Going round the bend

I have vellum in my possession people. VELLUM.

And David and I are bickering about ampersand styles. AMPERSAND.

It’s official, I’ve sipped the wedding kool aid.

It’s not easy being green (or wearing white)

I’m different, I’m like Kermit the frog different. I’m a unique little snowflake. I  have noticed this throughout my life.

Once in high school we had two days of ball aptitude testing to determine what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. Umm, yeah and the winner was…. eyeroll  i mean drum roll…. FUNERAL DIRECTOR. Two days of intense aptitude testing and I was “made to be” a FUNERAL DIRECTOR or the runner up was RACE CAR DRIVER. Actually throw those two in a blender and you have my job at IHOP. At any rate this test had a portion where the proctor would read out a word and we had to write the word that first came to our minds. The more that your answers matched “standard” replies the higher your score would be. I barely registered on the graph, like there was a dot where there should have been a line shooting out. My teacher initially thought it was a glitch, but alas no, I just think “outside” the box.

One of my teachers at that same school came up to me during the last part of my senior year and pulled me aside and said, “I was thinking about you the other day and I realized how difficult it must be for you here, you are so different and you think so differently, it must be alienating.” I think I shrugged and smiled, but as I walked away I let it sink in and I felt myself sigh, it had been painful, it had been awkward, I did feel alone.

Okay so fast forward, I’m getting married, and let’s just sidetrack here. Oh my gosh I am so ridiculously in love, it is vomitous. David is the best gift in my life, there is no way I ever thought I would ever be with someone so good, so cute, so smart, and so funny. I totally scored. And he thinks I’m AMAZING. AHHHHHH, it’s almost too much, most days I feel like I’m going to explode. What I can say is that Jesus must love me, if he brought David into my life. Jesus really loves me.

Okay so yeah, that’s only one part of getting married, being in love. The other part is treacherous, pay no mind to those bridal magazine or cable reality tv series. It is hard mind numbing work, and there is almost NO place for non-conformity. What do you mean you don’t like wearing white? You don’t have specific wedding colors? You aren’t wearing high heels with the dress? You don’t want to wear a veil? You don’t want to get married with 150 people watching you? You have a tattoo motif on the invitations?!?!?

I have seen so many “consultants” (in various fields) heads twist around their necks eye bulging at my matter of fact responses. You don’t even want to know what happened when I mentioned I was thinking about wearing a black dress. Their brains literally liquefied and ran out their ears, which was fine because they clearly couldn’t process the words-that-were-coming- O-U-T O-F M-Y M-O-U-T-H.

EEEEK. I feel like a total freak in half of these appointments, and I now preface all answers to their questions “please don’t laugh”.

I do have a base line of sanity, every once and while when I find myself orbiting in tulle and shades of satin, I return to the baseline. The baseline is all the things I really care about, sort of like my wedding mission statement. This is just my statement, I love going to weddings (and I have like 8 to attend this summer) and I love seeing how each Bride comes alive in the details that mean the most to them. I pass no judgement on any of that. This is just what matters to me…

I care about the life long promise I am making.

I care about expressing my love in a unique and vulnerable way.

I want my wedding day to be small, intimate, vulnerable, I want to feel like the best version of myself, completely comfortable with who I am and how I look, I want to recognize myself in the mirror. I want to wear a dress that doesn’t make me look like a round snowball. I want to wear converse. I want to have a head clear of stress and anxiety. I just want to focus on my feelings and my commitments. I want to take a mental picture every minute and remember the smell, the feel, and the taste.

And then, a month later, I want to throw fabulously fun party with all the people I love and celebrate the gift David and I have been given in each other.

At the end of the day, I will stray from my mission statement, I think that’s inevitable in this crazy culture, but I won’t stray far. I value being unique, I think that’s what make weddings truly special.

 

 

Oh and I found a dress (pretty traditional but looks fabulous) and it’s white and I LOVE it. And these people totally rock and completely rolled with my total insanity. I love them, they feel like family to me. I wouldn’t go anywhere else. I kid you not, I came to them a total mess, and I left on cloud nine.