It's been a few days, but I wanted to document the dress-buying process, in part so that I don't forget it myself. I would have started this sooner, but the day I got home after buying The Dress, I sneezed. Immediately after, I felt my throat start to tighten and burn in that "you're about to get sick, better stock up on the sinus medicine" kind of way. So I spent the rest of that day and the next under blankets, binging on Netflix with the fiancé. Being sick isn't fun, but under the circumstances, I've had worse days...
So the dress story. My mom's friend from high school owns this dress shop in Augusta. It's two hours away, but we really wanted to go there first, hopefully even buy it there. Jane was my mom's maid of honor, and my mom was hers. I went with my mom and my maid of honor, Heather, and surveyed the shop, trying to force it to sink in.
It didn't, not right away. It was hard to make myself believe that I was at a dress shop, that I would try on wedding dresses, and that I might, maybe, if I was really lucky, try on and buy the one I'd be getting married in. Ended a sentence with a preposition. Deal with it.
I pulled a few dresses that I thought I might like, then I let Jane take over. Soon we had about six hanging up in the dressing room. I changed into my dress-trying undergarments that the store provides (kind of cool, I think) and selected the first one I would try on. I justified this choice by saying that I wanted to knock out one that I was pretty sure wouldn't be The One, so I could save the best for last. I just really didn't want to end before I'd began by trying on my favorite right away. Jane didn't like this logic. She asked me why I was trying one on at all, if I knew I wouldn't like it. She explained that she likes to have brides try on their favorites first, and then they try to knock it out of first place. This made sense too, so we decided a favorite would be next, and I debuted dress number one.
It wasn't a huge hit. It was pretty, and I loved the bottom of it, but it wasn't my dress, and we all knew it. So we went back to the drawing room and put on number two. And, for the rest of the appointment, I was pretty sure that would be the one.
It was a champagne, slim A-line gown with a lace overlay and a champagne bow. I'd never wanted a champagne dress, but this one really was beautiful, and if I do say so myself, I looked good in it. The bow... the bow kind of nagged at me, but we tried a variety of bows, ribbons, belts, and sashes, and I didn't find anything I liked more, so I resigned that the bow was just a part of the dress. We forged on, with the champagne dress firmly in the number one spot.
I won't narrate every dress, because I don't remember them all separately, and I'm really okay with that. There were a few fit-and-flares that made me a little more curvy than I was comfortable with. There was a really oddly-shaped one that was a beautiful dress in its own right, but it was just not my dress. There was a cousin to the champagne lacey number, with a larger lace pattern and a prettier sash right under the bust line. There was a dress fit for a princess, the kind that I would have wanted a few years ago when I wanted a tiara and lots of sparkles, but not now. It was getting tedious. I was worrying that my dress might not be there. Then we put on The Almost.
It wasn't The Almost at first. At first, I could just about see it. The longer I spent in it, the closer and closer I came to saying it was the one. I considered putting the champagne one back on, maybe two or three more times. We started accessorizing. Veil, necklace, earring (just one earring. Not sure why). The more we added to it, the more it started to look like it belonged in a wedding. Just not my wedding. I couldn't really describe it. The dress was so fun, and so me, and so unique. I started to panic. I had my top two, but there was just something... off about both of them. If these were the best ones, what if I couldn't find anything better here? Don't get me wrong -- they were both stunning. They just didn't feel like mine. I didn't feel like I was getting married. It still didn't feel real. I announced that I was tired of standing. I needed to sit down. Heather started telling me stories from work to distract me, while my mom jumped into the dressing room and tried on Mother of the Bride dresses. People were swarming me, asking if this was The Dress, telling me to trust my gut and just say yes. I tried to explain that I am not someone who can trust her gut, thanks to a life of overthinking and decision anxiety. I just sat there, too scared to admit the truth: this had stopped being fun.
As I was sitting, Jane poked around the racks some more and emerged with another dress. It was very much like the dress I was wearing, but it had one major difference (for fear of giving away too much before the big day, I won't talk about that difference, so whether this post is completely pointless or not is your decision to make). I agreed to try it on. Like the dress before it, I covered my eyes while I was being laced and clipped into the dress. I turned the corner and walked up to the pedestal, still not looking.
When I finally opened my eyes, I was completely speechless. I wasn't sure if there would be a Moment, like they show on TV, but here it was. I actually even started crying, which caused everyone else to cry as well. We immediately started snapping pictures -- pictures of me in the dress, pictures of Heather and me hugging through our happy tears, pictures of my mom and me, pictures with Jane proudly pointing to herself because she had picked the dress that was responsible for so much emotion. This time it was easy. I could see Michael seeing me in this. I could see our wedding, and this dress was everything I'd wanted. Jane had somehow managed to take in all the semi-formed thoughts I'd supplied her and pull a dress that was all the things. I said, without hesitation, "I'm going to get married in this dress!" At that moment, I was okay with the appointment being over. I didn't need to see anything else in the store. I knew that any other dress I saw, on a mannequin or anywhere else, might be beautiful but it wouldn't be my dress -- because THIS was My Dress. I spent the rest of the day floating, imagining the moment that I will walk down the aisle toward my groom in my dress.
Now, I have a little less than nine months until he (and everyone else) sees it. How am I going to wait that long??
Monday, July 29, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Things I Should Be Doing Right Now
So I just watched about an hour of youtube videos after telling myself "I'll just watch two or three" and I realized that maybe nobody reads blogs anymore. Maybe we want to have everything just said to us and maybe it's more interesting when we don't have to read. Yeah? Well TOO BAD!
Okay. I guess I will quickly provide an update for those of you who somehow know enough about me to read this but do not know enough about me to read my facebook updates. So that's pretty much nobody, but whatever.
Important things are happening! Well... At least they will be soon. I've started wedding planning, which isn't as hard as people make it seem on TV, but DOES take a lot of time and there are a lot of decisions I still need to make. Decisions like: Officiant, music for the aisle-walking-down-part, bridesmaid dresses, wedding dresses, tuxedos.... And yeah. But I have something like 10 months left to figure it all out, so I'm not panicking. Anyway, right at the beginning of the wedding planning, we nailed down our venue and realized there was no freaking way we were ever going to afford it. Ever. But we really wanted it. So, the fiancee and I packed all of our things and put most of them in storage and took the really important things (like most of my clothes and Skylanders and all of his computers...) with us to his parents house. They have so graciously permitted us to live with them AGAIN, because we are in fact only pseudo adults. I am so, so, so thankful that they have let us move ourselves and our crazy cat friend into the room at the end of the hallway again, and they are awesome for that. Ferris is adapting much better this time, if you're curious.
So you would think that, with the summer off and with my wedding 10 months away that all I have to do is sit around in my pajamas and watch TV and wait for the future-hubby to come home, right? NOPE! I have SO much to do, more maybe than I do when I'm working. And so, I present to you... The list... of things I should be doing right now:
1. I should go outside, go through all the crap in my car, locate my tax forms, and fill out the student loans sheet thingy. And I need to find that sheet thingy, so I can be out of forbearance and start paying them back. But uggghhhh just thinking about all the steps involved in that...
2. There is an exercise bike downstairs, and I am getting married in 10 months. So... I should go ride it and stuff.
3. I should eat breakfast I guess?
4. Maybe I should get dressed...
5. I need to work on my novel while I have all this time because when school starts I will say I will write in November but I really won't and I'll be so busy and this is the best time to do it but... blerg.
6. I should maybe scoop the cat box, so another week doesn't go by like last time.
7. I should read something.
8. I need to catch up on Pretty Little Liars because I'm secretly still a teenager or something.
9. I need to organize the storage areas inside and outside of the room I'm in. Anywhere that my stuff is, and that is a lot of places, needs to be organized.
10. I need to make a bills chart so we don't forget to pay for important things like storage and all our stuff doesn't get auctioned off to people.
11. I should look for missing things, like my laptop and tablet charger.
12. Make a guest list for the wedding.
13. Discuss who we want to officiate the wedding with the fiancee (but he's not here, so I get a pass on that right now, right?)
14. Email the people from My Cat From Hell about putting Ferris on the show because he's insane.
15. Email that lady from that place and start making connections.
I guess I will stop there. I have this problem with motivation where if I have too many things to do, I just get tired thinking about all of them and want to take a nap. Or watch TV or watch youtube. Anything that wastes time instead of spending it well. Okay, so. I am going to go outside in my pajamas and rifle through my car and maybe find that form thingy and take care of this loans business. That is currently the most important thing, and I will do that. I think.
Sorry this wasn't an interesting post. As real wedding planning starts to happen, I will post about that. There might even be pictures!
Okay. I guess I will quickly provide an update for those of you who somehow know enough about me to read this but do not know enough about me to read my facebook updates. So that's pretty much nobody, but whatever.
Important things are happening! Well... At least they will be soon. I've started wedding planning, which isn't as hard as people make it seem on TV, but DOES take a lot of time and there are a lot of decisions I still need to make. Decisions like: Officiant, music for the aisle-walking-down-part, bridesmaid dresses, wedding dresses, tuxedos.... And yeah. But I have something like 10 months left to figure it all out, so I'm not panicking. Anyway, right at the beginning of the wedding planning, we nailed down our venue and realized there was no freaking way we were ever going to afford it. Ever. But we really wanted it. So, the fiancee and I packed all of our things and put most of them in storage and took the really important things (like most of my clothes and Skylanders and all of his computers...) with us to his parents house. They have so graciously permitted us to live with them AGAIN, because we are in fact only pseudo adults. I am so, so, so thankful that they have let us move ourselves and our crazy cat friend into the room at the end of the hallway again, and they are awesome for that. Ferris is adapting much better this time, if you're curious.
So you would think that, with the summer off and with my wedding 10 months away that all I have to do is sit around in my pajamas and watch TV and wait for the future-hubby to come home, right? NOPE! I have SO much to do, more maybe than I do when I'm working. And so, I present to you... The list... of things I should be doing right now:
1. I should go outside, go through all the crap in my car, locate my tax forms, and fill out the student loans sheet thingy. And I need to find that sheet thingy, so I can be out of forbearance and start paying them back. But uggghhhh just thinking about all the steps involved in that...
2. There is an exercise bike downstairs, and I am getting married in 10 months. So... I should go ride it and stuff.
3. I should eat breakfast I guess?
4. Maybe I should get dressed...
5. I need to work on my novel while I have all this time because when school starts I will say I will write in November but I really won't and I'll be so busy and this is the best time to do it but... blerg.
6. I should maybe scoop the cat box, so another week doesn't go by like last time.
7. I should read something.
8. I need to catch up on Pretty Little Liars because I'm secretly still a teenager or something.
9. I need to organize the storage areas inside and outside of the room I'm in. Anywhere that my stuff is, and that is a lot of places, needs to be organized.
10. I need to make a bills chart so we don't forget to pay for important things like storage and all our stuff doesn't get auctioned off to people.
11. I should look for missing things, like my laptop and tablet charger.
12. Make a guest list for the wedding.
13. Discuss who we want to officiate the wedding with the fiancee (but he's not here, so I get a pass on that right now, right?)
14. Email the people from My Cat From Hell about putting Ferris on the show because he's insane.
15. Email that lady from that place and start making connections.
I guess I will stop there. I have this problem with motivation where if I have too many things to do, I just get tired thinking about all of them and want to take a nap. Or watch TV or watch youtube. Anything that wastes time instead of spending it well. Okay, so. I am going to go outside in my pajamas and rifle through my car and maybe find that form thingy and take care of this loans business. That is currently the most important thing, and I will do that. I think.
Sorry this wasn't an interesting post. As real wedding planning starts to happen, I will post about that. There might even be pictures!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
How I Met My Other
Uhh... Hi? I guess I might possibly owe the one or so people who read this blog an explanation? I've started teaching full time. 'Nuff said? Seriously though, it has kept me so busy, and when I'm not busy, I'm busy doing nothing to balance out the always doing something that I am most of the other times. Seriously. I can't even enjoy my once-in-a-lifetime two hour planning without being pulled to go cover a class. But I'm not complaining; I love my job, and I'm so happy and lucky to have it.
But, I supposed I ALSO owe the one or so person reading this an explanation of the OTHER thing that has me so busy. That other thing currently resides on my left ring finger, where it spends most of its time being sparkly and beautiful.
I got engaged in December. Whoa.
And so, I thought that I would tell the story. Our story. The story of how we met, and all of the times that we could have met but didn't, because that story is almost as interesting as the real story.
I met Michael in 2008, when I was at the tail end of the first semester of my junior year in college. He added me on facebook, and I looked at our friends in common and thought "sure, why not. I remember those girls. They were cool." I then minimized facebook and proceeded to fill my head with absolutely anything else, and the event that would change my life and write my most important chapter was forgotten immediately.
A few months (or weeks?) later, I noticed an update from somebody whose name I did NOT recognize. Michael has one of those names that you'd KNOW if you knew it, and I definitely did not. So I checked out this mysterious stranger with the apparently hurting leg. And I liked what I saw. He was close to my age. He'd gone to my high school (what?!). He was in a band. He was CUTE. And he also worked... pretty much down the street from where I grew up. I sent him a message.
...And he did not think it was weird, creepy, or desperate. He wrote back, and we spent the rest of my semester messaging each other on facebook and AIM (this was, after all, back in the dark ages, when people still used AIM). It was great to have that feeling again, something to look forward to as I pretended to be surfing the internet while really waiting for the guy on the other end to see that I'd signed on and send me a message. Come to find out, he was waiting for the same thing. We decided to meet. Don't sound your alarm bells yet, I was safe about it. I brought a friend, we met in a public place, and it was a concert for his band, not exactly some dark alley somewhere.
I remember the conversation I had with my friend Heather on the way to the bar to see him play. I had recently (I say recently; it was really like 2 months ago) experienced a terrible breakup. The kind that leaves you paralyzed for a few days, the kind you're legitimately not sure you'll get through, the kind you write terrible poetry about and wonder if there really IS anyone to catch you when you fall. I had made up my mind that I was done. Not in the "I'm done with guys, I just wanna dance" way, but in the "I'm just done with that situation. I'm going to live now, for me, and see what happens." I have to say, sitting in the car urging Heather to please drive faster or we'll miss it he said they were on at nine -- I definitely did not suspect that four years later he would ask me to marry him on bended knee. I was just going to "see what happened." I was just going to see a guy play some music at a bar in Norcross with my long-time buddy Heather, who had almost talked me out of going because she thought I might look desperate and that it was "kinda shady" that Michael had listed two high schools on his facebook.
Li$tprice played one of my favorite songs. I remember being ten years old, listening to my brother Eric's Offspring CD on one of those old personal CD players that you have to hold reeeeaaaally still or it'll skip, and screaming along to "The Kids Aren't Alright." I don't know why. I had a great childhood, full of opportunities which I utilized to get where I am, and I lived in a nice house with nice people who cared about me. But man, it was fun to scream to that song!
We went on our first date two days after the concert, and life since then has been a series of milestones. Meeting families. Going on the kind of trips that require plane travel together. One year. Moving in together. Graduating (twice). Our first rental house, in a town that I'm pretty sure is a xerox of a storybook town. Somewhere inside me, I know it's been four years. I know that I wasn't even 21 when we met and that I'm now almost 25 and we're both legitimately adults now. But what is four years? Not to quote Rent, but how do you measure that? What does four years feel like? I just wish I could visit that girl I was four Octobers ago, in the days of sad poetry-writing and late night ceiling staring, and assure her that he was coming. That, in fact, he was already there. I just never saw him.
Michael and I went to the same high school. We had some of the same friends. The aforementioned source of my October sadness was actually friends with him, in the kind of way that I might have actually seen them together once or twice. But the teenage brain doesn't know how to notice things it isn't fixated on already. He didn't see me, and I didn't see him, but we were both there. We were both there one night in February, the day my nephew Cody was born, when I went to see a different friend's band play a concert in Loganville. Heather (again with the Heather!) went with me, and we took a picture of us at that show. I stare at that picture and imagine that life is like a touch screen computer and that I can slide my finger across the screen, drag, pinch-to-zoom, and find him there in the crowd, just outside the bounds of the photo. That photo, it seems, was taken of the wrong thing. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's just a reminder to me (And to anyone else who needs the reminder) that what we're looking for is always there. We find it, ironically, after we've stopped looking.
But, I supposed I ALSO owe the one or so person reading this an explanation of the OTHER thing that has me so busy. That other thing currently resides on my left ring finger, where it spends most of its time being sparkly and beautiful.
I got engaged in December. Whoa.
And so, I thought that I would tell the story. Our story. The story of how we met, and all of the times that we could have met but didn't, because that story is almost as interesting as the real story.
I met Michael in 2008, when I was at the tail end of the first semester of my junior year in college. He added me on facebook, and I looked at our friends in common and thought "sure, why not. I remember those girls. They were cool." I then minimized facebook and proceeded to fill my head with absolutely anything else, and the event that would change my life and write my most important chapter was forgotten immediately.
A few months (or weeks?) later, I noticed an update from somebody whose name I did NOT recognize. Michael has one of those names that you'd KNOW if you knew it, and I definitely did not. So I checked out this mysterious stranger with the apparently hurting leg. And I liked what I saw. He was close to my age. He'd gone to my high school (what?!). He was in a band. He was CUTE. And he also worked... pretty much down the street from where I grew up. I sent him a message.
...And he did not think it was weird, creepy, or desperate. He wrote back, and we spent the rest of my semester messaging each other on facebook and AIM (this was, after all, back in the dark ages, when people still used AIM). It was great to have that feeling again, something to look forward to as I pretended to be surfing the internet while really waiting for the guy on the other end to see that I'd signed on and send me a message. Come to find out, he was waiting for the same thing. We decided to meet. Don't sound your alarm bells yet, I was safe about it. I brought a friend, we met in a public place, and it was a concert for his band, not exactly some dark alley somewhere.
I remember the conversation I had with my friend Heather on the way to the bar to see him play. I had recently (I say recently; it was really like 2 months ago) experienced a terrible breakup. The kind that leaves you paralyzed for a few days, the kind you're legitimately not sure you'll get through, the kind you write terrible poetry about and wonder if there really IS anyone to catch you when you fall. I had made up my mind that I was done. Not in the "I'm done with guys, I just wanna dance" way, but in the "I'm just done with that situation. I'm going to live now, for me, and see what happens." I have to say, sitting in the car urging Heather to please drive faster or we'll miss it he said they were on at nine -- I definitely did not suspect that four years later he would ask me to marry him on bended knee. I was just going to "see what happened." I was just going to see a guy play some music at a bar in Norcross with my long-time buddy Heather, who had almost talked me out of going because she thought I might look desperate and that it was "kinda shady" that Michael had listed two high schools on his facebook.
Li$tprice played one of my favorite songs. I remember being ten years old, listening to my brother Eric's Offspring CD on one of those old personal CD players that you have to hold reeeeaaaally still or it'll skip, and screaming along to "The Kids Aren't Alright." I don't know why. I had a great childhood, full of opportunities which I utilized to get where I am, and I lived in a nice house with nice people who cared about me. But man, it was fun to scream to that song!
We went on our first date two days after the concert, and life since then has been a series of milestones. Meeting families. Going on the kind of trips that require plane travel together. One year. Moving in together. Graduating (twice). Our first rental house, in a town that I'm pretty sure is a xerox of a storybook town. Somewhere inside me, I know it's been four years. I know that I wasn't even 21 when we met and that I'm now almost 25 and we're both legitimately adults now. But what is four years? Not to quote Rent, but how do you measure that? What does four years feel like? I just wish I could visit that girl I was four Octobers ago, in the days of sad poetry-writing and late night ceiling staring, and assure her that he was coming. That, in fact, he was already there. I just never saw him.
Michael and I went to the same high school. We had some of the same friends. The aforementioned source of my October sadness was actually friends with him, in the kind of way that I might have actually seen them together once or twice. But the teenage brain doesn't know how to notice things it isn't fixated on already. He didn't see me, and I didn't see him, but we were both there. We were both there one night in February, the day my nephew Cody was born, when I went to see a different friend's band play a concert in Loganville. Heather (again with the Heather!) went with me, and we took a picture of us at that show. I stare at that picture and imagine that life is like a touch screen computer and that I can slide my finger across the screen, drag, pinch-to-zoom, and find him there in the crowd, just outside the bounds of the photo. That photo, it seems, was taken of the wrong thing. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's just a reminder to me (And to anyone else who needs the reminder) that what we're looking for is always there. We find it, ironically, after we've stopped looking.
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