Wednesday, March 31, 2010

the plight of the groom-to-be

Alright so my step-dad has yet to send me the pictures of the Save the Dates (or of my venue which I took in February) so, in the meantime, I have laid out for my future Hubby what I really need from him for this wedding. This is how the conversation went:

bonejangles: 1. Help me with the ceremony
bonejangles: 2. Try on a tux... and put on a tux
bonejangles: 3. Help me get my ring [bo.j. aside: we have already picked out his ring, we found one online, this is him needing to go to the jeweler with me to get something that matches his self-designed gorgeous engagement ring 0.0]
bonejangles: 4. Show up and say I do
bonejangles: CAN YOU DO IT?!

boyface: ok

Man, I hope he's not this excited on our wedding day or he'll have to take a Xanex...

-Bo. J.

Friday, March 26, 2010

no steps forward, two steps back

So... about a month after my last triste with wedding gowns, I am heading back into a salon that *should* have the type of dress I want. (pretty sure my future husband won't read this blog... but i'm not taking any chances because he already peaked a picture of the evidence on my cell phone...when i send pictures to people [ie, MOH and mother] my phone automatically saves them... and i forget about them... it's not my fault!) And i said I was going to lose at least 5 pounds in a month. Five pounds, four weeks... how bad can that be?

Well last week I was sick for almost 6 days straight. Before that? I have no idea what the hell I was doing. I know that one weekend I was determined to get back on the horse but I left my ipod at home and then my wiifit ran out of batteries. So that horse ran off into the distance without me. Guess I wasn't really that determined after all...

Good news is when I want to the doctor for my plague-sickness-of-death (which I got from my lovely boyfriend/fiance/type thing, thanks a bunch love!) I had lost 2 pounds! Two pounds is about half of 5 right!? Not eating cupcakes at my 10 year old niece's birthday party and eating raw vegetables for breakfast paid off! Right? I feel terrible... I feel like my shape is gone... I know by next year, for my wedding day, I'll have lost it. But it's terrible to think that I couldn't lose 5 pounds in four weeks. My self esteem is way, way down and I would KILL for cupcake or a donut... or a donut cupcake which sounds AWESOME right now...

April is going to be crazy. I have meetings with 3 of my main vendors (photographer, officiant, cake maker). I have a wedding to go (which will be nice to eat other peoples food and drink other peoples booze and not have to think of one little bit of it) and I might steal her DJ, I'll have to see. I have an Easter dinner with the in-laws, a family dinner because my grandparents will be in town, and 2 separate 'free glamour makeovers' that I have won somehow. This weekend is dresses, celebratory dinner with friends, and the SAVE THE DATE MAKING BATTLE.

This will be nice because I will be able to post the making of my save-the-dates and it'll make it look like I'm doing more on this blog than complaining about my non-weight loss and my tiny, insignificant arguments with my mother. So, get ready for that all you non-readers out there! (I know my blog isn't interesting... this is more of an exercise in self-indulgence that my wedding might meant something to someone other than me... maybe that's denial I don't know...)SO looking forward to that (and the wine, portwine cheese, and chips & guacamole that will be included... time with mom and moh usually means we break out the salty winey thinger dingers)

Also... my executive bridesmaid (one of my best friends who's definitely 2nd in command in my troupe) is very, very pregnant (she's technically due the beginning of May but considering she's like 4 foot nothin', we're not thinking she's gonna make it to the middle of April). I'm really excited for her... and I want to be there. So I'm about bouncing off the walls excited about that one.

Soo... next post will have zero complaining and hopefully awesome pictures of Save the Dates (which I refuse to abbreviate to STD... for obvious reasons...) WOOT!


-Bo. J.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

it happens in the early morning..

I had my very first wedding nightmare last night. As someone who has woken screaming in the night with terrifying and visceral dreams, it doesn't really qualify as a nightmare. However, the wedding-related dreams I have had up to this point have been pretty much disjointed and nonsensical... and altogether not scary. The other night I had a dream that me and the boy went to have him try on tuxedos... and he was all for it. While this is altogether unrealistic, not terribly scary.

This dream can qualify as a nightmare because it was cyclical and showed me all the things I would not want to happen. Imagine if I woke up tomorrow and it was my wedding day. This of course means that everything that I haven't done isn't... well, done... As in the DJ I haven't hired obviously doesn't know that I want the bridal party to walk in to Eva Cassidy's Songbird and that I want to walk down the aisle to Etta James' At Last... so they play whatever song it is would normally be played and I think 'crap, i needed to do that.' And as we reached the end of the aisle (the boy wasn't looking at me either, as I have always imagined him being unable to look away, he was just looking around like the ADD patient from hell) I realize that my mother is sitting in the front row. My mother... who is supposed to be walking me down the aisle. No, it's my dad and stepmom (very bizarre seeing as my stepmother would never, ever, ever be involved in this part so long as I'm sane) So I get up to my future husband and we kneel down on the ground (no idea why...) and look up at the officiant who is standing on the other side of the bar. Wait... the bar? We are getting married in a restaurant that's attached to our reception site... And although it does have a bar in it... we are getting married under the huge stone fireplace very appropriate for a winter wedding... This is not how the bar is supposed to function. So we can barely see the officiant... and he makes some sort of joke, and everyone laughs... and then he starts talking to my fiance's brother/best man about computers and technical stuff and... like... not marrying us.

So as if this is not bad enough, we decide to start over and go back to the beginning of the day. This time, I've been screwing around all day and then I show up to get ready right before the ceremony is about to start (in real life, I plan to be at the site as early as FREAKIN possible to get everything set up and to start getting ready and doing other art director super detail oriented things that could possibly be done by someone else but won't because this is MY grand scheme... hopefully). So I get to skip setting up the favors and the centrepieces and show up just in time to be shoved into my dress by my mom and two girls who are not only not my bridesmaids but I also have never seen before in my life... I start asking for hair curlers even though I know I dont want my hair curled on the big day, I want it in a low chignon with a sparkly hair pin... which I didn't have in the dream because I haven't purchased it yet. So I throw my hair back in a low pony tail and am "ready" and the whole catastrophe starts over again. Except this time... we don't have an officiant. In a moment of determination to get this cluster off the ground, I take one of the groomsmen (again, someone I dont know) and we go to a store where someone boy and I know will do it for us because he has been a great friend to us and we know him so well! (apparently) Except this life saver is... dead. He's died. I don't know who he was supposed to be... but he's dead. So he can't do it. Meanwhile my fiance is behind me asking what he should do and I'm telling him he can't look at me. I just keep my back to him. And I think I'm crying or something. This part is really vague because I think I started to realize it was a dream.

Although none of that strangeness was anything out of the ordinary for my dreams, it was still disturbing and about 10 months out it has made me feel anxious... as if in the next year I'm going to forget to do things. I don't think I will... given my voracious attention to detail...

I have thus resolved to make sure that this whole wedding planning thing is not life-defining. I'm already tired of looking at other people's table numbers and the way they take everyday objects, wrap moss around them, and fancy them up to make wonderful and creative centerpieces. Creative I may be, but I am also lazy and have reached a very whatever stage of everything right now. I don't feel the need to hand make every piece of this thing. I will buy premade table numbers and no one will remember them and that will be ok...

... I think I'm going to email my prospective officiant...

As an aside, my fiance has the flu. He bought a fish yesterday and it was dead this morning. In sickness and in health?

-Bo. J.

Monday, March 8, 2010

i knew there was something I was forgetting while talking about wine and cheese...

I am currently pleading my case for a 3:00 wedding to my mother via text message (while at work). You see she wants it to start at 2 (why she gets an opion is beyong me... especially considering I want it to start a mere hour later)

I want an evening wedding, but getting married in the beginning of January leaves us with NO dayling after 5pm to do any sort of outdoor picture... thing. So I want 3:00... and I'm calling it an evening wedding and I don't care what anybody says... dammit.

So for the last few weeks when someone asks us when the wedding is, mom would answer "2:30" and i would answer, "2:30-3:00"... great for scheduling a vendor, by the way...

In an attempt to get my way (which apparently requires research, witnesses, and solid, tangible proof regardless of the fact that this is MY WEDDING) I looked it up on the internet and for our wedding date we are supposed to have sunset at 5:00 exactly (or as much exactly as you can predict a little less than a year out). So I tell mom this, stating that even if the ceremony goes until 3:45, we'll still have enough sunlight to get some pictures.

Her answer, "Unless it's overcast."

Obviously this is worth arguing over to her. We're down to a half hour's difference... I am quickly approaching the 'whatever' stage in this argument. (because quickly after the 'whatever' stage comes making a decision in my family)

In an attempt to end this post on a high note (because the next argument is the difference between formal and semi-formal... which started in the bridal salon and hasn't been spoken of since... and will probably enter the 'whatever' stage shortly) my future mother in law just sent me an email from her blackberry that stated I "have a finance that worships the ground [I] walk on"

lol

- Bo. J.

too much...

An entire weekend of bingeing has brought me a step back. It was my MOH's birthday... so after the wine and snacks on Friday, Southern breakfast Saturday morning with future in laws, Hockey game with boyface and brother, bar with MOH and hockey crew (including Brother's girlfriend who is a bridesmaid) until 3am (way, way, way, way, way past my bedtime even for a Saturday... oh sweet sleep i miss you), and then the recovery day on sunday in which i ate the snacks from Friday, and everything else I could possibly find in my apartment...

I have now probably gained weight since my last attempt at wedding dresses. I can't even button my pants today at work (thank GOD for babydoll tops and they're waist/lovehandle-forgiving nature. even though I am under the suspicion this might be a maternity top I bought off a junior's rack at Macy's...)

so... on to dieting. raw veggie's for lunch. gym. uck. I just want more cheese...

-Bo. J.

Friday, March 5, 2010

my life is cheating on my diet...

i literally just ate most of a piece of pizza and a pickle for dinner while waiting for moh to get here so we can wine and cheese snack (i like that these are verbs). I know what you're thinking... pizza and a pickle? isn't that the perfect new york recall? no, it's not. first of all... pickles and pizza don't go together perfectly... and 2nd of all it was deep dish pizza and I'm from NY so it was nearly a sin except for the fact that making anything else would have required work and staying in the kitchen, which would have ended up with me staring at the tobasco flavored cheese crackers until i opened the box and crammed have of it in to my face. by the time moh got here i'd be plump and sleepy and there would go my wine dreams...

iiiin any case... i at t-minus 4 weeks from round two of dress shopping that may actually have dresses that are what i'm looking for or something like that. so i want to lose the 5ish pounds that i meant to lose before round one happened.

in an unrelated note... my dog (who i am convinced is smarter than i am except for the fact that i dont chew on my own extremities with reckless abandon) is unbraiding a tightly braided Kong brand dog toy as of it were some canine jigsaw puzzle... except in reverse....

Concerned for anything i own that may appear to my dog as a puzzle...

-Bo. J.

a new blogger

It's obvious I'm a new blogger... but I am a writer... and bored mostly...

I am now planning my wedding (woot!) so I am going to blog about that. If I got anything done for the wedding I guess that would be best.

The only thing we currently have done is a venue... and colors... and other little things. Little meaning not very important and not really helpful to the moving forward part of any planning process.

Our dream venue was a ski lodge in Southern Pennsylvania. It was beautiful, held enough people, and was a great price! It took me weeks to get my mother on board with it - so obsessed she was about golf courses and not driving 2 hours to our dream wedding destination. When I finally convinced her (or, more accurately, the average price of wedding venues in Northern Virginia convinced her) I called the resort and found out immediately that they don't do weddings during the ski season. (aka, January. aka, the month I want to have my wedding in. aka, the first tears spilt over the newly born concept of getting married nearly a week after the proposal tears).

So after lots of hemming and hawing about resorts in Virginia that were also 2 hours away if not more may or may not have weddings during the ski months, we ended up at a nice little golf course in Northern VA. It's very pretty (of course, over 3 feet of snow dropped on us in January/February of this year and my prevailing love of snow makes anything that is covered with snow equal very pretty) and holds the amount of people we want (want meaning have to have because i have a big family and so does my boyfri-- fiance... i hate that word) and caters weddings and gave us glorious discounts on both reception and ceremony rooms along with three or four (can't remember now) hors d'oeurves (favorite part of every wedding) on the cheap (January wedding FTW).

OK, overuse of parentheses aside... we have one set thing for my wedding. Oh and my colors, aubergine and white and sparkle (the notion of 'sparkle' is very vague, i know... but its not really silver... just sparkle for snow... and the aubergine [also known as eggplant but aubergine sounds like a color not an icky vegetable] came from a set of curtains that i got and made me fall in love with the color... inspiration comes to you in mysterious ways).

it's amazing how weddings suddenly make people your best friends (though the option of free food and, especially, free booze would make me anybody's best friend). literally, i announced (via facebook, classy is my middle name) that i was engaged, i had old high school friends and girlfriends of fiance's friends who happened to friend me (verb) on facebook but never actually speak to me or have met me in person sending me messages to "keep them in the loop" (translated swiftly to, i want to be invited, can you tell me im invited, am i invited?) and, less archaicly (is that a word?) "can i come to your wedding?"

ok, i confess. i've been reading the lovely ihateplanningmywedding.blogspot.com and i have been inspired to write myself (and not only am i now talking to myself in her way of writing, but I also kind of find a little of myself in her writing and liked it enough to start doing it again yay! thanks!)... and of course i wanted to continue blogging anyway but i didn't expect to and then i just started typing because i'm bored at work. It happens.

Tonight I have wine and snacks planned with my lovely Maid of Honor - childhood friend who acted surprised when I told her she was my MOH (hate that too but also lazy enough to abbreviate... even though abbreviate has more letters than maid of honor and typing them both and over and over again actually took more effort than writing it out the first time... oh well) when she actually knew it all along - because it's her birthday tomorrow and I have a hockey game so I will only see her after at a bar. The wine and snacks and MOH thing has been kind of getting me through the day (along with reading ihateplanningmywedding.blogspot.com... i am an efficient master of the multitask)

Here's to port wine cheese, twelve dollar chardonnay, and blogs about hating the best time of your life!

-Bo. J. (short for bonejangles... just in case you wondered)