WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Today is 60 DAYS till the big day!

Today is my FIRST DRESS FITTING!  and I get to see my veil!

Today people are already getting the invites we mailed out on Monday!

and today is one month till my birthday.   woo hoo!

In a word:  Wonderful.    The whole entire day was just so nice, and SO overwhelming!  No one warned me how much work it was!  (or how incredibly HOT you get opening all those gifts!)

The scene:  Saturday morning - I have had a headache for about 3 days, but I take some Excedrin Sinus and thank God start to feel better.  I shower, take my time and try to take in the whole experience.  I feel like I’m preparing myself for the wedding day - only that day will be magnified by 100.

I put on my dress and we head out, and the shower was actually down the street at one of our favorite little spots to grab a sandwich & a beer, with this great upstairs loft area where you can have private parties.  It was phenomenal, and everyone was standing over the edge to yell surprise down when we walked in.  It was great - and like I said, so overwhelming - seeing all those faces and people who came from all over just for you!  The initial 30 minutes or so was crazy, saying hi to everyone - having pictures taken, taking in the scenery, and all the work everyone did - it was beautiful!   The whole scene was very ‘me’ - laid back, beach themed, casual style - it was perfect!  There were about 35 people there, and I loved it.

The best part — seeing my MOH, wearing a yellow dress too!  Not the same one, but still hilarious!  We looked adorable together.  

I didn’t get too many pics on my camera, but I know many other people did - and I can’t wait to see them!  Here’s a little teaser:

This is part of my cake — and the best thing is - they didn’t tell the cake people this is how D proposed!  This was just a little detail on the cake!  It was red velvet with cream cheese frosting, and my GOD was it good!

And here I am in my funny bow hat (and a little part of my adorable dress that got many compliments!):

HAHAHHA it was phenomenal - my friends really went to town making this hat.  Now I will have to wear it whenever I get a chance.  If you can’t tell - they stapled a silver heart shaped balloon to the top of it.  SO funny.  And a long tulle “veil” down the back.

A perfect day, so touching - and I am SO EXCITED for my wedding now.  It seems so much more real now, and time is FLYING!  I want this week to FLY BY so we can go get our marriage license and wedding bands!  INSANE!

Oh and I won’t even say how when we pulled into the lot, there were 2 of my friends 45 MINUTES late running away from our car, trying to avoid being seen.  SO FUNNY, I couldn’t even be mad, its not like the surprise was ruined, right?

So I’m not sure that if I didn’t know about tomorrow’s event, would I still feel like everyone is avoiding me?

It’s finally Friday, and I can honestly say this week has taken FOR-EV-ER.  I did wake up at 6:20 this morning and think “Hm… is it Friday? Do I have to get up?  No, it’s Saturday, snuggle back up.. mmmmmm”  until reality hit me that no, the alarm is set for a reason dummy.

Last night I went to the gym, worked my ass into a sweaty oblivion again, and then went to the mall (after changing my shirt, thank god).  I desperately need new bras.  I am pretty unsure about my size and I think after last night’s escapade, I know the problem.  My ribs are too wide around, my actual boob tissue is too small, and the boobs themselves are just a tad too far apart.   Sounds fun, no?   After years of Victoria’s Secret bras that barely fit, cost an arm & a leg to buy, and then I end up wearing them out - I decided to go the Macy’s route.  I went in with a mission - Do not leave until bra is in hand. Simple enough?  Um, no.

After trying on no less than 22 bras, I determined that I am abnormal and I hate my boobs.

And I think I’ll just wear sports bras for the rest of my life.   Sexy, no?

I keep saying “I’ll go get fitted once I lose a little weight”.  Well, I’m not losing weight and my bras suck so I should just GO.  It’s frustrating, to say the least.   I did walk away with 1 bra that I am currently wearing.  I will say that after 6 hours of wear, I am still comfortable. I am not grabbing at the underwire, it’s not poking me, and its not too tight.  So far, so good.  And its not completely UNSEXY, which was the problem with my last set of bras.  Comfy - wireless, but like a granny bra.  So ugly.  Thank god I’m not trolling for guys.

I just bought the new “BioFit” from Vickie’s.  After 3 hours I wanted to rip it off and free boob at work. Sexy, but pointing into my ribs.

Anyway, I’ll just continue on my quest, and for now I’ll just pack them in sports bras, cause mine are so very comfortable.

Wish me luck at my shower tomorrow!!!  I’ll be back on Monday with pics!

Suit:  being re-tailored, as the pants were too short, the jacket sleeves a touch too long.  Will be finished by July 11.
His Custom Shirt:  CAME IN!  The original woman we dealt with told us August 1.  Um, it came in June 24.
Invitations:  All complete.  Stamps, addresses, invites inside.  DONE.  To be mailed in just 3 short days.
Shower:  Coming up quickly.  I’m starting to get nervous.  And why do my registries still seem SO FULL?!  D is hiding things from me now, when I asked “So, what is the plan for Saturday… like what is your ’story’ to tell me?” and he told me to leave him alone.  Maybe he is trying to keep some of it a surprise after all!  Although last night on our drive home, we pass this nice restaurant just down the road from us and he says “McLooooooooones”  like in a funny way, announcing it.  So I’m like “What? why did you say that”  [it was very random and we hadn't been talking]… and he was just silent, looking forward, no reply.   So, now I, of course, think that’s where my shower is and plan to tell him he’s an idiot on Saturday if it is.   haha

Next week is a short one, AMEN!  We are leaving for RI on Thursday around 3ish, for the weekend.  We will have lots of things to accomplish - including:  getting our wedding bands, getting our marriage license, securing the restaurant for our rehearsal dinner (long story there), finalizing details with the cake lady and meeting with the Reverend who is marrying us.   July 2 will officially be 60 days out!  HOLY SHIT.

Now I’ve gotten a few suggestions for a good book to read - but I need your help too!  When we go to RI I tend to spend a lot of my downtime reading, as most of the family is on their computer the whole time.  I like a thick book, not a ‘chick book’ if possible - while I enjoy them, I tend to finish them in no time flat, so I need one that will take me longer than 2 days of reading to finish.  Any help?   I may buy 2 to be safe.

I just finished The Kite Runner and The Secret Life of Bees.  Loved them both.

Also, my stupid cousin/bridesmaid who isn’t involved in ANY wedding stuff and has not contacted me in well over a month, just got invited to our wedding with a date.  I’m annoyed.  She was seeing this guy before, he’s kind of a dirt bag, and now they are back together.  It would have been rude to not invite him, but I still didn’t want to.  I don’t want her to have him with her the whole weekend in Newport when its supposed to be quality girl time before the wedding.  Is that selfish?   I just know she would pick him over me & her ‘duties’, and that annoys me.  Besides the fact that right now she is staying in a room with her parents, meaning all 4 of them would have to share a room.    SO STUPID! I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS SHIT TO BE OVER!!!!!!!!!  I hate making decisions like this or having feelings like this about people.

AMEN FOR:  payday today!  getting an oil change finally, getting a wax tonight FINALLY, mani/pedi tomorrow, FRIDAY TOMORROW!! and seeing my best girlfriends on Saturday!  YESSSSSS

p.s. D’s mom is avoiding me!   I emailed her Monday to say hi, and normally she replies in like a day - and it’s now Thursday with no reply!  Hilarious!

So I have to hand it to my Dad.  And I CANNOT WAIT for this week to be over so I can actually talk about this stuff with other people!!!

Here’s the story:  Apparently in this whole shower planning process, my mom invited D’s mom and dad to come stay at their house instead of getting a hotel room for the weekend.  After a bit of debating & wondering whether they would be an “inconvenience” to my family, I guess they said “sure”.   This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as my Dad does not really like his Dad.  And not only will they be staying in the house with them, but when I’m at the shower - the guys will be off doing something together too!  So that’s like 48 straight hours with them, and no kids to help break it up!  [Cause they are coming Friday night and I won't be able to come over since I'm not supposed to know, obv].   I guess he is putting on his big boy pants and dealing with it.  Heaven help him!

My friends so far have been really good about not spilling the beans, with some of them making up little stories about what they’re doing Saturday.  It’s quite funny since I know, and all I want to do is mess with them a bit.  D says the hardest part is talking to his mom or my mom and not saying “Oh it’s okay - its not like she doesn’t know!”  Apparently my mom told him to “Make sure she wears something nice”  HAHAH Sorry mom, I bought a dress!   This will be an interesting week!

Tomorrow we are going up to my parents house to put the invites together!  I finished addressing them last night, and we wanted to get them done and out by the end of the month.  Since I am onto them, I knew this weekend wouldn’t work & we had to get them out 

It’s all feeling so real!

I’m sorry all my talk lately has been about the wedding but things are starting to get a little intense, and I am being consumed…. and otherwise I’m pretty boring.

You know, I set myself up for these things.  I do, I make it sound better in my mind, and say “Oh it won’t be that way this time” but it inevitably always is.

My weekend was miserable.

Don’t get me wrong - I love my friends, and there were moments of fun - dancing like maniacs for a few hours late Saturday night, playing the most intense game of beer pong I’ve ever played, singing along to the guitar before heading to the bar - but overall I just felt really out of place.

The trip took me close to 4 hours  [each way].  2 trains with 2 connections, and a ferry.  A long time. We headed right to the beach.  Overall I just felt rushed - I felt like I couldn’t be myself, I couldn’t wear what I wanted without getting made fun of for not being “manly enough”  (my friends wearing men’s board shorts & a tank instead of my dress beach cover-up).  Don’t get me started on the house - one of the dirtiest places I’ve been in a LONG time - I just couldn’t imagine what sleeping there was going to be like.  We spent the day on the beach, then came home & I took the worlds coldest & dirtiest shower. I never felt clean.  I had to use my dirty BEACH TOWEL to dry off.  I’m just shuddering thinking of this. 

I know my friends are a lot more like guys, party like guys, get dirty like guys, don’t really care about anything like guys — but I am not.  I am a clean person. I don’t like to binge drink for 20 hours anymore. I don’t like to stay out till 6am.  It was so rough.   And I didn’t really have an ally.  D is always my ally, and that is so comforting and wonderful. 

And to hear D back at home on our beach with our friends (who I haven’t seen in a while), drinking, being clean, eating real food, laughing… it just felt so wrong that I wasn’t there.

By the time my 4-hour journey home on Sunday ended, I was in tears.  I felt so many emotions.  Sad, mad, frustrated, and dirty.  (Eh, it’s not an emotion but still).  I collapsed into D’s arms and spent the rest of the night so content at being home in my nice clean house, with my wonderful soon to be hubby, and realized that I do not need to do these things anymore.  Not for anything.

There’s no place like home.

As predicted, the dream last night went something like this:

1.  My friend who just got engaged and spilled the beans on the shower broke onto my work computer and stole all my wedding-related info, then DELETED the entire folder with all my hard work.  I mean, I do have a real actual job that requires attention, but I do have downtime, lots of fonts, cool programs and adult ADD.  Then it was like this terrible thing where I was begging the IT people from my very first job to reinstall the folder and get all the data back for me.  Random that that guy was in it, but moving on..

2.  It was my wedding day and instead of my dad in the room getting ready with us, it was one of the owners of my company.  I didnt really think this was weird, because what WAS weird was that I was wearing a BLACK strapless, knee-length, shiny satin dress with many, many layers of crinoline under it.  OH, and a bright-pink band across the boobs at the top.  I put on the dress and I was shocked, saying “Why did anyone let me buy this dress?  Why would I ever want a black dress?”  And no one was answering me.  Oddly enough, we were getting ready at my parents house (which also never seems weird to me in dreams that I’m never in Newport where I am actually getting married).  I had my hair done something like this:

Which is nothing I would ever want.  And all I could think is “Wow, D is gonna be SO disappointed I’m not wearing white…”

My mom was walking around in her bathrobe with no makeup, and I’m on the verge of tears saying “Please tell me this is fine, tell me no one will notice” (I’m starting to panic) and she says “Um, whatever - its fine I’m sure you’ll forget about all of this tomorrow”  and I slapped my mom.  In the FACE.  My mother.  On my wedding day.  WTF???  So of course she’s crying, I’m crying, we’re fighting…….. it was awful.

So for the record, I cannot talk about “not having bad dreams” anymore.

OOH and I got my shower dress, but I cannot find a picture of it anywhere!  I’m so bummed!  It’s a fun yellow Calvin Klein eyelet dress, knee length, very cute, fun and bride appropriate.  I love it.  The straps are a little loose (hard to explain) but I’ll take it to the little Chinese woman I love so much and have them taken up an inch or so and I should be all set!  YAY!  One more week, and I’m checking the registry like a mad-woman.  I just love it!

HAPPY WEEKEND!

Man, I’ve really been MIA this week.  I guess I am not feeling like anything is happening or worth writing about.  I am in a serious writer’s block I guess.

Things I’ve got going on (majority are wedding-related. Shocker):

• Shopping for my shower dress tonight after work.  I bought one I thought I liked, but when I got it home, it looked like a pink potato sack
• Hand-addressing my wedding invitations to send them out next week (EEEEEK!).  Not exactly pleased that I have to do this, but my mom is insisting - and if it means that much to her, I have to do it
• Trying to figure out how I’m going to print the place cards.  We’re supposed to mark on the cards what choice people are having for dinner, and I want to do it in a design-friendly way (aka not writing “Steak” or “Lobster” on each card).  I have an idea, I just need to find the paper.
• I’m going to Fire Island Saturday to visit my friends at their summer house.  I’m kind of scared because they are serious party animals (read: drink all day and night, stay up till 5am raging, then get up at 9am with no hangover and do it all over again).  I, however, am the complete opposite.  Sure, I can drink in the day into the night, but by 2am I am ready to curl up and pass the eff out.  By 10am I’m pretty sure I’m going to die a miserable, lonely death.   Remind me again why I’m going?
• I want to get a manicure.  I think I’ll go tonight while I’m at the mall.  It’s part of my plan to keep my hands looking nice until the wedding.  So far, so good.  They look decent.
• I bought a really cute galvanized bucket to hold the flip-flops I bought for the wedding guests today for 3 BUCKS!  Couldn’t believe the bargain!
• I’m reading “The Secret Life of Bees” (my mom gave it to me a while ago and I decided to give it a shot) - and I am loving it!  Definitely a great choice, has made sitting on the beach quite nice

Okay so you know I’m not dead, I am alive and still kinda boring, getting lost in Wedding World, and to be honest I have had NO wedding nightmares to speak of in the last few weeks.  Which now means, of course - I’ll update you tomorrow with the one I have tonight.

Well, after all I’ve been doing to stay away from learning about the shower - the worst thing happened this weekend!   That’s right… I found out.  And thank GOD the only one who knows that I know is D.

We were productive this weekend - when he got home Friday afternoon we went straight out and got all the ties for the wedding!  It wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated, and within an hour or so we had 5 ties, all corresponding shades of green,  but unique - and I feel more accomplished!  We spent the rest of the night just hangin out, watched a movie and went to bed early.  Saturday we ran our errands early and then spent the rest of the day at the beach (where we both had a couple too many cocktails at the tiki bar, and promptly came home and napped for an hour) before our friends came over.   We had made plans to go out to dinner & to celebrate their recent engagement. 

They came to the house and before we left we were BS’ing about wedding stuff & all sorts of stresses related to that - and she says “oh I have such a big book of stuff in my purse at all times” and goes to grab it - and opens it to this month to show me all the things she had going on.  (Meanwhile the book is like this neatly organized 1/4 inch thing, perfectly maintained).  She opens to June - and I glace at it and BOOM>  I’m hit with “[MY NAME] BRIDAL SHOWER!!”  in caps on June 28.   Awesome.   I think suddenly she realizes it and shuts it, then is like “Hey did you see anything in there?!”  I casually say “No, why?”   “Oh no reason” and puts it away.  FUUUCK.

So we go to dinner and I drink 2 cosmos and try to just ignore that little thought in my head of “aw maannn”…  We have a great time, and they have to head home kind of early, so we’re back at the house around 10ish, and after texting with Molly my guilty conscious & how bummed I am - I spill it to D that I know.  That I saw it in my friends calendar and I am SO BUMMED.  He feels AWFUL and genuinely cares that I am so upset and tries to comfort me and let me know that everything else will still be a surprise, etc.  I know that - but now it’s like I cant even be in suspense, I know that next Saturday I’ll wake up and go to my shower.  Ugh.  I just wish I never saw it.  So I make him promise not to tell anyone that I know, and it’ll just be our little secret. 

Its actually kind of fun and now I want to F with them, like “Hmm, I think I’m gonna go visit my friends in Boston for her bday that weekend” and see what they say hahaha.  I’m mean.

Oh well, I can now stalk my registry freely and not feel bad.

And there are so many things to look forward to anyway:  the guests, the gifts, the food, the atmosphere, the friends —  all of it is still 100% a surprise, but I just have to look on the bright side about it!   Feels good to get it out that I KNOW ABOUT THE SHOWER!!!!!!!!   ahh okay, thank you & good day.

AHH I am literally out of anything interesting to talk about this week so far, BUT because I cannot really tell anyone else — I have to share with you guys!

I was stalking the registries this morning (as per usual, and part of my rounds) - but this time there were actual ITEMS PURCHASED!!!!!!!!

Which means that people are starting to buy for the shower, which probably means its coming up, and I still have no idea when it is (although I sort of have a small hunch it might be next Saturday, we’ll see if I’m right) - and I’m so happy for that fact!  Like I’ve said - I’ve never really been surprised about anything and for the first time people are being really sneaky and I don’t know anything!  It’s wonderful!  Except I do know that we’re getting a rad 8-bottle wine fridge and some sweet new Riedel wine glasses ;)    among other stuff!

So now the hard part is NOT looking at the lists every day.   Can I do it?   It feels so bad.   I want more.