Vexing, Perplexing and Sweet

I'm tackling the room-block part of wedding planning. For some reason, I expected this part to be easy. I'd read it was a snap: Call hotels, ask them for a number of rooms to be set aside for the weekend of your wedding, sign the papers they send (for some reason, they all want to send papers), and wah-LAH (like my French?), you'll have rooms at nice (or at least nice-ish) rates for your guests. Turns out I'm having to deal with all sorts of strange bureaucratic weirdness. Nobody seems to want to sent aside time to show me rooms (I'm also looking for a wedding-night suite). They just want me to show up, which makes my antennae quiver mightily as I can see myself hearing the line "That room is booked, so we can't show it to you" repeated endlessly. And one place told me I had to guarantee that half the rooms I asked for would, in fact, be reserved, occupied and paid for by my guests, implying I would be liable if that didn't happen. I sent an email back asking if they would agree to simply release any unreserved rooms back into the general reservation pool 30 days before my weekend, like all the other nice hoteliers do. We'll see what he says.
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Before my sweetie and I met, I'd pretty much gotten over the idea that one day I'd be married. I figured I'd be the single, world-traveling auntie who'd never know the inside of a bridal gown. So the idea of having a bridal shower was even more remote a musing for me. I've only attended one bridal shower, and that was when I was 22. I don't even remember what happened. But my dear friend Donna and my godmother Helen are getting together to throw me a shower in mid-January, so party time approaches. At first I was perplexed. Apparently, a theme is called for in these things. A theme like "linens" or "kitchen" or (eep!) "lingerie." (I chose "kitchen.") The reason a theme is needed is that people expect to bring you gifts (why gifts need to follow a theme is another puzzlement that I think is just a woman thing I didn't get training in). The gift thing is weird when you're in your mid-40s and don't need much. I registered, but kept it on the small side, and emphasized with both hostesses that what I'd really love is for people to bring family recipes so I can make a cookbook. I'm hoping that's what people do--and I plan to bring my digital camera so I can get their photo to go with their recipe.

Besides hanging out with my favorite people, it looks like I'm going to get one of my best-loved treats. Donna said cake was called for, and asked for my favorite kind. I said "cream puffs!" And she said "Well, you can't have 'Congratulations April and Bob' written on cream puffs, but if that's what you want, that's what we'll get." So now I'm looking forward to this shower thing like an addict looks forward to a hit. Doesn't matter what else is going to happen, I'm going to get my Beard Papa fix--something that hasn't happened in months. Donna said they'll likely have games, just to get my goat, but that they won't humiliate me too much. I don't care what they do to me; they can make me construct a bridal gown out of damn toilet paper if the want. I'll have choux pastry and vanilla custard waiting for me on a sideboard, and a big smile on my face.

Postbox in the lobby: Full

We addressed our save-the-date cards today, stamped them, and chucked them into the mailbox in the lobby of our building. It's not easy trying to figure out how to skim an invitation list when it's 125 people long and our reception venue holds 80. Guess we'll have to do what so many others do and wait til we get regrets to send other invitations out. Which feels like hell. But I guess if that's our only worry right now, then we're doing pretty good.
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I keep getting a head of steam up to do wedding stuff (making various styles of shoulder coverings and headpieces, for instance), and then my motivation just deserts me. Not because I don't want to be married (I'm thrilled to be getting married) but because sometimes I really want to be able to call my mother or father and share everything with them, and there's nobody to call. And that idles my hands. The other morning, just as I was in that zone between sleeping and wakefulness, I dreamt I was on the phone with my mom, and we were having a conversation about all the things that had been going on since she died. I told her about being engaged and how we have plans for a nice but low-key wedding and reception, and we were just chatting away and laughing about how zany it is that I'm actually, finally, getting married. But then I started telling her about what I'm going to be for Hallowe'en, and the line went dead. I remember thinking "I wonder how come she hung up? Guess she's not all that interested in Hallowe'en." And then I woke up.
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For Hallowe'en, I'm going to be Cruella De Vil. I'm going to sew a huge white fake-fur coat, and line it with dalmation-print fabric. I'm also going to make an evil little purse out of fake fox tail. I have a white wig I'm going to dye half-black. I have red elbow-length gloves and a cigarette holder and red shoes. Tomorrow I'm going to begin drawing the pattern for the coat, and while I cut it out I'll begin thinking about makeup. On Hallowe'en, whenever anyone asks me how I'm doing, I'm going to say "Miserable, darling, as usual. Perfectly wretched."

Keeping the mailfolk busy

Our save-the-date cards came today in the mail. The hunky scientist brought them home from work, where we have most things delivered (getting packages is a huge pain when you live in a secured building). They look great. And at just a tad more than a dollar apiece including envelopes, they fit the budget nicely. Now all we have to do is sign them, address the envelopes, and get them into the mail.

Moving right along...

Isn't it funny that every time I post on either of my blogger blogs, I get a wave of fresh, new spam in my email in-box? Open Internet, insert spoon! I find it positively *cough* fucked up *cough* hilarious! But I digress; this blog is about my wedding and since I broke the news that we'd moved up our wedding date by three months, yet maintained radio silence since then, I thought I should catch you up. Our wedding date is now Feb. 24. Woo! Again, it's for boring tax-related business reasons, not exciting knocked-up reasons. It means we have to get moving on many details we'd been happy to let lie a while. I've got to phone up a couple of hotels and ask them about reserving some rooms for our East-coast guests to book. I've got to find someone who can do my hair on wedding day, as well as that of my sisters and my aunt. I think I've nailed down a ride for two dear friends who hail from a few hours south. There are a lot of other little things to take care of--things like making sachets for guest gifts, table numbers, centerpieces (already planned; just have to gather a few things), deciding on flowers and where to order them from (likely Costco floral, but we'll see)...things like that. Meanwhile, our engagement photos came on a CD in the mail and I immediately got on iPhoto and made some save-the-date postcards. That photo I included with this post? It's the image I used for the cards.

Speeding things up a bit

For mundane business reasons, we've decided to move our wedding up by (gulp) three months. This means I have to revise the entire Spreadsheet Timeline Of Preparation Goodness, putting many more to-do projects into each week. Joy! Bob has been game. He looked up the addresses of all his invitees tonight. And ordered our wedding bands. I looked up wedding license info and started calculating hotel reservation needs. Our photographer was cheerful about changing dates, as was our church and our reception site. That breeze you feel at the back of your neck is the continuing sigh of relief I've been letting out as each person I've called has said "No problem!" The only person I haven't been able to get ahold of is the tailor who has my wedding dress. Hmmmm.