Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Programming ...

That last post was depressing. I don't want it at the top of my page. So here is something awesome:

This picture was sent to me by Lawyer Bridesmaid in response to my bridesmaid package - which I should have photographed because I was crafty. There were ribbons. And fake leaves. It was wedding-y and impressive. Also there was booze. Anyway, I formally asked my girls to be my bridesmaids and this is how Lawyer Bridesmaid responded. Makes me obscenely happy.

I may be down a bridesmaid, but the ones I have left are FUCKING AWESOME. And I adore them. Especially Bridesmaids, Lawyer and Dentist. Because they read my blog and are amazing.

Missing.

So, generally I think that my blog posts tend towards the humorous, fair warning: I don't think I can make this post funny.

My sister is missing. For those of you who know me well, you know of my family's struggles with my sister, her addiction and her psychiatric problems. She was supposed to be my maid of honor, after her last explosion of crazy I decided that I did not want her in that position, that she didn't deserve it. I asked my oldest friend to take her place. I should have gone with my gut and never asked my sister. Also, I should not have allowed her to remain in my wedding party at all. And now, she isn't. In my wedding party, that is. I expressed this to her via text message last night because she ignored all my phone calls.

According to my mom and stepdad she has been using again. She wanted to take the car and go out with friends. She was told no. She threw a fit, as per usual. She packed a bag and left. She was picked up by someone my parents do not know. We have not heard from her since. It's been over 24 hours at this point. She's an adult and there really is nothing to be done legally. So now, we wait.

I was conflicted about writing this, I don't like talking about it. Or her. I'm torn between being so angry with her that I could shake her to death and being so scared that she'll die before she "hits bottom" as they say in the addiction world. At moments I hope she dies. I realize that that is an ugly thing to say, but it's what I feel. This blog is about planning my wedding, and one of the reasons I wasn't excited about wedding planning was the stress of my family relationships. At this point, if she comes home and doesn't go to rehab I don't think I even want her present at my wedding.

So, that's where I am today. Stressed and sad and angry and, well, down a bridesmaid.

I'll go back to being funny tomorrow. I got that invite sample in the mail so I'll post some more backwards photos.

Attempts at Pictures! One is Backwards!

This is going to be super fast because I have to go back to work in like fifteen minutes but I'm gonna post some pictures! Check it!

Here is the picture of my Save the Date ... which I took using Photo Booth on my laptop ... so it's backwards. Sorry!

Those are the walls of my kitchen in the background. Anyway pretty much everyone who reads this was sent a Save the Date, but I thought, "what the hell maybe I have other readers" Also it will be fun to post a weird mirror image of the postcard.

Now, here is a picture that I found online of the invitations we looked at! I will explain how we came to find them and more about the specifics of the invites and also I will post another bizarro backwards picture of some samples we got off of Etsy. But not now because I'm running late already.

These are super-sweet in that they sort of fold up into themselves and the RSVP is attached to the bottom and you rip it off and send it back - which means we only have to provide the return postage for a postcard and not an envelope ... Plus I think they're pretty and simple. That's sort of my aesthetic. Also I'm cheap. And I don't see why I need to have like four interior cards and an interior envelope and tissue paper and a million dollars in postage. Oh also they come with little personalized seals with our names on them. Cute, no?

Okay, I'm off to serve some wealthy, elderly, verrrrry southern white people some French food. Later, kids!

PS. I just previewed my post and I am totally giddy about this whole pictures on blog thing. I like pictures. They take less time to comprehend than paragraphs. Also they are pretty. Even the backwards one.

Save the Date, Y'all!

Do you hear that? What's that sound? I'm pretty sure it's the jaws of all my close friends hitting the floor as they flip through their mail to find ... my Save the Dates!* I know y'all never thought it would happen - and that is totes legit because I've been talking about sending them for, oh, like two months. In reality though, I sent them out only a couple days after my self-imposed deadline.

The major hold up in all this was my FMIL ... and the fact that it apparently takes three months to compile approximately fifteen addresses, nine of which are those of your siblings (not an exaggeration. at all. she seriously has nine siblings!) Whatever, anyway, I finally got the addresses! And with them, I got the addresses of seven couples I don't know (or know of). The thing about planning a wedding without the parentals bankrolling it, is that there's a lot more restrictions because of having a tight budget, but there's also so many more freedoms; like the freedom to make your own damn-guest-list. And limit said damn-guest-list as you see fit. Anyway, once I got over being seriously irritated about the fact that my guest list just increased by fourteen people, I took Fiance at his word and chose to believe that most of these people would not come but that they would send gifts. I like gifts. I dislike paying for strangers to booze it up at my damn wedding!

So I've been trying to figure out how to upload pictures to the blog (figured it out, I'm not entirely dim) and realized the larger impediment to this more frequent blogging with pictures of random stuff endeavor was actually the fact that I don't have a camera. Neither does Fiance. Mine is six years old and deceased. His is, well, lost. I lost it - on a trip I took without him. Whoops. Sorry, Fiance! Anyway my Dad gave us a little camera to use when we got engaged and now I can't find it - which is super lame. That being said I haven't really taken to looking for it too much. Anyway, I wanted to post a picture of my Save-the-Dates. But then it turns out I lack that ability. Sorry fans! Actually most of you probably got them in the mail, so, you know, go look at them! Hopefully on your fridge. You're supposed to put them on the fridge.

Next on My Damn Wedding - We looked at invitations! We found some that are perfect, and also cheap! The sales lady straight up laughed in my face when we stated our price range, but I soldiered on and victory was mine AGAIN! MUAHAHAHAHAHA

Victory, Bitches!!

This will be brief but I have to gloat: I did something right! Something wedding related!!

So, remember when I told you about the epic struggle to get Fiance to book our hotel blocks? Well, I had good reason to be so persistent (read: naggy/bitchy) on the matter. First: the Fall Foliage Festival, which - yes, boys and girls, is a real thing - is the same week as the wedding. Second: The possibility of the UVA football team having a home game was approximately 50% and with our wedding date dangerously close to most collegiate homecomings, I wanted to be sure we had rooms booked prior to season ticket holders descending upon expedia and stealing all our guests' rooms!

And, my paranoia paid off. In fact, UVA does have a home football game the weekend of our wedding. Unfortunately, this means that we cannot renegotiate for lower room rates. But I'm going to be glass-half-full on this one and dwell on the fact that our guests will have places to dwell during our wedding weekend! Yay, me!

I have been newly inspired to accomplish wedding related tasks! So much so that I will now email Future Mother In Law and I will call her tomorrow to tell her Save the Dates go out by Friday with or without her addresses ... I'll let you know how that goes.

A Totally Rambling Explanation of My Absence and Some Observations and Some Fun News and Then A Question!

Hello there, my damn wedding fans! Sorry for the totes lame title - I just couldn't summon the clever today. Also: Sorry for the lack of posting in the last couple weeks. My brain has been virtually bubbling over with fun posts to write but I figure I should start with an (admittedly somewhat lame and pathetic) explanation of my absence: I have apparently lost what I thought of as my exceptional ability to multitask. Maybe I burnt out in college, I don’t really know. I still have the ability to like, listen to music and read at the same time or, the always important ability to read blogs and stalk thefacebook while watching television. It would appear that my ability to compartmentalize (and successfully manage) my life like I did in college has gone the way of my ability to, say, drink to excess and then be a functional person the next day (like in college).

It could just be that for the first time in a few years I have a job that requires that I work at least 40 hours per week and more recently, closer to weeks in the 50ish hour range. To those of you with big boy and girl jobs (the kind that have, you know, set hours  during normal working times of day) you may be thinking: “What the hell, Mare. Those are not excessive hours” and you would be correct, loyal readers. You would be correct. It’s just that I work totally weird hours. From about 10 in the morning to anywhere from 9:30 to 12 at night depending on the evening with random breaks in the mid - late afternoon. This prevents me from engaging in normal big-boy-and-girl-career-world activities: like having a social life or a normal sleeping pattern or the ability to take paid vacation. Also, Fiance and I currently hold jobs in the region of South-Central-Bumble.

Really, the only normal adult thing I am capable of is: maintaining a relationship with Fiance long enough and well enough that he was all like “Let’s get married and stuff”. It’s a good thing he loves me, because I think most people would be like “You can’t even manage to pay your own bills without having a panic attack, why in the world would anyone be crazy enough to shackle themselves to that kind of crazy forever?!” But I digress. I am capable of having a very happy, loving, and mostly functional relationship with a man who wants to marry me. Planning the wedding, meh, I’m muddling through.

This brings me to the strange phenomenon of getting married when all of your friends are actual grown ups but none of them are getting married. My friends have big-boy-and-girl-jobs or are in school to have such jobs (the kind that add initials to the end of your name, you know, the bad ass kind) but are, with few exceptions, not really at the point where they’re perusing wedding blogs (except for funsies or as bridesmaids) and having to think about the payment options on a wedding dress. It’s weird - not bad weird or good weird. Just weird.

Not bad at all, because my friends (shout out to Bridesmaids, Lawyer and Dentist) are awesome and supportive and excited to help with wedding related things; but just odd. There’s not really anyone to say “OMG, we just bought our Save-the-Dates too, and here’s the cost break down of Magnets vs. Postcards” or “Bitch, you should have called the Board of Tourism to find out that the Fall Foliage Festival was the same weekend as your wedding before you fully committed to it, HAHAHAHA you are so dumb and no one will come to your wedding because hotel rooms will be too expensive”. (Ideally a friend wouldn’t actually laugh at me for overlooking something so completely obvious in wedding-world, but a warning may have been helpful. Also what my imaginary frenemy is saying is hopefully not true - the part about the people coming; not about the tourism. Because the tourism was good advice, frenemy, Good advice indeed).

What I said before about Fiance and I living in the middle of nowhere comes into play here as well. None of the movies about planning weddings involve doing it via the interwebs. They have fun montages with girlfriends/bridesmaids and cosmos (or something alcoholic, maybe some champagne, I don’t know), and like, mothers who are around to do stuff (even if in the movies they are usually lovingly, but irritatingly, and overbearingly planning The-Wedding-They-Wish-They’d-Had). My friends and bridesmaids are beautiful and wonderful and intelligent, but also not actually here (can’t blame them, like I said, this is South-Central-Bumble) and my mother is loving and wonderful but also absentminded and completely distracted by my crazy-ass-sister and the two year old grandson she lives with. And her fairly demanding full time job. Oh also, she lives in Florida.

But! That brings me to some fun things coming up in My Damn Wedding planning world! Mommy is coming! This is exciting on a few counts: I haven't spent any significant one on one time with Madre in legitimately 4 years; when she comes it will also have been almost a year since I saw her in any capacity for more than a couple hours. She is coming in mid-March from the 14 - 16 and …. Wait for it … actually, I’m going to need you to make a drumroll with your hands right now … she has offered to pay for my dress! WHAAAAAAT?! That’s totally crazy-town. And! And! And! I mentioned my budget but also that my dream dress was oh, you know, double if not nearly triple that budget and she said “Well, let’s not count anything out” …. DOUBLE WHAAAAAAT?! But actually it’s from her inheritance from my grandfather who died the day Fiance and I got engaged *whomp whomp* way to kill the moment right? But still, it is very much appreciated and I can’t wait to go dress shopping with my mom. Just like in the movies. Except without champagne because of stupid ABC laws.


** Also: to come in the next few posts, which I swear won’t take a billion years (or two weeks) to write:

     I go to St. Louis with Fiance and have dinner with the future-in-laws and FMIL becomes obsessed with my wedding colors being brown and PINK. Oh also, she does not give me the addresses. Still.

    I complain some more about people on the Facebook being more advanced at weddings and marriage and life than me. (Actual friend this time, I can’t unfriend her).

    I discuss the fact that I am, in the very near future, going to be a salaried employee. Also, will be paid to drink wine.

    And of course, hopefully the triumphant (if slightly traumatic - I imagine) dress shopping marathon with Mi Madre. Maybe I will have figured out how to add photographs to this crazy web-log thingy by then too. *Fingers Crossed*


Now for the question, if you haven't stopped reading : Dear readers, all ... 3 - 10 of you, what if I start doing shorter posts on a more frequent basis? And like the kind that involve showing you actual wedding crap and inspiration and stuff? Interested? Or is that not really in the realm of what this blog should be? Comments?