My hair is (basically) done, and the make-up artist should be here in half an hour.

Needless to say, things have already gone very wrong (from the standpoint of how planning is translating into execution). As an example, one of the groomsmen has been wretchedly ill, and though he is feeling somewhat better and is still coming into town (yes, I argued with him), he will not be standing up – he and his wife will just try to avoid getting too close to anyone, and we’ll find someone to stand in for him.

I’ll be back to blogging after the honeymoon.

It’s gonna be a beautiful day.

“The florist called. He can’t get the one and only kind of flower that he thought would work perfectly with your impossible-to-match bridesmaid dresses, so he’s talking about buying white flowers and dyeing them. When can we go look at a sample?” (That would be “Tomorrow after work, Alex”!)

“This is the hotel where you blocked rooms. One room for your block has been reserved. The block will automatically lift today. Please contact any guests who might need rooms and encourage them to book quickly.” (I know darned well more people were planning to book rooms, but with the last two things, I didn’t have time to deal with it, and begged a 48-hour extension.)

Yes, this was all within a 24-hour span. The last 24 hours, to be specific.

(Jill, I’m running low on Cosmo and Canuck couldn’t find it at our Kroger. Think you could score me a couple more boxes? I’ve still got a bar and a quarter of Sympathy, but the way things are going, that could change quickly…)

My cycle is all wonky. I’m afraid I’m perimenopausal. Canuck thinks it’s stress. He’s probably right.

I’m feeling broke, helpless, and anxious. And I have to go to Confession.

Oh – and I’m still calling people who haven’t RSVP’d. I’m not sure how much credence to give the claims of never having received the invitations, but anything is possible.

Did you know my sister thinks I’m about the most laidback bride she’s known? I’m very afraid of the other brides she’s known…

I’m not sure I can catch up on all the Jaibee challenge missed days in one night, so let me just list off a few things and we’ll see what else I have to add on tomorrow and the next day:

Today (T minus 17 days and counting): I love that he “gets” why we’re doing this, and keeps redirecting me to the bottom line. Which, of course, is that even if the flowers are nonexistent, the reception venue breaches their contract, and we get a whole bunch of un-RSVP’d guests…we’re still getting married. If my dress doesn’t come in, we can still get married. If someone has a psychotic break and runs through the church singing Edelweiss, we can still get married (after we have our burliest guests remove the unfortunate person from the church and restrain him/her).

We’re getting married. Period.

The other thing that’s been at the forefront of my mind today in terms of what I love about him is how good care he always tries to take of me. He can’t always do it – sometimes it’s just beyond human capacity – but he always tries, and he usually does a really good job.

So that’s Day 16.

I’m too tired to come up with more right now. I’ll try to do a couple extra tomorrow. I’m off to have more Cosmo and Sympathy (that’s actually Symphony, but I like Sympathy as a name), and to snuggle up with my poor under-the-weather sweetie.

Now that that’s out of the way… 

I called the florist, but the guy I need to meet with is out of town until next Tuesday. The woman I spoke with is going to see if he suggests a particular date and time when she talks to him this afternoon, and if not, she’s going to have him call me next week. Note to self: if he hasn’t called by the 10th, follow up.

I found a lovely, not too expensive purse online, and went ahead and ordered it. I didn’t want to spend a lot, and I especially wasn’t sure I wanted to go with a dyed purse (extra expense and what are the odds I would’ve carried an ivory purse again?), so I chose a pretty gold purse. (Definitely NOT this one! How do things that ugly even make it to the point of manufacture and distribution?!)

The shoes! They’re in my bag, and the shoe repair shop that’s handling the dyeing is open ’til 6 today. So I will stop there en route to Catechism this afternoon. I had a scare with the swatch when I was going to put my bag together last night…knowing that I am prone to losing things, I had tucked the swatch INTO the shoebox when I got it. Safe and sound, right? Well, fortunately, I checked to make sure it was still in there. It wasn’t. Apparently the shoebox had fallen open at some point…not good. Not good at all. So I tore my living room apart searching for it – finally found it, thanks be to God – and tucked it back into the shoebox, which I promptly stuck into my bag so I couldn’t then forget it this morning. Hooray for idiot-proofing! 

I still need to call my make-up artist, but at this point I’m wondering if I should wait until next pay. Hmm…I’ll balance the checkbook and then decide.

My big goal for this week, apart from what’s already been mentioned, is to get those thank-you notes written! Tonight is a good night for a big chunk of those, and I can do another installment tomorrow evening either before or after the firing range. I think what I should do, really, is set myself a goal of X many to do tonight, X many tomorrow, etc., so that I don’t get overwhelmed and feel like I MUST DO THEM ALL TONIGHT OR THE SKY WILL FALL, which of course ends up with me getting NONE of them done.

How are you all doing? 

That was disturbing enough.

Then Monday night I had my first…well, I dubbed it my “forest-for-trees” moment, where I bit my beloved’s head off for something that was really so not worth snapping at him over. Yes, he’d goofed up; but the reason I called it the “forest-for-trees” moment is that our relationship is the point, not whether every single detail of the day is perfect.

Today I had to take deep breaths and refrain from snapping again. It doesn’t help that I’ve got other stressors going on at the same time, though that’s not an excuse either.

I am going to have ice cream for dinner.

Lots of it.

Seriously - I never thought I’d turn into Bridezilla, but I think I might be on my way.

So depressing. This definitely calls for ice cream.

** UPDATE **

So last night I was on the phone with Canuck, having nearly chewed through my tongue to avoid snapping at him again earlier in the day. I asked him if it would be in the budget to go out for a nice dinner on Saturday (not Friday, because that doesn’t really fit in the spirit of penitential Fridays).

He said sure, he thought we could work that out. Then he said:

“It’ll help, right? I mean, if you’re still going to be Queen B*t*h afterwards, why bother, right?”

Yes, he was joking. Yes, I laughed. A lot.

It’s gonna be a long two months.

Canuck and Clam will each other wed.

I am very happy with it, and thank everyone for their advice and concern. And I will report back with further information as I have it.

As for the other dress, I think I will donate it. I think there’s a charity that’s specifically for taking wedding dresses and giving them/selling them cheaply to disadvantaged women.

Ahem. At least Bridezilla has not taken over to the extent that any of that made it into my reply…thank heaven for small favors…

** UPDATE ** Please note that this post is not about anybody that has ever, to my knowledge, read this blog. It is about a wedding vendor, not a friend, family member, or anyone like that. (I feel compelled to mention that because I suddenly realized that I have friends who have been behind in their e-mail correspondence too, but I promise that nothing anyone on here has said or done has elicited that response.)

Canuck and I will process in to Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus from K.618.

The hymn for the Presentation of the Gifts will be Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Communion hymn will be Joyful, Joyful.

The recessional will be the Promenade from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

I will try to find links to recordings of all of these later today so y’all can enjoy and envision…

After an initial rocky start, it was quite a good and productive meeting. It was rocky because…well, Canuck and I had decided we wanted to do what the GIRM suggests, and walk up the aisle together instead of him waiting at the altar for me while my dad or parents walk me up. I saw a post quite a while ago at Fr. Martin Fox’s blog that talked about how that’s what’s actually recommended; and I mentioned it to the Canuck, who thought it was a nice idea.

We both wanted to get away from the “bride as princess” idea, as the Sacrament really involves both of us, and the groom tends to end up a bit like an accessory at a lot of weddings. (And frankly, I was quite glad at the prospect of having someone else share the spotlight during that nervewracking walk up the aisle! With your dad, it’s not quite the same…) And my dad is very glad that we’re not having him walk me up the aisle; I’m sure he would do it if I asked, but he’s more or less of the opinion that it’s an outdated custom. Funny aside: I mentioned that to the priest who’s the main celebrant of our wedding. He said, in his Slovak accent “I think your family thinks, perhaps, too much about politics.” ROFL! Talk about your understatements…

Anyway. So we tell the music minister what we’re planning to do, and it turns out she’s never heard of this. So at first she says, “This is how we do it here…” and lays out the traditional bride-comes-last-with-Dad. When I explain that I was pretty sure it was what the GIRM recommends (blinking back tears because, well, I overreact to things sometimes), she says I’ll have to take it up with the pastor of the parish. And guess who walked into the music room not a minute later? Yup, Father himself, who says “Oh yeah, that’s allowed. In fact, we’re going to be having a meeting in August sometime with all the people who work on weddings – I’d like to bring the liturgy completely in line with what’s correct – so we’ll be working on moving to that as the norm.” Her response? “Oh! Okay, then!”

So – we got down to talking music. I confessed my dislike of Haugen/Haas, so apart from the Mass setting (there’s not much to be done to avoid them for actual Mass settings, I’m afraid, but I think it’s one of the better ones from what I’ve seen) and the Psalm (same thing with respect to not being able to avoid H/H, but it’s really not an overly Haugen-esque melody) , we are Haugen/Haas-free! Hooray!!!

I will post on the actual selections tomorrow, as the list is in the living room and my next stop is B-E-D. But I was just so excited that we’ve got this settled!

Well, almost settled. We still need to pick a piece for the “Flowers for Mary” portion. Ave Maria is so overplayed, especially the Schubert version; and my idea of some sort of solo or response of the Canticle of Mary elicited only the Gather hymnal’s option, which was…um, very Haugen/Haas. You know: the lyrics are changed to neatly fit rhyme and meter, and the tune is bouncy and a little trite. It reminded me of what a professor had said to me in a creative writing course in college, about a short story I wrote: “It wraps up too neatly – you can see too much of the ‘hand of the author’ in it.”

So – we’ll see. How many of you have been to a wedding where the recessional was the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition?

Canuck and I have ordered our wedding cake, deposit and all. Half a dozen of us (me, Canuck, TBS, Jill, and my father and stepmother) traipsed out to Mannino’s Bakery in Sterling Heights (which I highly recommend to anyone looking for a wedding cake or just some yummy Italian-style pastries – based on what I’ve seen thus far, they’re about as good as the fabulous Bommarito’s over here in St. Clair Shores)  for a cake tasting. We tried four flavor combinations: chocolate cake with yellow custard, yellow cake with yellow custard, marble cake with no filling, and cassata (yellow cake with cannoli filling).

Now, I shan’t tell you which flavor we settled on (though they were all quite tasty!), but I will tell you that despite their all being very good and tasty cakes, the votes were unanimously for the agreed-upon flavor. And Mannino’s had an excellent staff member (a member of the family – she couldn’t have been 25 or I’ll eat my hat, but boy did she know her stuff!) helping us, and we came up with a combination of two designs that I think is going to be simply gorgeous.

What I found funny: my stepmother knows me too well. She knows I would have to be browbeaten into buying a pedestal cake plate for this (and if I did it I’d grumble the whole time about how it wasn’t really necessary) – heck, I’m being browbeaten into wearing a headpiece with my veil! – so she wrote down all the particular dimensions and is going to go shop for one and buy it for us. That way she gets the satisfaction of seeing it look “just so”; I get the satisfaction of seeing it look “just so” (even though I probably wouldn’t have missed it to begin with); and no one has to listen to me moan about it. Win-win-win. 

I think I may dream about that cake tonight…