My Motherboard, My Self

Yes, that is a title of a Sex and the City Episode. Ya know, the one where Carrie's laptop crashes and she loses "her whole life"?? 



Well it happened to me.  My laptop's hard drive decided to commit suicide.  And, like Carrie, I did not backup.  (I know, shoot me now).  Which means, in no uncertain terms, that everything is gone.  Specifically, everything in my precious Wedding folder.  My budget spreadsheets, inspiration photos, saved blog posts, to-do lists and schedules.  Even worse is the fact that last month's DIY schedule task was to create all of the preliminary designs for everything paper-related.  That was hours of designing favor tags, programs, soda bottle labels, coloring books, iteneraries, and a ridiculous handrawn map - and now it's all been lost to cyberland.  ("In cyberland, we only drink...diet coke." Kudos to those who know what the hell that means).

Oh and did I mention that I also lost all of my photos, including the gratuitous ring porn that I have yet to share of my engagement ring, the pictures of my wedding dress and shopping experience, and adorable pictures and videos of my baby from Christmas?  And the video of Pete's proposal. Yeah, I'm mad.

So what's the lesson in this, my dear readers?  LISTEN!!! when everyone tells you to backup your stuff. I cannot stress this enough, especially if you are planning a wedding.  That *precious wedding folder* is not so precious when you realize you have to create it from scratch all over again.

Are Carrie Bradshaw and me the only ones this stupid, or can anyone else out there feel my pain?

August 17th.

I woke up this morning and literally did not know what day it was. Pete told me it was Tuesday...and within a few hazy moments I realized what day it was.  It is August 17th.  A date that I will never forget as long as I live.

Nine years ago today, my entire world was both destroyed and reborn at the same time.  I slept in too late.  I went to the second day of school of my sophomore year.  I ate Subway for lunch.  I met my future sister-in-law.  I spent a couple hours on the phone with my best friend.  And my mother passed away.

Nine years ago today, my brothers suddenly looked different to me.  I find that no matter how old they get, I always picture their faces in my mind the way they looked that night. That was the night that I found out exactly why God blessed me with those big football players - I needed their immense strength to hold me up.

Nine years ago today, I experienced the last day of my childhood.  I woke up on August 17th as a 15 year old.  I woke up on August 18th as an adult.  And I woke up today as a woman, a mother, and a soon-to-be wife who still misses her Mommy.

Planning my wedding without my mom is something that brings me pain all the time.  She was buying things for my future wedding when I was 10.  From what I have learned since her death, I now know that she knew she would not be around to see me as a bride.  She knew she would not be here to fight with me over my wedding dress, to help me choose flowers, or to pin my veil into my hair.  I cannot imagine the kind of pain she felt by knowing this.  On the other hand, I always pictured her being there.  And even though it's been nine years without her, and I have already been a bride and had a wedding without her many years ago, it is still hard to face the reality that she will not be there in person when Pete and I are married.

However, she will be there in spirit.  Her photo will be placed in a locket and tied to my bouquet, along with the heirloom wedding ring she gave to me a few weeks before her death.  Her seat will remain empty, and little Ryan will place a rose there in her honor.  And in the last few minutes before the ceremony, I will privately join with my brothers for a prayer to remember her.  She will be there.

As every August 17th passes each year, it amazes me how much has changed since the year before.  It amazes me how much more I grow into the kind of woman my mother was, and how much closer I feel to her as I get older.  As much as it hurts to remember this date, I look forward to it each year.  It marks one more year that I have survived. One more year that I have grown.  One more year of learning to understand the woman she was.  One less year that I have to live without her.  That's a good feeling.

"Every now and then, the softest breath upon my skin, I feel you come back again, and it's like you haven't been gone a moment from my side, like the tears were never cried, like the hand of time are holding you and me. There are more than angels watching over me, oh I believe." 

I love you Mama.
August, 17th 2010.

It takes two, baby.

My relationship with our Save-The-Dates goes waaaay back.  As in, long before we were engaged.  I saw this post on Weddingbee, by Miss Nachos, who admittedly copied Mrs. Piglet, about boarding pass STD's.  Here's the Piglet version:

(photo)

I decided I must have them - Vegas-style of course.  Little did I know I had to have two complete sets of them.

The very first project on the wedding DIY schedule was the boarding pass STD's.  I slaved away at the design of these babies on Microsoft Word for a few weeks before I finally came up with a design we were happy with.  Even though we knew they wouldn't be mailed until July or August, we took them to kinko's and got them printed, and spent two fabulous night cutting, taping, folding and embossing. 

My boys hard at work:

They sat, completely sealed, in their custom-made wrap-around labels, on our computer desk for the next two months...with the exception of the one boarding pass magnet we kept on our fridge...

I had to look at that thing every time I opened the fridge (which is a lot, based on how much weight I need to lose).  And the more I looked at it, the more it daunted me with its imperfections.  Did I mention that I'm a perfectionist?? Well if not, here's the first glimpse at the evidence.

About three weeks ago, I broke down and confessed to my super-patient fiance that I hated our STD's.

I expected him to tell me, "tough shit, they're done and ready to be mailed, get over your craziness."  Ahhh...but he loves me.  And somehow, completely unknown to me, the man just gets me...and so he lovingly said that we could redo them from top to bottom if I wasn't satisfied. Gosh I love him.

After another night or two of designing, cutting, folding and tying (no embossing), we had a happy little pile of these:

I don't want to reveal pictures of either design until everyone has received the final product, but I will say that I was much happier with Round Two.  Still not perfect, but perfect enough for people who aren't as crazy as I am. :)  I'm sure nobody will take into account the fact that they were completely handmade twice, as they glance at them for ten secoonds and (hopefully) stick them on their fridge...but at least I'm happy with the one I get to stare at every time I get a craving for something yummy.

P.S.  Our STD's are not the only DIY project that has already been done more than once.  But we'll talk about that later, after enough time has passed for you all to reasonably forget about my craziness. :)

'The time has come,' the walrus said...

...to talk of an intimate wedding.

Our Save-the-dates went into the mail today!  It was a very exciting feeling to see them go - it made me feel like this is really happening.  What started off as a 14-month engagement has now evaporated into just 9 months, and 60 of our closest family and friends will soon become official guests of our wedding as cute little black and white envelopes arrive in their mailboxes. 

But I must be honest. The excitement of my trip to the mailbox today is also accompanied with a bit of guilt, as I know it will also become official very soon to some people that they are not on our guest list.  This is what comes with planning an intimate wedding.

We did purposely want a small wedding. I wrote of this once before. We want our wedding to be filled the closest people in our lives, and we want to be able to celebrate with each and every one of them - not just hug them and say thankyouandgoodbye.  But I would be lying if I said that money did not eventually become a factor in the total list count, because it did, and unfortunately we had to be very selective with the final numbers.  This is what comes with a wedding budget that is less than 1/4 of the cost of the average American wedding.

 We tried to keep as many people as we could by choosing a cocktail-party reception over a sit-down dinner, choosing a location that would allow us to bring our own beverages and alcohol, and throwing out the traditional rehearsal dinner.  But in the end, cuts still had to be made.

So I would like to write to those who will not be recieving a save-the-date:

Please don't hate us.  Please don't think that we do not value you as a friend or coworker, because we do.  We have so many people that are part of our lives everyday, and you are one of them, and we apologize if anyone's feelings are hurt.  We are paying for most of this wedding ourselves, and had to limit our guest list to only family and a few select friends.  In the tough economy we are in, everyone is making sacrifices, and we hope you understand this as we are all facing challenging cutbacks in our lives.  We hope that you will still follow our journey to our wedding day and celebrate with us individually after we return a married couple. :)


Anyone have any words of wisdom on dealing with the backlash of an intimiate wedding?

The Doublemint Twins

That's the name that was given to MOH Andi and me back in high school.  

We may not have ever had those awesome green outfits, but we sure rocked our matching Moulin Rouge Tanks and blonde hair like no other. If I had the pics on my comp, I would share them.

 (image found here)

We are not sisters, but we are twins of our own kind.  And in true twin fashion, the other half of the Doublemint package went off to a cliff overlooking the ocean yesterday and got herself engaged!

We have joked in the past of how awesome it would be if we were engaged at the same time...well, apparently our guys were listening or something because here we are.  Two soon-to-be crazy organized brides, planning small out-of-town weddings, within just a few months of each other.  Hello awesomeness.

It's so fun to get to share this happy and exciting (and stressful) time with someone I love so much.  We might as well just be little girls with pillowcase veils on our heads with how giddy we are.

(This is by-far not the best photo to showcase our twinsieness, but it's the most ridiculously happy picture of us ever taken, at a Metallica concert two years ago)

 And ya know what's even better than planning our weddings together?    

We both get to spend the rest of our lives with two of the sweetest, most patient, and wonderful guys in the world.  We have had our ups and downs with each other's significant-others in the past, so I think we are so lucky now that we both support, respect and admire the man our other half has chosen.  I hope all girlfriends get so lucky.

To A&N: I am so incredibly happy for you and I feel so blessed to have you both in my life.  You two are so perfect for each other - even more perfect than Tom & Mike.  And that says a lot.  Congratulations!

I'm not crazy, I'm smart.

Or maybe I'm just a ridiculous type-A personality with an obsession for control, preparedness and organization...yes? Okay moving on.

I L.O.V.E. being crafty and artistic. (It must be the wicked combo of teacher-artist-theatre geek in me.) So of course I plan on DIY-ing many elements of our wedding. Now here's where you might walk out on me: I have an 11-month wedding project schedule.

Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. I have completely outlined, by the month, when each and every wedding project will get done, and I began the projects back in June. Mind you, our wedding is still over 9 months away.

The reason I claim that I am smart, and not crazy (okay maybe a little crazy), is because I simply REFUSE to be a ball of stress right before our wedding, or on our wedding trip, and especially not on our wedding day. When stalking wedding-blog-land, there is one very common theme: for some reason, so many crafty people get stuck doing all their DIY projects in the last few weeks before the wedding. These little lovelies pretty much fall off the face of the planet and go mad with paper cuts and fights with their printers. They are frantic and emotional and just have too much to do. Some of them are lucky in the fact that they find a way to pull everything together in the very last few days and all is well. Other brides are not as lucky. I know this because I was one of them.

I don't want to waste much breath on my first wedding (oh wait, we haven't discussed that yet, have we?  Yes, I've been married before. Let's leave it at that for now.)  But I'll be honest and admit that the week before that wedding, and even the day of the wedding, was completely awful. I was stressed to my core. I was doing everything by myself, I didn't delegate. I spent the rehearsal dinner crying in the bathroom. I had 7 cold sores (from stress) on my not-so-beautiful bride lips by the time I walked down the aisle.

(not me, but sooo been there)

So, cue my happy little wedding project schedule. *sprinkle fairy dust here.* As of now, I am on schedule, and even a little bit ahead. According to my plan, all of the major DIY projects (with the exception of cookies that must be baked) will be completely done one month before the big day. Woo hoo!!!  I will soon start making my schedule for non-projects as well - such as final payments, packing lists and to-do items, so that I can be as stress-free as possible (but yet still in complete control!)  So go ahead and laugh all you want at my obsessive planning, but when you see me calm and healthy and uberly joyous in Las Vegas, my craziness just might be worth it. :)

Anyone else have ridiculous lists laying around?

Making It Happen

It's time to get the ball rolling on my wedding blogging.

I realize that it appears as if Pete and I have not done anything wedding-planning-related over the past couple months. I have pretty much only been writing about the crappiness of this summer, and while we have been preoccupied with money issues, summer school, sickness and hives, we actually have gotten some stuff done for this whole wedding thing.

Most importantly, we planned and budgeted and booked(!!!) our little hearts out.

Let's backtrack: In April, we booked our ceremony location. It was very important to us that we get married at the Wynn...so we booked it without much of a plan (or budget) for the rest of the wedding.

By May, we had established a rough budget based upon many different factors, and we started creating a plan to fit that budget. We had price quotes and menus and all that in the works.

Then June rolled around. I really don't want to get into the details, so I will just state the fact that we lost a lot. of. money. from the wedding budget. Now, just to clarify, one of the reasons we chose Vegas was because we were already on such a teeny-tiny budget and our limited funds would not afford a traditional wedding in our hometowns. So when you take an already tiny budget and smash it with a sledgehammer...things get tricky. There were several moments when we felt we may have had to nix the entire wedding altogether.

But we pushed through and got creative. I scoured websites and blogs and message boards. I combed through excel spreadsheets like a madwoman. And then, thank goodness, we were blessed with some help from family and an awesome Maid of Honor who helped get things going. :) We had to sacrifice a lot of the original plans, but we eventually came up with a plan that we knew would work, and we went with it. So this is what we did:

We booked the caterer.

(Btw we will not at all be having watermelon at our reception, but its the only picture I could find from our caterer. Image found here.)

My girls and I booked the fabulous hair and makeup guys at Glamsquad.

We nailed down the very minimal floral plan with Wynn.

(inspiration image from theknot.com)

We booked the awesome photographer for our Strip Photo Tour.

If you feel so inclined, visit this link to view one of my favorite pics from his gallery:

http://wilson702.com/index2.php#/gallery2/1/

We even booked a little surprise thing that's very hush-hush.

And then we sealed the deal by getting the suite for the reception booked.

(image)

Ah yes, we now have a somewhat-complete plan...and I am blissfully out of wedding-budget-freak-out-land. We are still working on some additional details, but at least we have the biggest stuff booked and I've gotta say it's a really nice feeling knowing it's all falling into place, even if it is with an itty-bitty amount of money and dramatically-altered plans. The important thing is that we are getting married (!!!) in a place that means the world to us, with the people we love around us, and we are going to have a hell of a time. <3

Next up...let's save the date.

The Jam Plan

For those of you who are not obsessed with Friends enough to know what the hell I'm talking about, there's an episode where Monica is trying to get over her recent heartbreaking split from Richard. She hasn't been sleeping, she's been depressed, and struggling to get through each day. Finally she wakes up one day and starts making jars and jars of homemade jam. When the others ask why, she responds:

"I'm sick and tired of being depressed about Richard. I needed a plan. A plan to get over my man. What's the opposite of man? Jam!!!"

Ross and Rachel, surrounded by Jam, reading Monica'a note that says "Went to get more Jars"

(image found here)

Obviously making Jam was not at all related to her breakup, but it was her way of taking control of her life and finding something that makes her feel better.

Well of course I haven't been going through the depression of a heartbreak (been there, done that), but this summer has still been very rough for me and I have been struggling a lot with anxiety and sadness over certain areas of my life. In my last post, I shared my frustration with how things have been going, and that I was working on plans to try to get over the things that have been bogging me down.

So without further ado, this is my Jam Plan.

Starting today:

1. Monday nights will be Family Night (or FHE for all you lovely LDS folk). For at least a few hours, there will be no homework, no wedding planning, no budegting, no cleaning, no Ryan begging for someone to play with him. The three of us will do something as a family that Ryan will have fun doing - rent a movie and popcorn, build a fort, make homemade playdough, have a picnic, do some puzzles or board games, whatever. I need this night as a way to combat my feelings of guilt and stress from spending most every moment of my life doing things I hate (school, homework, etc) and missing out on chances to enjoy my son while he is still precious and small enough to actually want to be with me. Yes, it breaks my heart when he asks me to play with him and I have to say no because I have a paper to finish writing. But in the Jam Plan, there will at least be guaranteed family time every week that will make all three of us happier, less stressed, and hopefully get rid of some of that heartbreak. Pete and I strongly believe that family and parenting are the most important things in life, so we are taking one more step to make our family and our home the best place it can be.
2. Saturday Nights will be Date Night. Almost every successful couple will tell you that regular date nights are essential to maintaining your sanity and your relationship. Pete and I have been trying to make this ritual happen for a long time, but have always lost the battle to not having a babysitter, being too broke to pay for a babysitter, and being too broke to even go out. But in the Jam Plan, I finally demanded that we make it happen, even though it will mean having date night at home. So from now on, at 8:00 every Saturday night, the little one will be put to bed, and we will engage in a strictly no-homework-no wedding planning-no talking about money-no sitting in underwear and pajamas zone. We will put some damn pants on, brush our teeth, maybe even spray some good smelly-stuff on our overworked selves, light some candles, and pretend we're not stressed out parents for a few hours. The goal of this is to eliminate the side effects our relationship is suffering from spending every night reading history books, staring at excel spreadsheets and doing laundry (or in reality, just finding ways to hide all the laundry in the closet). With this part of the Jam Plan, hopefully we will become more connected and less stressed even if we don't have the money to go out by ourselves.
3. I am going to get healthy, dammit! Pete and I sat down yesterday and created a menu for the entire month of August that is healthy, low-fat, low-calorie and budget friendly. In the past I have been able to stick to healthy diets pretty well, it's just a routine I have to get myself back into. Aside from not fitting into any of my clothes, I know my overall health is slacking because of the slacking in the diet. To put it simply, I feel like crap all. the. time. I'm now officially cutting out all soda, high-fructose corn syrup, and as many sweets and saturated fats as possible in order to try to get back to feeling like the me I was two years ago. It helps that I was 40 lbs lighter then too....which brings me to other, not-so-easy part of the Jam Plan: working out. Uggg. This one is going to be hard. I will have to take it in baby steps as I have never been a very active person even when I was a size 3. But I really don't think there's any better motivation to do it than to think of how I want to look in my wedding pictures...and I've only got less than 9 months to pull it off. And let's be honest, my Groom doesn't really want the extra 20 lbs he's got right now either...so we are both going to find some way to get our lazy, exhausted, burnt-out asses off the couch and burn some calories at least 5 days a week.
4. I'm going to blog 3 times a week. This is pretty simple, especially because I love to write and blogging helps me get things out of my head and reduce stress. But I have been pushing it to the bottom of my to-do list under more imporatant things. I'm going to try my hardest to avoid that, and just do it. Hopefully it will help my mind to become a little less hectic, or in the very least it will bring me one step closer to my Weddingbee goal. Let's face it, once I have decided I am going to do something, it's hard for me to give up.

So there it is, the preliminary plan to get me up and out of my summertime blues. Bring it on, August! I'm ready for you...and I've got Jam!

Anyone else want to eat a PB&J sandwich right now?? Yumm.

$@*%!!!!

We have been engaged for four months. Holy crap.

I thought, 14-month engagement, pleeeennnnty of time to accomplish everything I want, including but not limited to:

• lose a bunch of weight
• blog regularly
• check off the things on my wedding DIY list

Well, a couple days ago, I was partaking in my daily block-out-the-world-therapy of Weddingbee, when I got hit with a BAM moment.

(image, then BAM added by me of course)

Weddingbee, for those who do not know, is like the Mecca of internet wedding blog world. It's a collection of internationally-chosen bloggers (engaged and married) who write about their experiences in wedding planning, relationships, family, etc. I became addicted to the Bee about a year ago after my awesome twinsie Andrea told me about it (Yes, Pete and I really have been planning our wedding for THAT long). It immediately became one of my goals to someday become a writer for the Bee. It's a very selective application process, and you cannot apply unless it's within a certain time-frame of your wedding. And of course, you have to have an active personal blog for your application to be based upon. SO, for those of you who haven't already figured it out...I pretty much only started this blog because of Weddingbee, in the hopes that within my ridiculously long engagement I would have enough time to get my blog going and acceptable for Bee status.

Okay, okay, I was telling a story here, right? Yes. So I was reading the Bee, specifically a post by a brand new Bee (Miss Handbag), when I happen to glance over at her wedding date: March 2011. *Enter mental expletives here* March??? March is only 2 months before MAY.

This made me realize that the earliest I can apply is in just two months. Which led me to my next realization of the fact that four months of our engagement have already passed...and we are now less than 300 days out. Which led to my realization of how much I have NOT done.

• I have not lost any weight. Instead I have gained at least 5 lbs since our engagement, bringing me up to the most I have ever weighed in my life.
• I have not been blogging as much I want to. I keep doing homework instead (how boring is that??)
• I am officially two months behind on my DIY schedule. Being broke and deciding that I must completely RE-make our save-the-dates will do that to you.

I have been so stressed out by summer school and money problems and work issues that I haven't done anything that I actually want to be doing. I keep hearing the voice of Ferris Beuller in my head:

Life moves by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you could miss it.

I've missed a lot in the past few months. And I'm sick of it. I'm not happy.

It's time for some changes, dammit.

I have plans. I'll be updating soon.

Anyone else out there feel like life is moving a bit too fast for your taste?

"I don't own emotion- I rent."

Right now I should be reading about sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. And I should be making lesson plans for my summer job that I start on Tuesday. But, as usual over the past few weeks, I cannot focus on anything that I should be doing, so instead I am indulging in some RENT therapy.

Translation, I watch the movie RENT on repeat all day while I attempt to do other incredibly important things like facebook, blogging, crying, and turning my bed into a car garage with Ryan (okay maybe the car garage is the only important thing on that list, but that's okay). My RENT therapy sessions began back in 2007 when I first moved to Phoenix after my marriage ended, when life was at its absolute hardest. Over the years I have found that the fantastic work of Jonathan Larson has a way of helping me to not *completely* lose it...and the beauty of Adam Pascal doesn't hurt either.

This summer is definitely taking its toll on me. I'm not alone - Poor Peter's stress rash is getting worse and he's scratching his skin to death, and little Bug is so incredibly bored being stuck inside with me every day trying to stay out of the scorching heat. I don't sleep at night anymore - I stay awake working on wedding projects and designs, reading blogs, organizing my fall class schedule...anything that keeps my mind busy and off of all the unpleasant crap of this summer. As long as I'm obsessing over the perfect wording for our invitations or the details of my adorable little wedding map, theres no room in my head to think about everything else...which is great, except for the fact that I don't go to bed til 4 am...and then I have the whole day to try to do homework and make lesson plans and inevitably think about all that crap I tried to avoid all night. It's a vicious cycle, that leads to my ever-so-present bad mood and the need for RENT therapy.

So... Today I did some required reading, I signed our catering contract, I ate a cheesy gordita crunch, I called my brother, I cried after I hung up, I spent 30 minutes on hold with DCSE, and I surfed the web for attorneys. Now I am trying to ignore the pile of toys and blankets next to me (leftover from the destruction of the car garage) and I am trying to focus on today's RENT therapy inspiration:

"How do you connect in an age when strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray? What binds the fabric together when the raging shifting winds of change keep ripping away?"

"Draw a line in the sand and then make a stand."

I don't know exactly how yet, but I need to draw a line and make a stand against the summer of 2010. Any suggestions are welcome. Now back to lesson plans.

Independence Day. Minus Will Smith.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.

I was a bit melancholy most of the weekend as I was missing my family, and Pete was suffering through the weekend as he is inflicted with a horrible stress-induced skin reaction (I'll spare you the gory details)...so our 4th of July was very low-key. We stayed in bed and watched a bunch of ER and Friends DVDs, we hung out in the pool, and we had a little picnic while we waited for fireworks. I didn't even take very many pictures, but I managed to capture a few of the moments that truly made me smile...

I couldn't let this moment pass without taking pictures. They are just too damn cute.

He's so adorable.

My love and I got a couple pics of each other in before the fireworks.

He's so handsome.

Doesn't everyone have a patriotic pillow? Oh, that's just me.

It's hard to believe that next year we will be a married couple (family) watching the fireworks. I can't wait.

New Name

I renamed the blog today.

Why? Well, mostly just because the old name was bugging me. Pretty much everything in life is bugging me lately, and my blog did not escape the list of things getting on my nerves, so I changed it to something that I think will derive happier reactions.

"Love Story" is a very meaningful phrase for Pete and I. Of course pretty much everyone in the world has heard Taylor Swift's song Love Story, and although it may be overplayed and so-last-year, it is "our" song and it makes me smile every time I hear it. The lyrics have nothing to do with Pete and me, but we established it as our song a long time ago (as we were dancing to it in the swimming pool), and whenever I hear it, I think of the first summer we were dating, and our road trips to Vegas, and more than anything, I think of the day Pete asked me to marry him. So it makes me happy to title my blog "Love Story". And I need all the happy I can get right now as I am still fighting this not-so-great summer of stress and blues.

It's a reminder that real love stories are not fairy tales, they are stories of people who go through good times and bad times, through thick and thin, and their love survives through it all. Pete and I have already made it through some pretty rough times both on our own and as a couple, and I know our life will bring many more and greater challenges for us to overcome together. We can do it. It's a love story.

Blue Ice Cream

When it's 110 degrees outside, most kids would ask for a cold treat such as ice cream. But my kid? My extraordinary little Bug? He asks to make ice cream. And not just any ice cream...he needs to make red ice cream "with red spikes".

This is him explaining the "spikes" to Daddy...

His request (or demand) was so incredibly cute that we couldn't say no. Google to the rescue! Apparently you can make ice cream in a bag. Who knew?? Well, maybe most people, but not me. Insert blonde jokes here. So yes. We made ice cream in bag. (Although it had to be blue because we emptied all of the red food coloring in December for *someone's* ridiculous red Handy Manny toolbox birthday cake.)

We stuffed a bag with ice and salt...

We poured the yummy stuff into the little bag, put that into the big bag, and then Daddy shook shook shook. The oven mitts are my favorite part.

And Presto! Blue ice cream for my little man.

Anyone can demand ice cream, but it takes a special one to demand to make it :) I love my baby.

Money and Purple Toenails.

I have not been blogging the past couple weeks. Truth be told, it is not at all that I have nothing to write about...it's actually been that I have so much to write about, so much to get out and vent, so much to explain, that it seems to be too much to even figure out where to start. The past two weeks have been...well, rough.

Let's start here: I have purple toenails. Translation: Something is clearly wrong with me.

Those of you who are not my very closest girl friends are probably wondering why the hell the color of my toenails says anything about...well, anything. So let me explain: I have had my toenails painted black since I was about 14. Yeah, that's 10 years of the same color. There have been pink and white flowers, jewels, sparkles and even one vampire bat over the years, but the base background color has always been black (the only exception I can remember was my junior prom). As crazy as it sounds, the black toenails became a sort of a comfort for me - a reminder of who I am, never changed by friends or men, love or loss, or anything else in my life - A statement that says "I am still me."

But as of two days ago, in the midst of yet another crappy day, my toenails became purple, and it was entirely my choice. Yup, something is definitely wrong with me.

The truth is that I'm a nervous wreck. I have become a ridiculous ball of stress thanks to school, motherhood and some very huge (and unforseen) financial problems that have consumed almost every moment of thought I have had over the past two weeks. My sleep schedule has been completely reversed - I lay awake all night long budgeting, researching, thinking, strategizing and worrying...and then I want to do nothing but sleep all day long. I am exhausted even when I can't sleep, and I feel like crap all. the. time. My migraines have been back in full force, I'm sick to my stomach all the time, and Pete is demanding that I see a doctor about my chronic nosebleeds. My skin is breaking out everywhere thanks to the stress, and considering I still haven't made my way to the damn gym, I have this "general plague" feeling about my appearance (Thanks, Eddie). BLECH.

I know I need to get a grip on my sanity here pretty soon, but unfortunately the outlook for the next couple months is looking very bleak right now (financially speaking). Hopefully by about October everything is going to start balancing out, and with any luck the wedding plans will continue to move forward...but unless I win the lottery or *finally* shack up with George Clooney, I don't see the headaches over our budget going away any time in the near future.

So what now? I've considered anxiety medication, yoga, and lots of pizza...but I'm not sure if any of that is going to do the trick of picking me up out of the gutter and calming me down before I end up Howard Hughes-ing it (see pic below) all the way to the wedding, or graduation, or beyond.

Leo makes crazy look good.

Maybe some things will turn around soon...and if not, please bear with me, and go easy on me until the black toenail polish returns.

The good and the bad.

It's 2:45 am. And I'm blogging. Waiting for my brain to shut off any minute now so I can sleep...

Today was one of those days that was both really good and not so great all at once. I got to spend most of the afternoon and evening with one of my very best friends (MOH B). We ate Taco Bell for old times sake, laughed at old choir videos, ate a yummy Pete-cooked dinner, drank some margaritas, went shopping and tried to do something constructive for the wedding (more on that in a minute). I don't spend much time with females, so this was a much needed girl day, and I'm so lucky that I have a man who understood that and let us have our space all day (Love you FI!).

But today I also had a sick little boy. We had quite a rough morning. Poor little thing. This morning was the first time he actually wanted Mommy in quite a while (Daddy is pretty much all that matters lately). But as nice as it was to remember what it feels like for him to want me, I felt bad that I couldn't actually make him feel any better. *Thank God for aceteminophen and ipuprophen though, because they did help. * It's never a good day for Mommies when babies are sick. :(

Today was also a hard day for wedding planning and school. I won't get into too much of the details because they are ridiculous, but lets just say that my summer school class makes me want to scream and dealing with our wedding budget makes me want to curse (okay maybe I have already done a lot of that...). And on top of that, B and I tried very hard to achieve the first round of this month's wedding project: Boutonierres, and the idea failed miserably. The problem here is that Pete really wants boutonierres made out of shamrocks...which we cannot get from our florist because they are basically grass and they die immediately. So I thought, no problem! I can just make faux-shamrock bouts and call it a day! I even found a Martha Stewart tutorial. Um...yeah, Martha, you suck. End of story. I never thought there was a wedding craft project I could not pull off. I'm the queen of crap like this. I pulled off complete wedding dresses as a pre-teen with nothing more than some tulle and safety pins! Okay that might not really count, but it's still a very funny memory. :) But I digress. I'm not sure my Bout attempt is over, but Pete may get stuck with shamrock lapel pins and green pocket squares and the world will keep on turning (and maybe my history paper will get written).

All in all, the good of today outweighed the bad, and thats really all that matters. It reminded me of how life really is, and what I think happiness truly is. People get sick, money gets tight, things get hard, and failures happen. But as long as the good outweighs the bad, and I've got the people who love me, I'll look forward to another day.

Motivation.

Or lack thereof, actually. I have had one of those weeks (okay, maybe two weeks) where I just do not have motivation to do anything that I should be doing. I have plenty of motivation to go swimming with my guys, move on to the next wedding DIY project that is scheduled for this month (yes, I have scheduled projects out over the next 12 months because I'm crazy), stay up all night talking to my honey, sleep half of the day, redecorate everything in my apartment and spend hours researching reception venues and doing the math to figure out how to pay for them. But I have NO motivation to do any homework, write any papers, participate in any discussion boards about Louis XVI, clean anything, do any laundry or work out. And I really need to be doing these things.

Pete and I were supposed to start working out regularly again on the one year countdown to the wedding day. Yeah...that day has come and gone, and neither one of us has hit the gym yet. We keep telling ourselves that there is no better motivation to get in shape than for our wedding weekend...but apparently there is something faulty with that thought. And my motivation for summer school should be to maintain my fabulous 4.00 that I scraped by with last semester. But I still don't really care.

I blame it on the heat. Oh did I not mention it was 112 degrees this weekend? I think the heat is melting my brain and causing all motivation that doesn't involve lounging in a pool to fry on the sidewalk.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to regain motivation for the things you really have to do, please, let me know. I'll be pretending to write my paper on Absolutism until then.

"I hope he doesn't die. I can't handle summer school."

I can always count on Ferris Bueller's Day Off for great quotes. :)

Sadly, Ferris can't get me out of summer school. June is now upon us which means that my fantastic break filled with sleep, The Shield and Save-the-Dates is now over and it's time to dive into the Old Regime in Europe, followed by Renaissance in Europe in July. I will be drowning in reading and writing essays for the next 10 weeks. My excitement is boiling over.

Yes, I love History (you would hope considering I will be teaching it very soon)...but my preferred area is US history, and all this European stuff is not really my cup of tea. But I must do it anyway, so I will make the best of it and get it over with. I think I will just keep quoting Eddie Izzard in my head and say "I'm from Europe. Where the history comes from." anytime I'm feeling a bit bored, and it will bring a smile to my face. :)

I realize this post is pretty pointless, but the truth is that I'm purposely avoiding anything wedding related right now due to money and budget issues that are giving me chronic migraines. So European History it is. Wahoo! Wish me luck.

Williams & Sonoma must be a fabulous store.

Because that's where our first real engagement present came from to land happily at our doorstep this week (via the UPS man of course, because as cool as Williams & Sonoma may be, I don't think they can make gifts fly).

Pete's awesome Godfather and cousins sent us the happy gift. Thanks so much you guys!

Of course we had to take photos to document our excitement at an engagement present arriving at our door because, well, I've said it before, we don't get out much. :)

I have never been to Williams & Sonoma, because the closest one to where we are is somewhere off in ritzy Scottsdale land, but they sure have pretty giftwrapping.

R Bug had to get in on the action. No 3-year-old can pass up opening a present.

What fabulous crystal champagne flutes!!! They are SO beautiful. Love them. :)

(And of course, Pete had to play with them, because every man needs to play with fine crystal...)

We are blessed with a wonderful family. Thanks again G. Fam for thinking of us!

Why Vegas? The last of it.

4. We want a celebration!!

I wrote a little about this in a previous post, but here it is again, because it really is that important to us. Pete and I started discussing our someday-wedding about 10 months ago. We had a lot of ideas, but one thing was for certain: we did NOT want a "cookie-cutter" wedding. While we both value tradition, we didn't want the stereotypical one-day event where 200 guests come to eat some food, maybe do some dancing, and then leave after we have talked to them for maybe 3 minutes.

We want our wedding to truly celebrate this wonderful event in our lives...and the more we talked about it, we knew that a wedding weekend in Vegas would do just that. We want the whole thing to be more of a vacation or family reunion - an excuse for everyone to get together and have a lot of fun, with our marriage being the center of it all. We want to spend real time with our family and friends - we love the idea of sharing several meals, hanging out by the pool, enjoying some drinks, sightseeing cool places, maybe seeing an awesome show or two or chilling out in a lounge made of ice (seriously, it exists in Vegas) with the people who come to celebrate with us. And every other option we looked into that may have been a little cheaper or closer to home just didn't provide those kind of options.

(See, I don't lie.)

But we looked anyway. We toured a couple places here in Phoenix, we emailed some other venues, and we tried to see the advantages of not getting married in Vegas. See, here I am scouting out a very pretty venue downtown...

Then one night, we finally just threw it all down and really asked ourselves what kind of wedding we want. We knew that with a limited budget we would have to decide what our priorities were and make sacrifices in other areas. And we realized that our top priority was to have the experience and celebration of a small, fun-filled destination wedding in our favorite city with the people who mean the most to us. So we made some sacrifices in the overall plan (and are still making constant sacrifices) to make it happen. And we couldn't be happier about it.

And that's that.

So Viva Las Vegas, Baby.

In case you missed it:
Why Vegas? Part One
Why Vegas? Part Two and Three

Why Vegas? Part Two & Three

Two more important reasons behind our decision...

2. We already got married in Vegas!

Okay, not really. But that is a picture of us at the Wedding Chapel in Paris Las Vegas. When we were on that fabulous first trip, we decided it would be really funny to pull a practical joke on two of our friends back home by convincing them that we got married in Vegas. One of said friends had tried to pull the same joke on us earlier that year, but no one bought it. We knew we could do better! So we bought some fake wedding rings, took some pictures of us wearing them, sent some fake drunken picture texts, and voila! They totally bought it. As fun as the whole joke was, the real significance of it in the end was that it brought about the first conversation we had ever really had about getting married, and planted quite a bit of a seed in us. We wore our rings for two days and talked about what it would be like to actually get married in Vegas someday. Although we were not at all serious about it at the time, it was yet another special tie we made to Las Vegas. (And just FYI, Pete and I will be wearing our *fake* rings on our right hands when we really DO get married in Vegas!)

3. We cannot afford a wedding in IL or AZ.

Well this is a pretty simple reason. We realized that if we were to get married in either Pete's hometown, my hometown, or the city we live, we would inevitably have a much bigger guest list than we either want or could afford. Bigger guest list = bigger price tag. We LOVED the idea of a destination wedding because we knew it would mean only those who really wanted to be there would be there. And, we really did research and compare costs of both AZ and IL...Vegas won over the numbers almost every time.

Coming up next: Part Four of Why Vegas.

Why Vegas? Part One

Okay I know I said I would write this many weeks ago...but the end of the semester got in the way. And since finals ended, I have simply been soaking up way too much joy in doing nothing but cleaning, watching "The Shield" with my honey and making wedding plans (including buying my gown! - more on that in a future post) to put much thought into blogging. But here I am to do as I promised and explain why we have chosen fabulous Las Vegas as the perfect place for our wedding. **I originally wrote this all in one huge post, but now I've decided to break it apart into four separate posts for easier reading.**

Reason #1: Las Vegas has special meaning for us.

Pete and I went to Vegas to celebrate our first year anniversary as a couple last year. While it was an anniversary trip, it was also meant to be an unspoken farewell trip for us, as we knew we only had 6 weeks left together before Pete moved back to IL for a job with Harley Davidson. The three days we spent in Vegas were...well, magical. So much of our relationship suddenly transitioned during that little getaway. We had an insane amount of fun and we got lost in the romance of Paris and Venice, and all the while we were faced with the reality that our relationship was going to end, or at least completely change, in just a few weeks. Somehow, the complex combination of all that led to both of us completely falling in love with each other all over again. We joked that even if we were never able to find a way to make "us" work, we would always have Vegas as our special place to meet, year after year, forever.

Fast forward one year to Pete and I celebrating our 2nd Anniversary in Vegas. This time we were celebrating the fact that we had made it through our temporary seperation the year before, we had made much bigger commitments to each other since then, and we knew we were going to be together forever. Then came March 16, which as you should know, is the day Pete asked me to marry him. After the proposal, we spent the rest of our fantastic trip daydreaming about how awesome it would be to come back one year later and get married in "our" city. After the cherished memories we had already made in Vegas, it just made sense to make some more on our wedding day. :)

Stay tuned for Part Two of Why Vegas? to find out more about our fabulous location. And in the meantime, here's our favorite picture from our first trip to Vegas, with the romantic Eiffel Tower in the background. Someday we'll get a picture with the real one in France, but for now, this will do just fine.

"...But I had the best days with you..."

Happy Mother's Day to any hardworking mommas who may be reading this. :) I found this card I made for my mom when I was in kindergarten. That's a fantastic unicorn if I do say so myself. :) My blogging has been pretty nonexistent the past couple weeks as I am up to my eyeballs in finals, but I wanted to take a quick moment to remember the greatest woman I have ever known - my mother.

Most Mother's Days for the past nine years have gone by with little to no celebration or mention in my household, for obvious reasons. But today I decided to embrace the day and publicly say that I could never be the mother I am today without the mother I was blessed with as a child. I love her and I miss her every moment of every day.

I was also blessed with an amazing grandmother, who was also taken from our lives nine years ago. I want to say that I love her, I admire her, I miss her and I think about her more than anyone knows.

I often wonder what my life might be like if I still had both of these women with me...(I know there would be a hell of a lot of laughter, that's for sure). I am thankful for everything they taught me, and I know I am very blessed because I have not one, but two guardian angels watching over me and my family at all times, and we know both of them by name. :)
We miss you always.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to all the women who have been stand-in mommas for me when I have needed you. Mary Jo S, Jennifer B, Delany C, Sue F and Jayne V, you have all loved me, taken me into your homes, and treated me as your own daughter...I love you and I wish you all a Happy Mothers Day.

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." ~Abraham Lincoln

"You know I don't do contracts, but my word is stronger than oak."

...Well, Matt Cushman in Jerry Maguire may not do contracts, but we most certainly do - and we did, this weekend! We signed our very first wedding contracts...well actually, the first contracts of any kind that have both of our names on it. We were quite excited about our Wynn contracts, so much so that we even took pictures to share our excitement with all of you. We don't get out much, okay? Yes, this was the highlight of our weekend - signing contracts at 11pm on a Saturday night. Don't judge.

You can't tell, but I am signing with a Hilton Garden Inn pen (where we first met). Yes it was intentional. :)



Pete may - or may not - have worn this shirt exclusively for this photo...



This was my favorite part - seeing "M***** and Mc**** Wedding" (edited for internet privacy of course) and our names listed as Bride and Groom. It gave me all these happy fuzzy feelings that I shouldn't admit in public.



Someday we'll have house contracts and insurance contracts and plenty of other things that will have both our names on it, and we probably won't care at all, so I'm glad we took this moment to be happy about our legally binding documents just once.

13 Months.

Yes, our wedding is 13 months away. I agree, this is a long time and I wish it were not so far away, but it is what it is for many reasons.

As I mentioned in my previos post, there are certain people in my family who are questioning why we have to wait so long, and when I give them the most obvious answer, which is that we need time to save money and plan the whole thing, they then question why we have to have an expensive wedding at all. "Why don't you just elope in Vegas?" "Why don't you just go to the courthouse?" My response to this now is, "why can't we celebrate one of the happiest and momentous occasions of our life with the people who are most important to us??" I don't believe there is anything wrong with that...and the only downside of it is the reality that, in our society, celebrating with family and friends = money. BUT, for the record, we are having a very small, intimate wedding which will cost about 1/4 the cost of the average American wedding.

So yes, our wedding is going to cost some money and it will take a collaboration of ourselves, our families and friends to make it happen...but this is just how the world works. Weddings cost money, food costs money, everything costs money. Yes, we could chuck all the plans out the window and run down to the courthouse without spending more than $60 for the marriage liscence. And for some people that is an excellent choice and fits them and their relationship very well. But not us. And this is why:

We see marriage as a very sacred, very important step in our lives. As everyone knows, Pete and I already live together. We already have a life and family together. Getting married will not change any of this. We are choosing to get married because we both value the importance and sacredness of making vows to each other that solidify our love and our family for the rest of our lives. And we both feel that those vows deserve to be witnessed by the people who love us. We have already made plans for our future together, we have already promised to love each other through thick and thin no matter what. But we feel that our promises of marriage deserve to be shouted to the world and celebrated. That is what weddings are all about.

I won't lie...I have questioned Pete several times in the midst of "wedding stress" if we should just elope. We have discussed it and considered it greatly. But every time, we come back to the same sentiments that I just wrote above. We don't want an overpriced meal, pointless flowers and an enoumous guest list that will forget about our cookie-cutter wedding a year later. We want a true celebration of our marriage, and that is worth every penny in our eyes (more to come about the celebration in the "Why Vegas?" post).

So why 13 months?
Well, why not?? I know many of my family members are uncomfortable or ashamed of teh fact that Pete and I live together without being married. But it's been reality for a long time, so what does it matter if it stays reality for one more year compared to the entire lifetime we have ahead of us as husband and wife? But aside for the "why not?" reasoning, let me give you some of the real reasons why we chose next May:
1. We have to have time to save money and plan the whole thing (yeah I already said that.)
2. We cannot get married before I file next year's FAFSA (in february), or else I will risk losing a huge chunk of my financial aid for my senior year of school due to the change in marital status and combined income.
3. I only have two breaks from school every year - spring break and summer break. Those are my ONLY options for getting married, and obviously this summer is not going to happen, and if we do it over spring break I would have no time for a honeymoon and would most likely be doing nothing but homework the day after our wedding. So that leaves May of 2011.


The last thing I would like to say, for certain people who are hopefully reading, is to pose a question: If this were my first marriage, would you be questioning why I want to have a wedding? Would you be questioning why I want to wear a beautiful dress, walk down the isle and live out the fantasy that I acted out a hundred times as a little girl in my dress-up clothes? I do not believe you would. So please, do not treat this any differently than you would if I had never been married before. You all know that, in the end, that marriage was not at all worth celebrating. But this is. THIS is the one, the ONLY one that matters. End of story.

So please, if you are one of the people who have asked why we are not just eloping, please stop asking, because you now have the answers. Please take the opportunity to celebrate with us as we look forward to the next 13 months. And take a moment to think of how special you are, because, apparently, we would not want to do this without you there. :)

"Hey Baby let's go to Vegas, kiss the single life goodbye..."

Today is a very exciting day! The date has been set, and the ceremony location has been chosen! Say Hello to May 2011!

For privacy/security reasons, I will not publicly post the date here, but for those of you who are actually friends and family, you can visit our wedding website for more specifics:

www.mywedding.com/peteandgina

And, big surprise (not really), we will be tying the knot here:



At the Wynn Resort and Casino in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. The same place where Pete asked me to marry him five weeks ago! Yes, we are romantic and cheesy, thank you very much.

Now...it's time for some honesty.

Pete and I both expected, for quite some time, that we would have to explain and defend our reasoning for choosing Las Vegas to our families. We have been planning speeches and suggestions and even lists of shows to help ease the explanations for quite some time. We both come from conservative, religious backgrounds, and seeing as how Vegas is still outdatedly and inaccurately labeled as "Sin City" to some people, we expected there might be a bit of struggle. Luckily enough, though, there hasn't been as much of a struggle with the location as we expected (smile!)...

However, what we didn't expect, was that certain people would, (instead of questioning Vegas), question why we are even having a wedding celebration at all. I have to be honest and say that I have had just about all I can take of hearing people's opinions that we should just run off to Vegas and elope, and get it over and done with. This hurts my feelings. And it now brings me to the decision to not only publicly explain our choice of Vegas, but also our choice of a long engagement, and our choice to celebrate our marriage with our families and friends in a way that is, unfortunately, going to cost a large chunk of change.

Instead of one huge post, I am going to break it up into segments...so for those of you who care (and if you have at all voiced your opinion about our wedding plans, then apparently, YOU CARE), please stay tuned for my next couple posts that will hopefully make our plans and intentions more clear.

In the meantime, I hope you are all just as excited as we are, as we giddily look forward to next May. :D

Lastly, for the record, the modern name for Las Vegas is the "City of Entertainment." Look it up. And really, who doesn't want to be entertained?

"...Hey Baby let's got to Vegas, bet on love and let it fly." -Faith Hill

I may not have a wedding date, but I have an awesome date for my wedding.

My "date", of course, would be my future hubby, Peter.
He makes me so happy. I just had to share a tidbit of why I am such a lucky woman to be marrying him...

I worked from 8 am to 3 pm yesterday, then I hopped on the campus shuttle for my ride downtown, was in class until 7:30, and I came home at 8:30 to Pete and little Ryan getting things out of grocery bags to make dinner. Ryan screamed his way to bed (it was a temper tantrum kind of night), Yummy yummy BBQ chicken followed (which of course Pete made, because the most I could manage was putting honey in the sweet potatoes), and then he set off to clean the disaster zone we call a kitchen while I headed to my computer to try to work on some homework. Well, apparently I fell asleep (and did no homework, mind you) and did not wake until 5 something this morning, in a panic over the fact that I had no alarm set.

Well, there was my phone, alarm set, plugged in next to my bed. Thanks, honey.

Then at 7:30 am while rushing out the door (late of course) I am handed my breakfast-to-go, and a packed lunch. My laptop had also been plugged in to charge after it died under me on the bed. Thanks again, honey.

At noon today, I pull out my lunch to find a sandwich, adorable little 100-calorie cookies and cheese and crackers, and a note that says: "I love you very much. I felt bad that you fell asleep while I cleaned the kitchen, so I went to the store and got the stuff necessary to make your lunch. I love you and will see you when you get home!"

Okay seriously, where did this man come from??

I love him so much it's ridiculous.

In the past 4 weeks I have repeated the words "we don't have a date yet" so many times it has become my LEAST favorite phrase ever. Over the past 2 weeks, I have pretty much completely stopped talking about the wedding at all, due to the overwhelming stress I have found comes with simply trying to figure out how to pay for it. Yes, the truth is Pete and I have been planning what we want for our wedding for the past 6 months...but all of the "wishing" becomes an entirely different ballgame once there's a ring on your finger and it's time to put down a deposit to book the date.

So, No, we don't have a date yet. No, we have not decided where it will be, either. And YES, I do cry when I think of how much I wish we could just figure it all out right now and move on the much more fun aspects of planning a wedding.

BUT...
I do have the most wonderful fiance...one who packs my lunch, and listens to my rants about how much weddings cost, and even does my homework for me when I'm completely beyond exhausted and cannot write one more paper (shhh don't tell anyone). So whenever, and wherever our wedding will be, the absolute best part is that it will all be happening with this guy by my side.

I fell in love. With the veil.

One week ago today, I made my first trek to the place that has all the wedding dresses.
It was not a planned outing...I was having brunch with my Godmother, Mary Jo, and I mentioned that it was the last weekend of the $99 sale at David's Bridal. She said she would go look with me, and eventually we found ourselves surrounded by women, manikins, poofey gowns and some annoying teenagers shopping for prom.
I (ahem...I should say WE, as in both Pete and I - yes I have the one fiance in the world who looks at dresses for me and even makes phone calls to random shops in California to ask about a certain style...but that's another story) have been looking at dresses online for a few months now. I had a general idea of what I was looking for: a pick-up or draped skirt, a trumpet cut, a black sash. But apparently, it's almost impossible for all three of these things to exist in one gown. So we started with two out of three (I won't say which, because I know Pete will be reading this). To put it plainly, I loved it. Took-a-picture-and-sent-it-to my-best-friend-loved-it. Mary Jo even loved it, even though she didn't think she would at all. It was almost perfect...but it was only the first one I had tried on, so it couldn't possibly be THE dress, right?
So I moved on to the next dress. Too traditional (or, as I named it, the "Catholic church dress"). The next one was what I liked to call "cupcakey", meaning it was a bit too poofey and princess-y...but it was kind of artsy, and I just so happened to love it too. The next one was "too boring" at first...but after a few pick-up pins from the seamstress, I was yet again loving it. Anyone noticing a pattern here? Yeah I pretty much liked every dress, but there seemed to be something I didn't like about ALL of them too...except the first one. So I put the first dress on again. Then they added a necklace. Then they added a broach. Then...they added a veil.
Ah, the cathedral length veil. I. was. in. love. Cathedral length veils are pretty much the most dramatic statement a girl can make on her wedding day, and let's face it, I'm a drama queen.
So I'm standing there, in love with the veil, while Mary Jo is discussing the price tag of the dress and two different saleswomen were fussing over various sash and ribbon options, when a certain song starts playing on the radio.
(For those unfamiliar, listen here. Please excuse the cheesy early 90's video - it's the lyrics that should be payed attention to.)

garth brooks-its your song
- Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

Your Song. By Garth Brooks. It's a song that, I swear, was written for my mother, as I'm sure my brothers would agree. I never hear this song without thinking of my mom, who has been missing from my life for the past nine years. And apparently, when this song comes on the radio while I'm staring in the mirror at a girl in a wedding dress and cathedral length veil...things get a bit emotional. A girl always dreams of shopping for wedding dresses with her mom...and although I'm pretty sure dress shopping with my mom would actually result in quite a bit of fighting and arguing (we had many battles over our "style" differences), I still wished so much that she were there. There were quite a few tears, and a moment where I was convinced that apparently, this had to be THE dress.
But I couldn't commit.
The tears started blurring together with exclamations of "but I wasn't supposed to actually find a dress today! It's way too early! I've only been engaged for 11 days! I'm supposed to have a whole girly day of shopping with my bridesmaids and sisters-in-law before I find the dress!"
The emotional moment passed and I moved on to another dress. And another one. Then back to a few of the first ones again. At this point, I was exhausted. The more dresses I put on, the more it seemed like none of them were what I was looking for...not even the first one. My mind was fried, and I was dizzy from beading. It was time to go home.
In a couple months I plan on going back and trying the first dress again. And in the meantime I must soothe myself over the fact that I found the most perfect dress in the world at a shop in California for a price I could never justify spending, even if I could afford it, which of course, I cannot, and dream of my fabulous cathedral length veil.
All I can say now is, Girls (meaning Brittany, Mandi, Mariah, Angela, Mary Jo, and whoever else tags along in the future), brace yourselves. This is going to be a very bumpy search. Bring kleenex. And please, don't kill the overly-picky bride.