Monday, February 11, 2008

T-186 Days

Yay! Step One of Wedding Planning is complete.

We'll be getting married, IM'H, on August 17, 2008. We have the location reserved, and can now begin filling in all the other details. Like caterers, band, flowers, dress, invitations, benchers...

Actually, it's already feeling less stressful. Just having one detail finally pinned down (and by finally, I mean a whole 2 weeks after getting engaged) feels like we're moving forward. That, and I'm blessed to be engaged to a man who can communicate. We're both learning quickly how to help the other cope with stress in ways that don't increase our own stress.

I'm on a roll. If it weren't so frigidly cold outside, I'd go leap tall buildings in a single bound...

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Twelve Days of Engagement

I've always considered myself a fairly stable person, emotionally speaking. I experience ups and downs, strikes and gutters, just like anyone else, but I feel like I generally manage to maintain an emotional balance.

And then I got engaged.

It's been 12 days since the day H-Bomb went from boyfriend to fiance, and I cannot even begin to count how many different times my emotions, thoughts and perceptions about the wedding (read: wedding planning) have flipped, spun, tied themselved into tangled knots of confusion, and done impressive gymastic moves inside my head. There are a moments when I optimistically believe that I can single-handedly plan my wedding without mortgaging either my soul or my first-born child (which I think I may have already pledged to my alma mater anyway). And then there are moments when a cold, harsh reality comes crashing down, and I begin to think that it is impossible. There don't seem to be that many in-between moments. They might be there, but they get so overshadowed by the extreme highs and lows that I can't be certain.

H-Bomb (and he will need a new nickname, but I can't think of one yet. Or, to be more honest, I can't think of one that I'm willing to post online) and I are both in agreement that we do not want our engagement to be 6 months of Supreme Suckiness. We both recognize that it won't always go smoothly, but we would like to be able to enjoy this period of anticipation. It is supposed to be a simcha, right?

So far, the one thinkg I've learned is this: do not start discussing wedding plans when one or both of you is running on an empty stomach. Do any of you wise, married folks out there have any real advice or suggestions on how to make engagement less sucky? (And by "real advice", I do realize that I've just rejected the immediate responses from just about anyone who graduated from OTI. Sorry guys.)