Happy New Year!
Besides the flare up of bursitis I’ve had since December 24th (hello, stress), I’ve also been suffering from blogger’s guilt. It’s not that I don’t want to keep up, it’s just that—well, take yesterday: got home from Plymouth around 1:30am from painting the bedroom (blue! so fresh! so pretty!), the power was out at home thanks to a horrible windstorm, then next morning tracked down a wedding cake person, finalized invitation plans, started a bridal registry, dealt with invitation screwups and printing errors, etc etc.
Getting married in America is apparently a full time job. Thank God our engagement is short. I can’t imagine stressing about an event’s color scheme FOR SIX MONTHS STRAIGHT. I’m already fantasizing about the halcyon future days of going to work and coming home to do laundry or wash dishes with the radio on. A future in which no salespeople will badger me about my FORMAL DINNERWARE and nobody will care about my personal taste or plans.
To be honest, the wedding thing is distinctly less exciting than the marriage thing. Besides immediate family (who are all supportive and wonderful), most people hear my plans and become instantly critical. Sometimes it’s just raised eyebrows, but usually it’s some kind of comment.
It’s so short, why the rush? and are you pregnant? are all pretty common. People have even started sharing my plans with THEIR friends as a kind of colorful anecdote (guess what my impulsive and ridiculous friend is doing NOW?). After one particularly brutal and loving conversation with a friend, I told Carl (it might be bitterly) that all this could have been avoided if we’d only waited exactly one year after our first date, if we’d had a Shakespeare sonnet read in the service and if I’d bought my dress at David’s Bridal.
Mostly, I said a bunch of times that night: SCREW THE WEDDING. (Carl’s attitude is one of calm and minimal concern. If people assume the worst of you when they hear the news, they’re probably not really friends worth keeping. The people who actually know us are really happy for us. And we’re happy. That’s all that matters… which is all true, but somehow I still want to spit at someone. Anyone. Dunno).
Other than that, things are great…
And, I guess I should have said this at the beginning: I’m engaged. And, it’s absolutely perfect; absolutely right.
And no, I’m not pregnant. Thanks for asking.
5 responses so far ↓
Andrea // December 31, 2008 at 6:41 pm |
I’m totally with you on the whole misery of planning a wedding thing. And I think a short engagement is the absolute best way to go. Once you’re certain you want to marry someone, why on earth wouldn’t you rush? What does anyone need all that time for anyway? Dress shopping? To be honest, I think it’s usually people who are already sleeping together (and therefore are way more likely to be pregnant, btw) who feel so little rush to get married. The ones who are committed to purity are in a huge rush. And that is exactly as it should be. If you weren’t in a rush, it’d almost seem like you didn’t really want to get married at all.
RyderCup // December 31, 2008 at 10:55 pm |
Again, congratulations. And, by the way, I hope I am in the “latter” group and not the “former” – although I would be less than honest if I was not somewhat surprised by the “soonness” of your wedding date. So I hope my surprise did not seem to be anything other than that – genuire, pleasant surprise. And I certainly wish the two of you a long and joyous life together. And if the Mrs. and I can be of any help at all, please let us know.
botanyhead // January 1, 2009 at 8:18 am |
Carl’s right. The man’s brilliant. Hang tough. It will all be a blurry bad dream soon enough.
kathrynarmstrong // January 1, 2009 at 10:37 am |
RyderCup: surprised is fine. I’m ok with surprised… it’s the surprised mingled with the “well, I wouldn’t do that. Let me give you some advice. Here’s how I did things” that fouls my mood in twenty seconds flat.
The “rush” doesn’t seem like that much of a rush to me, I guess. We’ve known since about October that we were probably going to get married in February (unless aliens invaded, Carl developed a secret love child, or I ran off to Portugal to become a chain smoking writer). We both agreed that we thought it would be wise to wait at least six months from when we started dating to become engaged just to give ourselves time to be certain, but he knew within two months that he wanted to marry me, and I–well, I’m a little more skittish, but I’d say I stopped having any kind of doubts by Oct or Nov.
Anywhoodle, thanks, everyone, for the kind comments!
RyderCup // January 1, 2009 at 7:04 pm |
Thanks for the reassurance. Good stuff. I don’t think any of those eventualities will come betwixt you and wedded bliss. Wait a minute…writing, in Portugal…oh, wait; you said chain smoking. Nah, that will never happen.
As for the February thing, I don’t think there is an ideal “time to wait” for everyone. Given that you are now in the latter half of your 3rd decade, and I suspect Carl is roughly the same, my only question would be, “Hey, if you are both ready, and you know what you want, why wait?”
Again, God bless you both, and give you great happiness and joy!