Let the internet research begin!

Ever since Future SIL mentioned the wedding shower thing, I have been somewhat consumed with real thoughts about the wedding. I mean, real honest-to-goddess thoughts about how to make this thing happen. As opposed to all last year when I just gazed at my ring and thought fluffy, floaty little daydreams about getting married.

And it is slowly dawning on me that there is a bazillion things to plan and decide, even for our intimate little affair. You’d think, having done it once before, that none of this would be a revelation for me. But you’d be wrong. It’s been almost 3 decades since I last walked the aisle in a white dress and it might as well have happened to another person…that is how much I have changed since then. And how little I remember of the planning process.

I do remember that my mom and dad were quite involved – natch, since they were paying. And that I was pretty easy going about everything. That we made a lot of the stuff ourselves – the cake, my dress, bridesmaid dresses. That I wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes that I loved because, at $65, they were going to cost more than my dress, and I thought that was a ridiculous price to pay for shoes period, let alone ones I would wear only once. I also remember that the cost of the meal and the open bar at our reception came to $1800, and I was aghast at the $ my parents had to shell out. (I think we had 50 to dinner and 80 in total at the dance.)

Something tells me things may be a wee bit different this time around…

What’s staying the same is this. I still want the wedding to be very personal and with a lot of homemade touches. I won’t be making my own dress this time around nor will I blink at shoe prices. I also still love things to be real. So real flowers it is, and a real wedding cake. Though, I don’t see myself baking it this time. Last time it was an old-fashioned fruit cake (which I actually love to eat…I know. Weird.) and it turned out beautifully because my Maid of Honour’s mother had taken a cake decorating course and she iced it perfectly, so capturing my design of cascading icing flowers in my colours of pink and blue.

Colours! Flowers! The Dress! The hair! Will I have a MOH this time?! If so, who will it be? Who will walk me down the aisle since my dad has passed away? Or will I walk down it alone? Will we have a dance? Sit down or buffet dinner? Have I missed anyone on the intimate little guest list we have drafted so far? Invitations! Favours! Honeymoon! Photographer!

We had originally thought of going away to a resort/spa type place for our wedding, about an hour away – one of those one-stop-shops – marry in the garden, take pictures there, private room for reception, stay the night – quite an elegant country inn with fabulous scenery and food – but the wedding coordinator there was cold, and that put us off and then we started thinking about our elderly guests and their comfort, and we decided to keep it much simpler and closer to home for everybody.

It won’t be a church wedding this time. We are going to get married in the historic building we own downtown, with a hired gun…er…I mean preacher. Who we have to find yet. We want to have pics taken across the river downtown, the site of a lot of our courtin’ (and first kiss!). I’ll probably have my hair and makeup done at the downtown salon. And have the reception at the local hotel. The flowers and decorating – I will ask our tenant – a florist who specializes in not just flowers, but complete wedding decor including linens, chair covers, lights etc. – how appropriate is that? So the nascent theme of this shindig seems to be turning into A Wedding in the Village: Keepin’ it real, keepin’ it local. Which just seems right, given my place as a Board Member, for the Village Business Improvement Association.

So, some things are fleshed out and the researching for all the other things to decide upon is beginning.

This is the first day of the next year of my life…

…which is, of course true for every day. However today IS special. This day next year I will be getting married (for the second time) to the mate of my heart and soul (for the first time). We’ve been a couple for seven years now (engaged for one), and he still makes me sigh…and not always with exasperation either.

My future sister-in-law emailed me today to ask my permission if she could host a shower for me next spring or summer. What?! Oh my goddess, that’s right – I am a bride-to-be. At first I thought: Wow, that’s nice! She remembered it is 1 year to the wedding today! Then I thought: Oh, wait. A wedding shower – for someone this old and on her second round? I don’t know…it feels weird. Do people do that?

And then I remembered my mom having a wedding shower thrown for her when she married again after my dad passed away, when SHE WAS 63 YEARS OLD. Hey, I guess people DO do that sort of thing – I guess I can too. And SIL-to-be loves throwing a “do” and she’s very good at it too, so I am kinda looking forward to this.

There’s a lot I want to get done this next year. Some of it I should be doing anyway – and getting married is a lovely impetus, is it not? I am thinking, naturally, of losing weight and getting in shape. Been talkin‘ about losing 30-40 pounds now for about 4-5 years and been giving it a half-hearted effort, with the subsequent half-hearted results. I lose 5-10 pounds, then life gets in the way (don’t it always?) and I lose focus and back they come on again.

I have very valid health reasons to do so, not just to look good in that special dress (which I haven’t picked out yet). Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and stroke have already affected my younger sisters. I seem to have won the genetic lottery (in my family) so far, but my doc and cardiologist are in wait-n-see mode. So, I believe it’s in me, and I also believe I can avoid or delay it coming out by lifestyle modifications.

Other goals:

Belly Dance – I want to become a better belly dancer this year. This means I am taking the route to Carnegie Hall….practice, practice, practice. In fact today I was practicing my 3/4 shimmy at work while waiting for a timer to go off during a DNA extraction procedure. Thankfully no one entered the lab at the time and thus I avoided hideously embarrassing myself.

Running – I had a goal of running a full-marathon during my 50th year however, since I haven’t lost the weight yet, that goal is looking not so good. I have run a couple of half-marathons, disgustingly slow due to injury or inadequate training (see Life Gets in the Way, Lack of Focus, above) and vowed not to do the full unless in much better/lighter shape. So I think I need to re-evaluate my running goals for this year. More on that later.

De-Clutter – Part of the upcoming co-mingling involves moving from my abode to his. Also renovations and such, but that may be part of The Next Year of My Life: the Post-Wedding Year. I’ve been in this place now for 9 years and that, my friends, means I have accumulated a pile of unnecessary crap. So I plan a room-by-room, show-no-mercy assault on the house. Should be a heck of a garage sale this spring if all goes according to plan.

I think I’ll stop here. I have a tendency to over-reach, become too scattered, too diluted, take on too many projects etc. End result: Lack of focus, thus no goals met. I am by nature a “dabbler”, not a “digger” (thanks Dr. Eydt – I still remember you telling me this and it’s still true today), which means I am not programmed to pursue something single-mindedly for any huge length of time. I also remember my esteemed prof telling me not to despair, for “though the diggers get the Nobel Prizes, the dabblers have all the fun”.

So – this is one dabbler who is determined to have a fun year leading up to her nuptials, AND meet her goals at the same time.