1. Working like a fool.  Then, I’ve worked a little more.  When I’ve had some free time, I’ve relaxed by working a bit.  Are you sensing a pattern here?

2. Paying down wedding costs thanks to the above.  Those extra hours at work helped me afford my wedding dress.

3. Teaching a summer “super session” course.

4. Adjusting to new medicine for ovarian problems.  The last time I tried to take this medicine, I lasted four days.  I’m up to 30+ days so far without giving up.  Still having plenty of ugly side effects, but it is amazing how wanting to be able to have a biological child one day can encourage you to suck it up and just take the medicine.

5. Counting down the days until Paul moves here.  Today is four months until my wedding day… but only one month until Paul moves here.  YES!

6. Preparing Snuggles y Cuddles for the fact that, in a few months, there is going to be a new man of the house.  They do not seem to feel threatened by Paul’s impending arrival.

7. Contemplating wedding decisions.  I’m having trouble planning the reception due to a variety of factors mostly based around the fact that the place I had originally booked for my wedding reception is a no-go.

8. Trying to figure out ways to have a nice wedding without excessive costs.  I just can’t reconcile an expensive wedding with the fact that Paul and I may get to adopt a child one day.

9. Considering elopement.  Just kidding.  Not really.  Okay, I’m kidding.  Kinda.  (Dad, this is just a joke.)

10. Searching my house for spiders.  Three days ago, a spider bit me while I was asleep.  This means war.

What have you been up to?

but I know you’re not scared of anything at all.

Don’t know if Snow White’s house is near or far away

but I know I had the best day with you today.

And I don’t know if you knew,

so I’m taking this chance to say

that I had the best day with you today.

And I don’t know if you knew

so I’m taking this chance to say

that I had the best day

with you today.”

The Best Day, Taylor Swift

– — –

You all made every day I had with you the best day.

“There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child — and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own.” – Robert Brault

YAY!

(That’s Kelly in pink, me beside her, Christan next to me and Brandy in the yellow.)

My weekend with my friends was wonderful and still bittersweet at the same time.  I’m going through a situation in my personal life right now where I’m completely estranged (by my choice) from someone who I really, really don’t want to be estranged from at any time, but especially in the months leading up to my wedding.  The problems have been going on for over six months now and it has left me pretty quiet, as you’ve probably noticed.  And, well, defeated.  I feel very, very defeated.

For the last few months, I have put a lot of my life on hold hoping that things would get better and that I would feel like it was appropriate to ask the person to be a part of the important events happening in my life right now.  I’ve certainly tried to fix our relationship and I think the person has tried in their own way, but for various reasons that I don’t want to get into on a public blog, it just isn’t working for either of us.  Relationships are just hard, you know?

One of the biggest things I’ve been holding off on was looking for a wedding dress while I waited for things to get better.  Things have not gotten better, though, and I didn’t want to face it.  Luckily for me, my friends decided to help me face it.  A few weeks ago, my Knoxville-based bridesmaids gently prodded me into starting to look while we were together one night and, over Easter weekend, my Memphis-based bridesmaids took their turns helping me.  Then, this past weekend, Cate and I went and found the perfect dress which I’m planning to order as soon as I get paid this month.  Just thinking about how my friends have stepped in to try to help a painful situation be a little less painful has made me more grateful than ever for them.  I feel like they’ve kind of circled their wagons up around me and said “We’re not going to let the time leading up to your wedding be a bad memory for you.  We will help you make good memories.”

But the other thing that has made me thankful for them is that they’ve been willing to speak up when they’ve seen me be in the wrong about the situation, too.  The situation has caused me to feel a wide range of emotion — from sadness, to anxiety, to jealousy — and, more often than not, it has caused me to lash out in anger because I have no other way to express how deeply hurt I am by this relationship.  I hate what this situation has brought out in me and how I choose to react sometimes.  I will start thinking about how hurtful the situation has been and, before I even know it’s happening, I’m suddenly lashing out at the person or overeating my feelings of rejection.

Anger has never been a big part of my personality so I have been so surprised to see what control it has been able to have over me.  Sometimes, when the anger has welled up in me, I lash out towards the person who has hurt me because I want them to know and grasp how badly I am hurting so that they will change their behavior.  A few of my friends have happened to be near me when it has happened and have spoken up each time to say “You know, you really shouldn’t react that way” or “You’re better than that.  You can handle that better next time.”  I’m grateful for the fact that they’re not afraid to say things like that to me.  They agree that the events that have happened over the past six months have been profoundly hurtful in my life, but they also know that only I am responsible for how I react to the events.  It takes a lot of guts in a friendship to speak up like that, you know.

I am really disappointed that there is any bitter in the sweetness of the months leading up to my wedding.  But, if there is going to be bitter, I’m glad for friends who help take the edge off of it.

Paul and I are hoping to book our honeymoon by the end of May so that we can check that off the list.  Because of regulations with his visa, we cannot leave the US for our honeymoon (you cannot go out of the US for three months after your wedding date).  For visa purposes, they recognize Hawaii as an acceptable place to go but not the US Virgin Islands.

So, I’m thinking we basically have three options: Florida, Hawaii or Hilton Head, SC (ha!).  Our dream honeymoon would be a cruise to Hawaii, but I can only find one cruise that goes only to Hawaii and it leaves on our wedding day, which makes it impossible for us to go on for the honeymoon.  So, I guess a cruise is out.

We don’t want to go to theme parks and we don’t want to go anywhere cold.  Part of me thinks it would be fun to go to Hawaii (because when would we ever go again?!) and then another part of me thinks we should be conservative and just go to a quiet beach in Florida.  Neither one of us love to just lay in the sun, but we do love the idea of a beach, especially if there were umbrellas involved.  Keep in mind that we’ll be going in mid-September.

Any ideas?  And specific recommendations of hotels, resorts, etc.?  It’s time for me to harness the power of the blog readers for good.

Happy Easter!

Saturday evening, my dad and stepmom came to town so we could have dinner.  After we ate, we went over to the chapel where I’m getting married because I wanted to show them around.  They got to see the inside for the first time and we walked around the outside of it figuring out where tables and chairs are going to go for my reception.  Then, we went to the building where the rehearsal dinner is going to be and figured out set-up there, too.  I was so excited to have them there, helping me with wedding stuff, that I felt like I might start bouncing off the walls.  Because most of my bridesmaids live pretty far away, I’ve done most of my wedding stuff alone so far.  To have people to do wedding things with — including my father, who passed along the event planning gene to me — was so much fun.  In fact, it was so fun that I drove up to their house the next day so we could sit in their living room and talk about my wedding for a few more hours.

This week has been pretty busy at work but I’m excited because it’s a short week for us and I’m going to be using that mini-vacation time to head to Memphis to see three of my bridesmaids!  So far our plans include spending the night at one house so that we can stay up late talking and going in search of the perfect wedding dress for me.  I feel so bad for my friends already because living alone for months on end has caused me to have a build up of WORDS, LOTS OF WORDS THAT NEED TO BE SHARED WITH OTHER HUMANS.  I’m a talker as it is but living alone?  With two dogs as your company?  MANY THINGS TO TALK ABOUT WITH HUMANS.  By the time I leave to head home on Easter Sunday, their ears will probably be bleeding from ALL THE TALKING built up inside of me.

Speaking of words, last night I was texting one of my best friends, Ashley.  Ashley is one of my longest-running friends (we met in middle school) and she’s my assistant for my photography business.  Ashley has two kids and an aversion to actually talking on the phone, so our friendship is really built around texting, which works great for me too.  We have the best conversations over text and, last night, something happened that caused me to Google “how to take screenshots of an iPhone” because I wanted you to see it for yourself.  Before you read it, you should know that Ashley’s currently on the Daniel fast and she hasn’t had meat in awhile.  Not thinking about that, I randomly told her that, for Easter, I was going to buy her some baby bunnies and chicks.  I actually would never do it (I like to give chocolate for Easter, not things that require care and maintenance) but it just seemed like a good, threatening thing to say because Ashley is more of an animal tolerater than an animal lover.

Um… happy Easter?

1. Has anyone else realized that this Sunday will be April Fools Day?  It makes me want to go join a Baptist church really quickly so that I could pull the ultimate Sunday morning prank: announce, to the women’s Bible study, that Beth Moore is coming to speak at the church but that we don’t want them to publicize it in the community because Beth wants to have time to “take a picture with each one of them individually” and “spend a few minutes listening to each and every one of their life stories.”  Then, be all “Just kidding, everybody.”

2. Speaking of spiritual matters, I would like to ask you to consider joining me in prayer that the maxi dress remains in style for yet another summer.

3. Speaking of dresses, a couple of months ago, I won a free wedding dress of my choice from an online store (actually, one of my bridesmaids won the drawing and gave the prize to me).  I picked a dress and it arrived this week.   My boss and I shut the door to my office, closed the blinds and I tried on the dress only to discover I looked rather terrible in it.  So, I’m going to try to sell the dress since it’s brand new with tags attached and find a wedding dress that actually looks good on me.

4. Speaking of my boss, she is going to Dollywood today with her son.  I am jealous.  I serve as proof that you can take the girl out of the small country town, but you can’t take her love for Dollywood out of her.

5. Speaking of Dollywood, I miss the years I would buy a season pass for myself and MacKenzie and take her every chance I got.

6. Speaking of MacKenzie, I miss the fabulous five.  And my foster children.  And having children to take care of in the evenings after work.

7. Speaking of the evenings after work, last night I watched Sarah Palin’s Alaska on Netflix.  This brought me to two conclusions: 1. I need Paul to move here quickly so I can get a life and 2. I think Sarah Palin is really pretty.

8. Speaking of Paul, we’re waiting for the embassy to send him a letter saying “Here’s an interview time.”  The interview is the last thing he’ll do before moving here.

9. Speaking of the embassy, do you all remember the closing credits for the movie The Proposal?  The part where Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds are being interrogated by the immigration officer?  I kind of want to make a spoof of that with me and Paul to be shown at our wedding rehearsal.

10. Speaking of Sandra Bullock, I have started a new habit of laying in bed at night watching random clips from The Ellen Show on my iPhone (last night I watched one of Sandra Bullock on the show, which is what made me think of this).  You guys, I’m addicted; Ellen is hilarious and I love a good celebrity interview.  Still, the fact that my life has come to the point where I lay in bed at night watching YouTube videos might suggest that it’s time for Paul to move here.

(*None of these things really matter in the grand scheme of life, of course.   I just enjoy a good dose of party planning and planning your own wedding is like waking up on Christmas morning to find out that you finally got the Barbie Pool Party set complete with inflatable pool and plastic water slide.)

With having photographed 19 brides last year, it was fun to see what details were important to each bride.  It always made me laugh when I photographed a bride one weekend who was really, really into her dress and shoes and then, the next weekend, photographed one who was far more into throwing a fun reception.   Every girl is different and, as I’ve started planning my wedding, it’s been fun to see what I care more about than other things.

For example, I have been WAY more into picking out my save the date cards than a wedding dress.  I realize that is strange on so many levels, but I have always loved anything in print.  I am the queen of cute note cards, writing paper, etc.  I love it — I just can’t help myself.  So, I knew immediately that one of the ways I would want to use my wedding budget was to have save the date cards.  A lot of people skip them to save money (which I totally understand!), but for me, it was important that I tell people the wedding date in advance so that it would definitely be on their calendars early.  I read through my etiquette books (fun fact: I like to read etiquette books for enjoyment) and learned that I needed to send the save the date cards six months before my wedding date.  So, I got cracking and here’s what I ended up with!

(click on picture to enlarge it)

Do you like it?  I chose this one for a lot of reasons.  First, it had colors I loved.  Secondly, I love the light script writing that can be seen laid over the images of the birds.  It reminded me of handwritten letters, something that Paul and I have both loved about our relationship.  The card also looks very “British” to me — almost like an English garden.  I had to work on Paul a bit to get to him to accept the idea of having birds on it* but I think he ended up liking it in the end.

(*By work on Paul, let’s just say I may or may not have forced him to watch the clip from The Notebook where Noah says “If I’m a bird, you’re a bird” and then followed it by saying “Are you saying you don’t want to be a bird with me, Paul?” with big, doe eyes.  I think Paul was so confused by that point that he just gave in.)

I sent out the cards last week which means one thing: now it’s time to start picking out the actual wedding invitations!