn’t really have any specific examples, so who knows how accurate this assessment is. I started my search to find reviews of the cake maker.

And, I did find a review… only it was the most website EVER. What I found was actually a link to a woman’s theknot.com message board. She posted extensively about each and every vendor she was using, but up tons of photos as examples, put up more photos of the day of the wedding, and then rated each and every vendor she’d used. The cake maker got an A+ according to this woman.

But even better, the girl had listed a photographer that was actually not yet on my spreadsheet! You can imagine how I felt about this!

This photographer looked awesome, and she also got an A+ rating. And looking through the samples on her website, she had photos up of someone fiancé and I went to high school with! It was wild. When I heard back from her via e-mail she was exceptionally nice as well. The price is right, and the only thing I didn’t love about her photography package she was very flexible about changing! We’re meeting next Sunday… we may have a winner!

So hopefully today I won’t look for any more photographers. I think my spreadsheet of information including almost 20 Virginia photographers is quite enough. Fiancé and I have scheduled three meetings with photographers, this last woman being the last meeting, and I think we’re more than equipped to make a good choice.

This Sunday – Photographer 1
Next Saturday – Photographer 2, Cake Maker 1, Cake Maker 2
Next Sunday – Photographer 3, Officiant, DJ

Busy
Busy
Busy

Not to mention that, well, I put a resume out there. We’ll see if anything happens with it, but it felt damn good.

It's Alive!!!

I thought I was above wedding stuff sucking my brain out with a straw, but I must have seriously underestimated my love of distractions. I have never been very good at saying “no” to a distraction… whether that be writing notes to boys in middle school, staying on the phone until 3AM, or using up all the minutes and then going over by quite a lot on the AOL Account… back when AOL used to charge by the minute.

I got better for a little while… maybe. I never, ever watched television until about my third year of college. I just wasn’t interested. The only shows that I heard about that were ever on were Dawson’s Creek or Melrose Place, and those were shows to be scorned by people like me (“cool” people… too cool). Thursday nights in college I used to order Chinese food and watch some hilarious reality tv with friends. But that was it, just Thursdays.

I think it all slowly started with Buffy that summer. And once you learn the supreme joy of watching a great tv show on dvd, you can never go back. That compounded with the pain of law school after college, where I picked up any distraction possible just to take me out of that place! Google talk, reality tv, blogging (sorry, Blogger)… my thirst for distractions knew no bounds.

Now I’m working and taking two classes. We’re also planning a wedding. Which of these three things sounds the most fun to you? What do you think I’m spending the majority of my time on?

Weddings, weddings, weddings… I stare at photographer sites forever, trying to discern the hidden differences between images. I talk to DJs. I update spreadsheets. Like an alcoholic, my love of distractions is starting to interference with my work (school)… so I guess I should start getting concerned.

I mailed my “will you be my bridesmaid” trinket to the last person yesterday. I made them each individualized boxes with a note. Fiance and I are zeroing in on a photographer and DJ. We’re scheduling meetings for next weekend, and I think I should really really take a wedding break until then. I think my life depends on it!

Good morning, world

Why is it that when I set my alarm to get up earlier than usual I wind up waking up later than usual? I can't explain this phenomenon... but it makes me sad!

My parents are coming to my apartment tomorrow to bring the kitchen table that we actually have room for now in the larger apartment. This means that unpacking should be mostly complete, as my parents are hounds that sniff out mess and disarray. There's a lot to be done, no willpower to do it, and a short timeline to get it done!

I did, however, finish the two biology quizzes that I needed to take so that I would not be withdrawn from the course; these distance learning courses set up some periodic deadlines to keep people from slacking off until the last minute. Not like I know anyone who would do that... ahem. The grade average for the quiz I took on Wednesday was 47.36, and the average for the quiz I took last night was 58.06. DANG. I didn't do well at all on the first one, or even that great on the second one, but at least I got above the averages?

So last night after the quiz, I had planned on taking a little break... letting my hair down... meaning, probably going to bed early. Instead I got stuck looking at wedding cakes and table centerpieces and adding photos to a photobucket account for fiance to put on our google wedding map that he's making. Apparently now you can make your own maps in google and save them, putting markers on any place you chose. Fiance is marking places that are important to us, the countries we traveled to in Europe, our high school, where we grew up, where we work, etc. You can also include pictures that pop up when you hover your mouse over the location. We hope that our guests find it fun!

On Sunday I'm going with my friend and some of her other bridesmaids to hunt for the bridesmaid dresses she wants for her wedding, and perhaps also check out some wedding dresses for her. Her wedding will sneak up on us before we know it, so we're really hoping to swoop in there and find some awesome dresses! I'm sure we will emerge VICTORIOUS.

Happy, happy Friday... thank God it's Friday... ad nauseum!

Segway to my Heart

Friday!! This is thrilling! The first week back at work after a vacation is not fun at all.

I think I may need to get my engagement ring resized AGAIN. He bought it in our hometown, which means that if I part with it I have to wait an entire week until the following weekend when I can go back and pick it up. In the heat it’s tight, but in the cold, air conditioned office or the shower it turns to the side and can easily slip off. Sometimes in the office I wrap a little bit of tape around it, but this is ridiculous… it’s a diamond ring! And I hate ring guards; they pinch the skin on my fingers.

Tomorrow is fiancé’s birthday! We’re going to see Harry Potter. We had a long talk the other day about my job. I was being miserable about it, as usual. I was even feeling pretty down on nursing as a career option. He said that I should either change my attitude about my job or change my job. Suddenly the reasoning I’d been using to keep myself there until next summer doesn’t seem as persuasive as it used to. But finding and interviewing for a new job, going through all the training, waiting to get on a new benefits plan and health care package sounds like a lot of work I’d rather not have. And if I’m too lazy, I should really quit my bitchin’.

A good friend has already said he won’t be coming to the wedding (over one year away). He has a lot of social phobias. In college he went home to his parents’ house every single weekend, all four years. He did it also once he started medical school, but then he got into a car accident that almost killed him. He had to unenroll from school to work on physical therapy, etc. When he started med school again the following year, at first he didn’t drive home as much, but it wasn’t long before he started doing it again. Usually we can’t get him to hang out passed dinner time. He told fiancé and I that he’ll either be studying or doing rounds at the hospital that day, so he can’t come.

I guess I should be understanding if he really has a problem, maybe he can’t control it. But instead I find myself pretty pissed off. He’s known fiancé and I since high school, and we never ask for anything. Is it so much to come out and eat a free meal prepared by a four-star chef, enjoy free beverages, and spend time with your best friends? At first I thought he would probably warm up to the idea after awhile, but now I just don’t think so.

p.s. I got to ride a SEGWAY in Disney World!

BOOKED

I'm baaaaack.

Alright, I've been back since Sunday, but I'm not really sure what day or date it is. We're moving soon, it's time to get serious with the classes I'm taking, work is work, and, oh yeah, planning a wedding!

One friend who is getting married in May 2008 keeps telling me how far ahead of her I am in planning. I'm not! It’s just that reception sites get gobbled up quickly, so if we want a summer wedding we have to MOVE. A year from when he proposed was late June… then there’s July… then there’s August… then it’s fall already! Not that a fall wedding would be bad, but with friends in grad school or possibly one of us there next year it might makes things more then a little tricky. Also we knew we wanted to get married at our alma mater’s chapel, and August begins to interfere with the revered home football game schedule (they don’t let you get married on football weekends… and they shouldn’t! the place would be a madhouse).

So, if you want to get married at the university chapel you have to enter a lottery system one year before. If you want a July 2008 wedding, then you have to get your name in the hat by July 1, 2007. They start pulling names out of the hat on the first working day of the month and you just have to take whatever is left when your name is called. We decided sure, let’s put our name in there for July.

Luckily we got date we wanted!

The next step was finding that reception site and, again, they go quickly. We decided to go with the city where the university is (that seems to make sense, right?) because that’s where we’re having the ceremony. It’s not a very big city at all, so that limited our choices even more.

My parents went there to visit possible sites on their July 4 holiday, while boyfriend and I were still in Disney. They kept calling to give reports on what they found, but seriously people, we were in DISNEY. It’s a little hard to focus, and I didn’t have internet access. They seemed pretty insistent though that we should go visit these places as soon as possible.

So Friday when we checked out of our Disney resort we hit the road… HARD. We drove the entire day and made it back to VA in about 13 hours. It was a long, long day!

The next day we got up and drove to visit those reception sites. The first place was great, the second place was REALLY not us (think old white men on horseback hunting foxes… think colonial), and the third place was absolutely fantastic. My parents also loved the third place. It only had two weekends left in July that weren’t reserved – and ours was one of them!

So, wedding ceremony site and reception site are BOOKED. And the reception site takes care of the catering!

Sure, that leaves attire, florist, entertainment, transportation, SOMEONE TO MARRY US… but I’m feeling damn good about where things are right now. And so far it’s really been easy. I feel like it’s not supposed to be easy. I’m supposed to sweat and cry and all that. Well, the 13 hour drive wasn’t easy… of course. Tips and advice are always welcome, too. :-)

It's the Season for Love, Apparently!

At the end of last month I was thinking about how mine and boyfriend's anniversary was coming up soon. We had discussed it in early March when we decided to purchase the Wii; we split the cost and called it our anniversary present to eachother. We're a progressive couple?

I woke up Monday morning pretty grumbly... boyfriend was going to be off of work for a few days so he was still sleeping, and I was just absently checking celebrity gossip blogs. I glanced down at the clock on the computer screen and hovered over it for a moment.

Busted! It was our anniversary!

I don't know how the damn date just crept up on me. I'd been thinking about it in the back of my mind, but for some reason I just kept thinking it was far off. Good thing we had decided previously on the Wii as a gift, otherwise I'd be in the DOG HOUSE! We went out for some Coldstone Creamery after work and, as always, I had a great time.

When people ask me how long we've been dating, I get really squirrelly. Maybe I feel like they'll think there's something wrong with us for dating so long, even though I know we're very different people than we were after 2 years of dating, 4 years of dating, 5, 6, 7, and now 8 years of dating! That's right, I said it outloud and published it on the internet... 8 years!

We don't get into fights, we have similar goals and beliefs, we very supportive of eachother and love to try new things, we get along great and have fun, we don't always share the blankets but we usually share the remote control... sometimes I'll even share food (except for warm, fresh baked cookies and most kinds of cake)! It just keeps working; I can't explain it and I don't want to.

In other very exciting news, a good friend who recently got engaged took me out to dinner on Tuesday night. We enjoyed our Thai food, talked and laughed, and then she said, "I have something to ask you."

If it wasn't for her recently being engaged I would have sworn that she was about to propose to me! That was not the case, but she did ask me to be the Maid of Honor in her May 2008 wedding!

The cost of having lots of male friends led me to think that I'd never be lucky enough to be anyone's Maid of Honor. I'm extremely excited to help her with her wedding. There will probably be many funny incidents ahead, as neither of us have been planning our respective weddings since we were five years old, so we're not exactly experts on the topic. Luckily again there is a lot of information out there, and if there's one thing I'm good at it's looking things up!

Wikipedia tells me that my pre-wedding duties will include:

• Traveling with the bride to help choose a wedding venue.
• Helping to choose and address wedding invitations.
• Going with the bride to help with the shopping for her wedding dress as well as the bridesmaid dresses.
• Going with the bride to register for her wedding gifts.
• Helping the bride with the seating arrangements.
• Hosting and planning the bridal shower as well as the bachelorette party.
• Maintaining communication and organization with the other bridesmaids.
• Attending and assisting during the rehearsal dinner.

Piece of cake, right? No problemo! We'll see what the bride would like to add and/or subtract from that list in the future, and in the meantime I'll start stocking up on some Martha Stewart Weddings and Virginia Weddings magazines this weekend!

As always, any advice in this endeavor is more than welcome!