The world outside the wedding bubble

I am fully immersed in the wedding bubble now. All I can do is think about the wedding while running through mental lists of things to do for the wedding. I can't focus at work, despite having reports to write while still seeing my regular clients. I can't get housework or yard work done. And the saddest of all is my poor little pooches are suffering from cabin fever. Here are the poor little guys

They get out to the backyard to roam around and do their business maybe chase a stick, but they are used to trips to the dog park a couple times a week and a whole lot more attention. Luckily, they will be spoiled in a few short days because my mother is looking after them while we are getting married and on our honeymoon. They LOOOOVE visiting her and playing with her dog in her giant back yard.

As for work, I am so glad my work grants marriage leave, that's right they are paying me to get married! I am using it to take the week before the wedding off, really I don't think I would be all that productive anyway, but I am grateful for the time to get ready and do last minute stuff, without the guilt of not focusing on work. Yay, only two days left of work, now I need to go, I have reports to write.

Happy Days

One of my best friends is a photographer. She kindly offered to take some pictures as a gift for us so here we are in all our goofy, blissful, pre-wedding happiness!

Sunny with a chance of BRIDAL SHOWERS!

I am excited to report that my very loving family and friends are hosting a bridal shower for me this weekend. I am not sure why but when I started planning our wedding I was pretty sure I was not having a bridal shower. I guess I just figured I was to old for one.

ideachampions.com

Now, before anyone starts with the 'your not old' sympathy comments, I know that I am not old. But I am in my early thirties and PJ and I have been living together for a couple years. In that time we purchased a house, had a house warming party, a couple of christmases and moved all the stuff into every nook and cranky our house has to offer. So guess I thought I don't need a shower or even gifts for our wedding.

Here is the dilema: People REALLY want to give a bride and groom gifts, they want to shower a bride with attention and kitchen gadgets, whether the bride and groom need or want them. So embrace the gift giving you say! That is easier said than done. Like many others,  I am having a hard time with too much attention on me. Though I am amazed and so beyond grateful that people want to help us celebrate our wedding I feel uncomfortable because it somehow feels undeserved. I am actually more nervous about this part of the wedding than I am about marrying PJ and spending my life with him, that part is easy! I wonder how others cope with this sort of thing or is it just a rite of passage?

The 'Somethings'

Last night was my fiance's mother's birthday so we took some cake over to her house to celebrate. After the birthday festivites, she wanted to talk wedding stuff. Down to business! We covered a few topics when we came to the question of whether I would be including the items from the poem.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed,
Something Blue and a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe.

I stated that I would be happy to include them if they developed naturally but that I was not going out of my way to hunt these things down. I felt that you can't really force the sentiment and I would not be upset if they were absent from our wedding. Incidently, here is a fun link that tells about what each is meant to represent http://www.somethingoldsomethingnew.co.uk/

Well she had a little something up her sleeve, she told me had recently found some hankerchiefs that belonged to her mother and that I was welcome to have as many as I wanted. They could be the something old.

findvintagehanky.info

Well it was a good thing that these delicate little cloths are meant for wiping liquid emotion from the face because I was very touched by her generosity. She then proceed to offer her own silver bracelets given on her 21st birthday as a something borrowed. And in her most considerate way, made me feel honoured but not pressured to accept these items. I am truly happy to be joining this family.

The countdown is on!

We are now approximately only one month until our wedding, Yikes! I would love to say that I was a calm and cool bride right up until the end, but I can feel the anxiety creeping in and my grip on calm, cool and collected is slipping. Here are the things that I am worried about:

1) Making sure everyone is happy and has a good time, there is something in me that desperately needs to please and have people walking away thinking that they loved our wedding. Ok, I am sure most brides feel this way and I get that my wedding will be infinitely more important to myself and my fiance then anyone else. Maybe I am more afraid of the opposite , that things will go horribly wrong , guest will be bored, hungry, uncomfortable or worst of all offended. Ahhh, I think the truth is out. I think the later is more the fear the first bit is more the hope. This fear may have been brought on by the fact that I just found out some guest did not recieve their invitations, stupid postal strike.

2)Worried I forgot something, with so many details that go into a wedding and it falling on my shoulders to coordinate them, my flightly and disorganized self is like to to drop the ball somewhere.

3) Not enough time! We had 10 months to plan this shindig and we only booked and DJ last week. I am trying to remember that most of what we have left is detail stuff and decor so if it gets missed likely only I will know but I can still feel the pressure.

4) Keeping people in the loop. I never imagined myself as a bride until after the proposal, not to say I didn't think about getting married endlessly, I just never pictured myself in the dress walking down the isle. I am a little older, we own a house, we have good jobs, so the whole idea of a wedding to start our life together is a bit deflated. Due to this, and a healthy amount of not wanting to be the center of attention means I have not put much effort into reaching out or unifying the bridal party, not to mention 4 of the 8 live in other cities. This lack of effort on my part is potentially a backfire as it also means people are not kept up to date with events and plans to participate in the activites. Working on it!

Those are the biggies, enough of the negative. The positive is things are actually coming together, nothing major (knock wood) has gone wrong and I haven't lost it yet.

PS. Bachelor party was this weekend, they had a good time, he came home safely and missing me. LOve him!