Flowers

This whole time I have been planning on doing my own flowers for the wedding. It was going to be very simple, which has been my mantra throughout this entire planning process. Simple. Simple. Simple. Maybe a couple of bouquets in the sanctuary, but nothing major, bouquets for me and my three ladies, boutonnieres for Jason and his guys, 3 corsages and 5 more boutonnieres. I also planned to use flowers in the centerpieces, however this weekend I came up with a design that is simple and incorporates candles (which I wanted) and, in fact, does not involve flowers.

So now after totaling all of this up, I'm thinking maybe I should just suck it up and go to a florist since I don't know if buying 100 wholesale flowers is really necessary. The thing is, all of my flowers are roses and I bet the florist will charge a ton for roses. I can get 100 roses and filler for $150 from the wholesaler. It's called Wedding in A Box, and I think it's brilliant.

But then you have to factor in wire and ribbon and the labor time. But then I could also distribue the excess roses amongst my friends, which is kind of fun. Thoughts?

On Saturday I drove out to Burlington, MA to what I thought was a flower wholesaler. I guess technically he was, but not a very useful one.

Basically I walked up to the store, where a burly man was talking on a cordless phone. I went to pull open the door and he said, "Hold on. What do you need, hon?"

I said I wanted to talk about wedding flowers.

He asked, "When's your wedding?"

I said "October"

He guffawed and said, "I don't know from one day to another what I'm going to have in stock. I jsut get overflow from folks."

I said, "Ok, well I want particular flowers so I guess this won't work."

Then he said, "Yeah, you can go to one of those other guys to get 'what you want'*, but they'll charge you an arm and a leg."

"Well...yes...maybe so. But I kind of need to know what flowers I'm going to have for my wedding."

He shrugged as if to say, "suit yourself" said thanks for stopping by, and went back to his phone conversation.

So that was kind of a pointless drive, except for then I went to Michael's and made up my centerpieces. I also discovered a new route to Burlington that bypasses the highway and winds through these really pretty, woodsy neighborhoods. Nice.


*This was said with a sneer in his voice. Like I was being absolutely ridiculous wanting particular flowers and in particular colors for my wedding.

Papers Papers Everywhere

One of the things I do not like about having two lawyer jobs is that I have two separate sets of piles of papers. Maybe one of my sets would just be doubled if I worked one of these jobs full-time, but I'm not so sure.

My little cubicle at the health care company is getting overrun with papers from various projects I have worked on, I am working on, or I will be working on when the stuff I am working on is done and assuming that other items haven't come up in the meantime to supplant them. I have done my best to organize by topic and into different colored folders, but the papers are taking over. It's even migrating to my house because I usually take a couple of those colored folders home with me, ostensibly to work on, though that hasn't really been happening much lately because of the wedding planning and the qoing away parties for friends* and Jason's family visiting, etc.

At the firm I have more space because I have my own office, but even though I haven't been there nearly as long as at the health care company, I already have a formidable set of papers since I got thrown into two huge projects almost immediately. Earlier this week when I had a slow moment, I went through the piles and organized and labeled them, but since then, more stuff has come in and now the piles are migrating to the floor.

Plus not only do I have 2 different sets of piles to keep track of physically, but I also have to keep track of them in my head. I can be right on top of things at one job, but then the next day I'm at the other job and every time I'm asked a question, I have to crawl back into the recesses of my mind where I stored that information two days before and I'm just hoping that doesn't make me appear completely scatterbrained. It's there, it's just not at the forefront of my brain right now.


* Everyone is leaving! Tonight I have a going away dinner for one of my roommates, and tomorrow I have a going away party for three other friends.

Anniversary

Today is a big day. For one, it’s Jason’s and my two year anniversary! Happy anniversary to us.

For two, it’s exactly two months until our wedding.* And it is starting to feel very real, at least for me. Something clicked in my brain this weekend. Probably because Jason’s parents are in town and I feel like now that Jason and I are getting married, I’m getting accepted and welcomed as a future family member. On Saturday there were some impromptu family pictures and Sarah’s brother-in-law posed us by saying, “Okay, the wives stand behind the bench…” and I thought, oh yeah, I’m going to be one of the wives.

I also found myself eyeing my friends’ babies** and thinking about how that could be us in a few years. I mean seriously thinking about it. I’ve always wanted kids in this abstract sense, but to actually look at the babies and think, ‘we could do that,’ was sort of a new step for me. I think it helps that Jason is completely adorable with Sarah’s 5-month old nephew, although he did tell me that if our babies aren't as awesome as Sarah's nephew, we may have to send them back. I suppose mulling over these big life events and feeling like they are actually possible is what this whole starting a new life and a new family thing is all about.


* For those of you keeping track, no we didn’t get the invitations out today. Jason promised me we’ll get them out sometime this week.

** Seriously, almost everyone we know is having a baby right now.

Los-er

In case you were wondering, I am the losiest loser that ever was. Jason and I planned to watch the Perseids last night. Since he lives right near the Brown University observatory, which has a nice big lawn in front of it, we trekked out there with a picnic blanket and lay down, fully prepared to be awed by the vastness of space.

Instead, I fell asleep. For the life of me, I could not keep my eyelids from drooping down. We went out kind of early, so at the beginning it wasn't that big a deal. I think Jason saw 3 or 4 during that first hour. But then things really picked up and I would lay there, willing my eyes open, and just when I gave in to the crushing force of my eyelids and gravity, Jason would go, "Whoa!" or "Wow!" or "Did you see that one?"

No, no I didn't see that one. Because I'm a loser who can't manage to stay awake past 12 despite being a self-proclaimed night owl. Stupid regular day job with stupid regular hours has killed my ability to rock the house* until 4 AM.

So I saw about 3 meteors last night. I was so excited to go out and watch them too. Sigh.

PS I have no idea who the guy in the picture is, but I liked his Loser L.


* You know, for a Mormon girl.

Shower

Saturday my roommates held a bridal shower for me which was so fun. Really hot and sweaty, but so fun. We had the AC on in the living room all day leading up to the shower, but it just couldn't compete with 20+ women in one room and the 90+ degrees outside. I felt so loved as we all sat and sweated together. My roommates and I have been dining off of the leftovers of chocolate fountain chocolate, pretzels, fruit, brie, hummus and ice cream ever since.

We got some items off of our registries, plus some scandalous items that embarrassed me more than I ever thought they would. I am pretty up front when it comes to, um, honeymoon items, and my roommates know this, so I think I shocked them by turning bright red and giggling like a 12 year-old boy when I opened up three boxes from them containing 3 pretty negligees. Not to mention the sensual massage book and massage nectar from another friend.*

Everything made me so happy. The flower-shaped appetizer tray, the lime squeezer and avocado slicer, the pitcher with the school of fish etched on it, the good knives and ALL the towels and the bath mat I registered for. It kind of makes me feel like a grown up, knowing that we will be somewhat coordinated. I'm excited about the prospect of living in a space that feels more like a home and less like an interim stopping point. We'll see how it goes considering I'm moving into Jason's bachelor pad.

***

On a side note - or maybe it's right on topic. Whatever - I'm getting tired of wedding planning. I don't know how those people who are engaged for 1 year or more do it. Because, okay, sure, I want to be the pretty, pretty princess for a day. And yes, it's fun to think about getting presents and setting up house and having loved ones around to cheer us on. But it's just all the planning and arranging and thinking about things that's wearing me out. And I've only been doing this for two months. My momentum is kind of waning and I still need a cake and flowers and to get all creative with centerpieces. Actually, I saw some centerpieces on a photographer's site that I might steal so I don't have to be all that creative. And we have to do invitations. By August 20th, so say the etiquette books. Have we started? Um...no.

I'm just kind of tired of thinking about it. Maybe I'm not as much of a girlie girl as I thought I was.

Not to mention, now that we know we're getting married, I kind of miss Jason on the evenings when we're not together. I mean, I like my alone time, but it feels like now that the decision has been made, we should be together. We know we're getting married, so why don't we just go do that then? Instead there's this whole "engaged" period. It's hard to explain, but the whole waiting period after we've decided what we want to do just seems kind of silly.


* Any bets on how many seedy hits the blog will get now that I've typed the words sensual massage?

Decision

Well, it's been a week and after discussing the situation at length, Jason and I have decided to have our wedding as planned in October. We will hopefully be able to visit my parents and spend time with them at Thanksgiving. There are several reasons we have decided this. One of them is that by focusing solely on my mom, we may end up excluding other family and friends who are also important to us. Also, based on what my dad has told me, it sounds like even if we tried to do something in Chicago, my mom may still not be able to sit for any length of time or enjoy herself. There are other considerations as well, and this is what's best for us right now as we start our new life together.

I do like the suggestion a couple of you had to videoconference/webconference them in. I have no idea if that would be possible from the church, but it's something to look into. At the very least, we will videotape the event.

In the end, I know there's really no way to make everyone happy with our decision, but we think this is best for us in this situation. We aren't getting married in the temple right now, so my hope is that my parents will be able to come to our sealing when that happens.

I am glad that I could get out some of the rolling, spinning thoughts that were rattling around in my brain last weekend.

So the planning continues.