Measi's Musings

Archive for August, 2005

First– a huge thank you to those who responded via comments or by private email to my fears yesterday. Lots of suggestions and encouragement, and two very lengthy emails with two close friends who are at different stages of this wild wedding planning thing-a-ma-jig, and I’m feeling a tiny bit better. Hopefully that’ll grow with time. And maybe a couple of verbal brawls with my mother. Which will hopefully lead to things calming the fuck down.

Upon the advice of four people, I’ve registered an account on the Kvetching forums at IndieBride. Lots of different topics over there, and I beelined to the one simply named “Anxiety.”

Me? Anxiety? Tell me one you haven’t heard…

A big part of what really set me off was a discussion with my mom on Sunday, in which she made a comment about reserving a hotel for the reception in downtown Providence, but that we should just have the ceremony there because “we didn’t really need to have it outside.”

Well… yeah, we kinda do.

And my mom has been told why this needs to happen. I’m already making some allowances– by my own choice, with no pressure by others– to NOT have a full Pagan handfasting. This is because, despite my openness about my faith, I’m not completely “out of the broom closet” when it comes to extended family. My parents know. My brother knows. Anne (dad’s wife) most likely knows, but already thinks I’m weird, so probably thinks it’s some weird New England thing. And I think my Grandma Lillian knows. Mom’s side of the family? Nope. Lots of conservative Polish Roman Catholics. A couple of them would probably be okay with it, or at least not say anything.

But breaking the news to my grandfather that we would not be getting married in a church was a bit difficult. He was upset, but I told him that neither of us belonged to a church. And I had to remind both my mom and my grandfather that neither of us would be able to get married in a Catholic church anyway. I was baptized and received my first communion in the Episcopal church. Erich recalls receiving first communion, but doesn’t know the denomination beyond “Protestant.” He’s not particularly religious, although spirituality crosses his mind from time to time. And I hold mine as more of an internal ethics/morals structure than an open practice.

Having the ceremony outside is MY way of expressing my faith during the ceremony in a way that’s meaningful to me without being obtrusive to other people. And really– if we’re shooting for an autumn wedding. It’s NEW ENGLAND. You get married out under the gorgeous leaves!! Instant ceremony decoration– and one that we couldn’t top anyway.

So having a completely detailed Pagan handfasting during the “public wedding” is something that I don’t want to do. At least not openly. A later handfasting, just with friends and us, might be in order later. And that’s something we don’t have to arrange a big whoop-de-doo about. Maybe we will– but I’m not worrying about it.

With the “Melissa’s not marrying in a church?!?” issue now out on the table for family consumption, it’s time to start getting into some of the grittier things of a wedding. Like… picking a date…. you know, one of those minor things. And everything’s just hitting me at once. Really stupid little stuff that I don’t need to be worrying about yet– like how we’re going to address engagement and wedding invite announcements when we have two sets of divorced parents, and one of the four has remarried… because we don’t need some retarded “Jennifer, Thomas, Deborah, and Arthur… and Anne (kinda)” thing going on for our announcements.

Although I am leaning toward an amusing reply card like I saw in the forums. “will be there with bells on/won’t be there – childhood bell issues.” Indeed.

Hello, IndieBride… I am about to become your slave…

I hope it’ll be okay. It’s just that I had to forcefully shove wedding stuff off my plate with all of the moving. But it seems like family and co-workers pushed off the “so… when’s the wedding?” questions just until they determined we had a box unpacked at the house. Whammo! It all starts back up again. “When’s the date?” “Have you bought a dress?” (Dude, we’re trying to figure out how to adjust our finances due to the friggin’ flooring bill at the moment. I can’t buy new bras, let alone a wedding dress at the moment).

And Ivy… per your email… you may have to go dress shopping with me. Because I’m certainly not going with my mother. I can only imagine… *shudder*

At this point, the only goals I have for the wedding for the next say, two months or so, is this…

1) Check out reception places downtown.

2) Pick a date– either randomly or by necessity in a deposit on a reception spot.

3) Thereby having a date so I can start researching what I’ll need to find an officiant (since different officiants have different preferences to meet with couples beforehand).

4) And really casually, start putting together a backbone of an invite list.

Maybe we can just get married and not tell anyone… *scratches chin*

I’ll quote myself (roughly) from entries earlier this year… Come August, I’ll start thinking about the wedding….

So August is here. And I’ve found and unpacked the bridal magazines and my wedding planner. I have the copy of the wedding book that Minarae sent me. And I’m honestly just scared to death of this whole ordeal for two reasons:

- I have the personality that could fall into Bridezilla mode
- My mom most definitely has the potential to become Mom of Bridezilla. In fact, she’s already started.

And to be honest, there’s a good portion of me that just wonders if going through all of the steps to plan a wedding is something I want to do. The pressure has been put on me by several family members, particularly from my mom. I’d like to actually enjoy my wedding. But already, it’s taking on that stressed-out feeling that my college graduation entailed (which wound up not being a particularly happy day) as the “but this needs to be done, Melissa…” words (and chastizing tone) has crept into my mom’s voice. My mom rarely uses my full first name when talking with me. If she is, it’s a sign of exasperation. If I let her run this, I’ll wind up with a Polish Wedding of Epic Proportions ™. And while it’s fun to attend one of those weddings, I don’t want it to be mine. Polish food=good. Bring it on. Length of parties= Oh. Goddess. No.

But I’m going to give it a try, and hopefully can get past all of the stuff I’m seeing in magazines and find something that appeals to me for a wedding. It’s just all so frighteningly…. girly. Beh.

If, by some strange miracle, I actually find a dress… I’ll be posting the photos to my notify list:

**********************************************************

**********************************************************

Maybe all of this dread of wedding planning is just a sign of complete, utter laziness on my part. I don’t know. But the whole thing just screams of “what are the Jonses doing??” comparisons, and I’m completely turned off by them.

Hopefully something will inspire me…

This weeked I managed to nearly complete the new blog template… but for some reason, the simple act of cutting and pasting is beyond my capabilities. I managed to kill not only the new working template, but my old blogger template as well.

To the point that I just. don’t. care.

So we’re going green for a while. And maybe, when I’m in the mood, I’ll try fixing the template I *wanted* to use. Because it’s actually nearly done. But I can’t copy and paste it into the template for my normal blog and have it work. Why? Who knows. (Who cares.)

*sigh*

Yes, I’m feeling helpless.

But at least I have a working template– with links — this morning. Unlike last night.

~ Mel.