Return of the Wedding Dreams

Last night I dreamed our wedding started late.

We kept delaying it by five minutes to finish the last little things, and five minutes turned into hours. All the guests were sitting patiently in white wooden folding chairs in a big dark room that looked like a conference room, and I was running around behind the altar, in a little prep room, making a list of the things we still needed to do and realizing we'd forgotten almost everything.

We hadn't confirmed the location with the photographers, so they weren't there. We hadn't written a ceremony with Mo. We hadn't written our vows. We had forgotten the booze for the unity cocktail. We didn't have music set up. We didn't have a chuppah. We weren't in our wedding clothes. We hadn't discussed the reception at all, so there was no food, no music, nowhere to sit.

So I tried to write vows as fast as I possibly could in a way that would encapsulate everything we wanted to say (which makes sense--the ceremony's the most important part of the day for me, and the vows are the most important part of the ceremony, so of course that's what I'd want to get done first).

I didn't ever get to the ceremony part of the dream. One of the last things I remember is Nate suggesting that he could "throw together" a chuppah at the last minute and me worrying that it wouldn't look nice,
This is a classic example of how my brain manifests subconscious stress. In high school, I would dream about being late for class because I didn't know where class was, and everyone being mad at me and therefore not telling me where class was, so I'd just run around looking for it, getting later and later. In college, after I stopped living with Julia (the roommate from Hell), I woke up crying in my sleep, which had never happened before and hasn't happened since. Dreams have always been my way of releasing steam my conscious brain isn't ready to admit is there yet.

So yeah, maybe I'm a bit stressed about wedding stuff. Really, I'm stressed about how damn much money this thing is going to cost, and whether or not people are going to have fun, and a bunch of shit I seriously should not care about. I'm not as interested in the wedding  minutiae as I am in the actual relationship/marriage stuff, but I haven't ever thrown a party this big before, and I guess I'm worried that people will think it's lame, rather than awesomeand original and fun and touchingly personal in a quirky-yet-spiritually-significant way.
So yes, I guess it's time to get this planning shit well and truly under way. 

Prenuptial Braindump

Okay, so, our engagement party is over, Great Western is over, I think it's time to actually start doing wedding-related shit. Here beginneth the brain dump:

Phew. This is probably post-party exhaustion, but I'm wiped out today, and generally not feeling so hot. Pre-period body changes have made me extremely clumsy, overly emotional, feeling gross because I'm breaking out everywhere, my boobs almost too sensitive to put in a bra, and generally Ready To Be Done with it all. Of course, I was supposed to get my period last weekend (the Saturday before the party) but being stressed out and in go mode has delayed it for a few days... and hopefully not much more than that. I don't really want to have my period at war, thanks. Also, all that nice relaxin has made my back go out worse than it has all year, including fun-filled spasms. It's probably also a reaction to starting to de-stress after this weekend... fortunately, that mostly got wiped out at the chiropractor yesterday and I'm feeling stiff, but not dying.

Things I Learned from Throwing My First Party

• When my parents tell me we haven't bought enough food, DON'T LISTEN. Your eyes and the size of the Costco shopping cart are true compasses.
• Make sure I actually get to spend time with the person/people with whom I am throwing the party. I saw lots of guests at the party, and not much of Nate.
• Your guest list will never be final, nor will it ever be set in stone.
• There are people in your social group who have done this before, better, and more often than you. These people include your family. Use them. Don't be afraid to delegate; just delegate to people you trust.
• If you're going to speech, prep it before the party.
• If you can't prep your speech before the party, Mo bullshits as easily as breathing.
• Sometimes Nate gets stressed out about party-planning too.
• White wine sangria.

Don't let the bullets fool you, our party went really well. We had some last-minute no-shows and some folks changed their RSVP's to No, and my parents decided when they showed up at the house that we hadn't bought enough food, so they went back out and got more... and now we have leftovers for days... but the party itself was great. It was really great to get to finally introduce my awesome family to my awesome friends, and we were totally loved on during the party itself, so I floated on a nice cloud of happy community lurve for the next day or so.

My mom surprised us by giving us one of our engagement pictures, blown up to 8 x 10" and glued to a big piece of posterboard, for our guests to sign. We got signatures from almost everyone, and we're going to frame the whole shebang and hang it up in the apartment. I was really touched and pleased by Mom's thoughtfulness--I keep being surprised when they do these wonderful wedding-related things (visiting so often to help us look at venues, giving me my Grandma's wedding ring--well, that was a request from her to my mom, but still--talking with me about wedding plans and marriage in general). I think part of me still expects them to disapprove of me getting married at this age, but that seems to be entirely in my head now.

Having Nate's family out was great too. They got along famously with my family, and held their own during a traditional Bauman/Day family Drunken Dinner at a restaurant where we drank waaaaay too much wine, sang in harmony with each other, and threw things. Yep, typical us. There were some issues with Josh, Nate's little brother, but nothing to write home about. I'd been anticipating some drama with him, but it ended up manifesting in a different way than I'd thought it would, and Nate and I got some good conversations out of it, so it all worked out in the end.

And people came! They came to the party and drank beer and played kubb and hugged us and bantered and generally had a great time! My parents seemed to really like everyone, and Nate's parents said it was easy to talk to everyone and that everyone made them feel welcome, even though they were in the minority 10% of folks who didn't know anyone at the party other than us. I was really floored by how much people helped out--my mom, dad, and Linda all handled a lot of food stuff, Rachie, Monica, and Kim all did a bunch of food presentation stuff, and the boys did a lot of shopping on Friday and Saturday. It was really incredible to see the community come together and help us out with stuff, unasked.

We're so blessed.

Venue Acquired! ...and a food dilemma

So we've FINALLY found a wedding venue (yes, we've only been engaged for five months and we've got over a year to go, so there isn't much finally about it. But still, I'm an epic procrastinator, so I want to get all this shit done as fast as possible. Bear with me. FINALLY.) We're going to use the Museum of Ventura County. It's really pretty in sort of a mod-Spanish style way, it has indoor and outdoor options, it's totally decorateable, and it's (for Ventura county) fairly affordable.

We just have one issue--food!

The venue has 3 recommended caterers, which is to say, 3 caterers you can use without having to pay a $500 fee. This is the only issue I have with the venue--the only reason I agreed to go with it is because they have three caterers you can choose from, not just one you're required to use. Having good food at the wedding is a pretty high priority for me, but I'm worried about how much the catering is going to cost. We calculated the cost for the mid-level caterer to do a meal for our guest list and it totaled up to the remainder of our budget. So we'd have photographers, a venue, great food, and no decorations, invites, clothing, gifts for the bridal party, rentals... you get the picture. That ain't gonna fly.

We're waiting on a quote from the "value" (AKA, cheaper) caterer, but I can't imagine it's going to be less than $3500. So, here are our options:

• Swallow $500 and self-cater. I absolutely don't want to self-cater, but it's the cheapest option. I don't trust myself, Nate, or our fridge to stand up to preparing food for 150 people the week before we get married, so this is pretty much off the table, but it is, technically, an option. 
• Move the wedding to Friday, rather than Saturday, and pay half as much for the venue, freeing up extra funds for catering. I'm okay with this option, but I'm worried it would be really inconvenient for our families and half of Team Bride, which is coming from 5 hours away--they'd have to take more time off work/school, and that could very possibly suck for them in terms of time, money, and getting behind on work. We'd also have to do the wedding in the evening, and with a lot of folks coming north from LA, would all the guests make it? Traffic's pretty heinous on Friday afternoons, and I'd hate for any of the folks I love to miss the ceremony... or to have to leave work early to make sure they make it at all. 
• Move the wedding to Saturday afternoon, rather than evening, and do tapas/appetizers instead of a full meal. This is another option I'm fine with, but I'm worried my more traditional father would freak out at the idea that we wouldn't be feeding our friends a full meal. 

What do you guys think? I'm kind of at a standstill here--any of these options would work, but I'm not thrilled about the potential screw-ups or problems with any of them.

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)-- Part Deux

So when last we left our heroine (me), I had given some cashola to the jeweler I lurved in Ventura as a promissory payment on a custom ring... of some kind. I was torn about teal-blue diamonds vs. sapphires and feeling kind of guilty about spending so much money on such a frivolous thing and debating the moral implications of buying diamonds, even ethically sourced ones, and generally wringing my emotional hands about the whole situation.

So I got a call from the jeweler yesterday, and he told me he had ordered some diamonds for me to look over, but the color variations weren't as diverse as he thought I would like. I went in to take a look this morning, and he was right. I was hoping for a five-stone ring that had a very light stone, a medium-colored stone, a dark stone, a medium-colored stone, and a very light stone in a line, but when we put the diamonds next to each other, they all looked like pretty much the same shade of teal. Teal's my favorite color, and the stones were beautiful, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

So long story short, I looked at the sapphire ring again, I looked at the diamonds, I mixed up the order of the stones, and finally George (the jeweler) suggested we put a couple of sky-blue diamonds on the ends of the line of teal stones. I took out the two middle stones, bumped the lightest color teal stones into the second and fourth positions, and put two sky-colored stones on the end, and voila--colors I loved, the gradations I wanted, and stones I didn't have to worry would wear out in fifteen years, like sapphires can. Sold.

Until recently, I'd been wrestling with buying a diamond wedding ring. I trusted the jeweler when he said the diamonds were ethically sourced, but I felt guilty about spending what, to me, is a good amount of money on a purely symbolic item. I felt like diamonds are so stereotypically decadent and chi-chi, would I really be happy with a diamond ring, or would I look at it and think I could have had something almost as pretty without the pricetag? Would I feel guilty about spending money other folks didn't have on something that was, on some level, a status symbol?

So I was driving to work on Thursday and it occurred to me--I'm paying for this ring by myself, with money I earned. Doing so isn't going to keep me from paying my bills or put me in debt. Nate's not helping me with it. My family isn't helping me with it. I'm choosing to spend money I earned with my own work on this.

All of a sudden, the ring changed from a petty concession to capitalism (and my fixation on sparkly things) to a symbol of my independence and capability. I'm spending money I earned on this ring, money I worked for. It's not an indulgence or a stereotype, it's a token of achievement. It's a symbol of my ability to take care of myself, to commit myself to a marriage as an independent adult.

That doesn't suck. :)

Pre-weddin' depression?

Things are not necessarily well in Sarahville.

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)

In which I do some emotional handwringing about wedding rings. Sorry, kinda long, kinda fluffy.