Surprise!

July 17, 2012 at 6:43 am | Posted in Life and Living | Leave a comment
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In taking the traditional steps in wedding planning, I have scheduled the regular pre-wedding activities including a bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, and of course, a bridal shower.  I have been calling upon my bridesmaids for ideas and opinions, providing them with regular updates on my overall planning, and my bridesmaids can attest to the fact that I’m organized and clearly taking control of most of the planning, probably almost to a fault.

I know that this may make it sound like I’m being controlling bridezilla, but that’s really not it.  Two of my bridesmaids live in Boston, one who is actually getting married this weekend, and all of my bridesmaids are busy people.  I don’t want to add too much stress to their lives.  I want them as bridesmaids to support me, not to take on a whole bunch of planning.

But this doesn’t mean I’m not listening to them or giving them responsibilities — I certainly am, and have gotten a lot of great ideas from them.  What it does mean is that I am not expecting any surprises.  I know when my shower is, where it is, and basically everything about how the day is going to go.  And I prefer it that way.  I don’t do surprises all that well, or haven’t ever really had anyone really surprise me.

Of course there is a bit of a double standard in this because I love surprising people.  Aside from an awesome surprise shindig I pulled together for my fiance’s birthday a few years ago, a notable surprise when was I took my best friend to see her first Broadway show.  We made it within blocks of the theater before I accidentally blurted out the surprise.  Usually I’m pretty good, but these things happen.

I’m not sure why I don’t do surprises well.  I think a lot of it comes down to never expecting anything from anyone.  So I think in that way I will be surprised time and time again by people’s thoughtfulness and generosity.  I don’t ask for much from anyone, so I plan to continue to be surprised by the humanity portrayed when it is least expected.

Things I’m Going to Do After the Wedding

July 12, 2012 at 7:47 am | Posted in Life and Living | 4 Comments
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With my wedding less than 3 months away, constant work travel, my major company conference next week, followed directly by one of my best friend’s weddings, my to do list has been on hyperdrive.  It seems I never have a moment to sit back and relax.  Anyone planning an event, be it a wedding or a conference, or anything else, knows just how much there is to do, so my best friend had a good question for me.  What am I going to do when the wedding is over to keep busy?My list was not short.  There are a lot of things I have been holding off on since this insanity really hit.  Here are a few.

  1. Cooking: I’m been trying to eat really healthy, and yes the theory is that when you cook, you eat better.  But when I cook, I experiment, and not all my recipes are healthy.  Right now, I don’t have the time or the money to invest in cooking new recipes.  I have been keeping it real simple and just preparing food that only really needs heating on the stove and basic seasoning.
  2. Paying off my bills:  I have let go of control of my budget.  With all of the expenses of my wedding, I have let my credit card balances get higher than I’m used to and I’m not paying them off monthly the way I always have.  But it’s an expensive time in my life, and I don’t want to hold back from the one wedding I plan on having.  I will work to pay it back after the wedding.
  3. My 30th birthday!  That’s right readers!  My 30th birthday is just 7 months away, and clearly an important moment in the life of this blog.  I have to do something, big or small, to mark this moment in history.
  4. Moving day!  I will finally find a new apartment — two bedrooms and dog friendly, a place we can stay for a while.  I plan to be out of this apartment by next summer.  I’m looking forward to decorating a new place that I love!
  5. Travel –  It may sound like the last thing I want to do at this point, but I have got to get back to Europe.  I plan to save money and collect miles with the goal of making this happen for our 1 year anniversary (surprise honey!)
  6. My BFF –  My BFF has been spending so many of her weekends dealing with everyone else’s celebrations and sacrificing her own.  I am going to do something special for her 30th.  She seriously deserves it.

So that’s just a few things.  I know what a lot of newlyweds say, that they miss the excitement leading up to the wedding, that it all ends so fast.  But for me, I’ll be happy to leave this craziness behind and start living my life as a married woman.

The Guest List

June 14, 2012 at 7:35 am | Posted in Friends Then and Now | 3 Comments
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With my pending nuptials only a little over a hundred days, I’ve started to feel the crunch of needing to get things done.  Having been engaged for a year now, I really felt like I had plenty of time, and perhaps the reality of the situation hadn’t really hit me.  But it has now, and hard.  This is really happening and I have some stuff to do!

One of the things that I’ve had to cross off my list once and for all was the guest list.  Who would actually be invited to my wedding?  Sure, I’d sent out save the dates back in October, so the list really should be final, but I went back and forth with people I might add, or people that didn’t receive the save the date that I could not invite.  There were some adjustments, but I finally locked it down.

Being on a tight budget, it was really hard to make decisions.  I really wanted to spend the big day with all of my friends, past and present, but it’s just not feasible.  When I was younger, not even that much younger but like college-aged, I had thought I would invite all of my past best friends to my wedding.  Even though we weren’t all close anymore, they had an impact on who I became, and I would love for them to be there.  But it’s just not the case.  Tough decisions had to be made.

So how did we make them?  I thought about who was there when my future husband and I became a couple?  Who witnessed, watched, supported and shared in our courtship?  Who came to all of our parties and birthday celebrations?  Who supported each of us individually during the time we came to be a couple?  That was how we made our decisions.  Truth be told, some of these people we lost touch with over the duration of our relationship, but that’s just life, and they still matter to us as a couple.

And the truth is, friendships change.  The people I was close with last year aren’t the same as this year.  Some people have reappeared, some disappeared. Some old, some new.  It’s really an attempt to capture a moment in time where you can celebrate with the people who watched the relationship bloom.  Not everyone I hang out with will be invited to my wedding, and that doesn’t mean I think less of them.  I plan to make new friends for the rest of my life, and for those I can’t invite, I hope to share the memories with them.

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