the water got high and she never got dry

Saturday, June 30, 2007

oh heavenly day

Reader, I married him.

And it was perfect.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

here is the golden close of love

I was woken up by a stomachache this morning before the alarm went off and at first I spent a few minutes stressing out about everything we have to get done today before driving off (we have to finish our playlists and make CDs and our ceremony isn’t done being written!) and freaking out because it’s really hard to believe we’re leaving today. But as I drifted back off to sleep, I had this slideshow running through my mind of all these sweet moments of our relationship from the beginning until now. Those early emails we sent each other and how he would knock me off my feet with his words. How I used to come home from our early dates and be so excited to call my girlfriends and talk about it that I’d grab my phone and throw myself on my bed with one shoe on and one shoe off and lay there grinning like an idiot.

The first few moments of half fear, half wonder when I realized just how seriously in danger I was, that this was something big. The first time Husband to Be told me he loved me, out in a field under a starry summer sky. The first time HtB heard me say I loved him – he was hunched over a toilet in a friend’s bathroom, sick from drinking too much and several drunken friends were outside the door, advising me to help him throw up by sticking my finger down his throat.

The drunken friend who kept loudly proclaiming at a party how much I’d “blossomed” since meeting HtB and the random woman who came up to us at a concert last summer and asked us if we were married and told us what a cute couple we were.

Raiding a friend’s fridge while they were out of town and HtB asking me if I was his girlfriend as we polished off the rest of a strawberry pie. All the weekends we spent doing a whole lot of nothing, making lounging around in the grass an art form. Our whole amazing week in Maui. HtB continuing to ask me to marry him every time we’ve been in a different state or country.

We were getting ready for bed one night and he said “I wish I could marry you and then get hit over the head and forget who you were and meet you and fall in love with you and marry you all over again.” Totally goofy and utterly sweet, and so quintessentially him.

Just the other morning, HtB snuggled up to me and reminded me that “Soon, you’ll be waking up as my wife.”

There’s been so much more sweetness in the past 2 years and 3 months than one post could ever contain and there’s a thousand times more than that to come. There were so many heartaches over the course of planning this wedding but none of those matter anymore. In the lottery of love, I won so big.

This is the end of one long journey and the beginning of another and I can’t wait to see what happens.

This next week and a half is going to be simply amazing.

See you on the other side, Ray.

Monday, June 11, 2007

let's go crazy, let's get nuts

Still here, but just barely. Scatterbrained and tired. We leave on Thursday. Thursday! We're running around, calling the caterer, taking stuff over to the new place, buying more damn cardstock (if I never have to buy cardstock again, I'll be a happy woman), trying to arrange wedding transportation, cutting the Jesus saturated cards off the Jesus cookies, designing menus, tying gifts tags (Husband to Be does all the ribbon tying in this household. Really. He's just so much better at it.), and a million other silly, silly things. I cannot believe how frenetically busy we're going to be right up until the last second.

We simply cannot wait to leave all this behind. We are so ready to be married. But it doesn't feel real yet. Afer all these months of anticipation and planning and stress, with so much focus on the process and the journey that the real weight of the event itself hasn't touched down yet.

The other night I was wondering when the next quiet moment will be. As soon as we get back, we move temporarily and continue looking for jobs and preparing for the Big Move and July will be filled with parties and wedding receptions and weddings and saying goodbye and then we have one long drive to parts unknown and a new city and new home and new jobs. When will I have a moment to catch my breath? Part of me longs for that quiet moment but I'm doing my best to enjoy being a little out of breath for now.

We've had a few quiet moments to enjoy normal summer pleasures of arts festivals and the free Friday night concerts downtown, hanging out at the pool and getting tacos. Summers here are so idyllic, the town is at its best and for all that I rail about getting out of the Midwest, there are many great things about living here that will be sorely missed.

And there are some wedding planning moments I'll want to remember. Working together with Husband to Be to help make our wedding dreams reality has a good dose of sweetness to it amidst the insanity. The other night we worked on our ceremony and talked about what marriage means to us. And then went and got pie, because I was craving it. And Husband to Be is signing on for a lifetime of catering to my food cravings. For the past week or so, every time one of us has done something quirky or annoying, we've reminded each other that we have to put up with it "For the REST of your life!"

There are so many things about HtB that I look forward to putting up with for the rest of my life. Before my bachelorette party (which was a lot of fun, what I remember of it. Lots of martinis and champagne and dancing.) I went and got my hair done at a salon down the street. I sat down in the chair and watched the storm clouds gather outside and wished I had brought an umbrella with me, fearing the imminent ruin of my hair. Five minutes later, unbidden, HtB comes through the door with an umbrella in hand. This is why I'm marrying this man.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

where is my mind

I never, ever, ever have to do this again. This is what I keep telling myself. If we have a kid and they want to get married, I will be hard pressed not to tell them to just elope. Because Christ on a cracker, wedding planning is the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve had some moments of being uber-stressed about dumb crap like chairs (and some moments of legitimate annoyance with our erstwhile wedding planner) and other moments of being so excited about getting married and of all this crap being done with that I don’t give a crap about what to do with the centerpieces.

And then our annoying wedding planner writes a dumb email and I’m forced to reassure her about some nonsense and our caterer fails to get back to us at all and I get stressed out again.

But in a moment of quiet the other morning, I thought, I’m young and kid-free, at the very start of a career (of some kind), I’ll be moving somewhere completely new, I get to marry an amazing man who is unbelievably perfect for me, and I’m in the best shape of my life. There are going to be some stresses that go along with these things, but that’s just part and parcel of being at a pretty cool point in my life.

So self, suck it up just a little bit longer. And enjoy the hell out of the honeymoon.

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