(As the sane one, I have reserved the right to edit all posts to bring them more in line with reality. You know, the one you can touch, see, feel and hear. Please see the end of this post for a jump back to reality.)

Another wedding milestone: James had his first wedding-related breakdown this weekend.

We sat down together to do the save the dates (finally!). James starts playing with our “Kennedy photo” that I wanted to use for the magnets. But the more we look at it, the more we each are uncomfortable with how we look in the photo (might have something to do with that 22 inch LCD monitor he has hooked up — I never want to see that many details of my own face). So we go to our engagement photo CDs and start looking for one from there. Then it became a question of black and white or color.

Finally, finally we have a photo we like. But then James says he doesn’t like the idea of the magnets.

Now, since we got engaged I have been blathering on and on about how excited I am to send out magnets, I love the idea, yay magnets. At one point James even said, “Oh, that’ll be easy since I have that magnetic paper. We can just print our own.”

But now he hates magnets.

He suggests postcards instead (I envisioned magnets on postcards, but this is fine, whatever). I get excited, because I think that if we just send postcards, we can save so much money: we won’t need envelops, the postage will be less, it will be nice and easy.

So we go along that route for a while until James says, “But how are you going to fit all that information on a postcard? Alternate hotels, things to do in the area, restaurants…”

I try to explain to him that a save the date is just a simple little card announcing the date.

That’s when the meltdown happens. He goes off on a whole rant about what a dumb idea it is to just send a postcard with no information but the date; how is anybody going to plan anything? And wasn’t I supposed to be gathering all this information anyway? Why aren’t I more prepared? And we never do anything the way he wants to do it.

I talked him down. If he wants to send out whole packets of info, I’m all for it. I suggest we come back to the project after he finishes his most recent freelance assignment (which he hadn’t even started at this point, so I’m sure that was stressing him out). That way I would have time to pull everything together.

As much as I don’t enjoy getting yelled at, it was kind of fun to hear him insist on making things just so. I love it when he cares about the wedding.

<rant>
Clarification:
We agreed to do the packets because none of my family lives within 600 miles of me and it would be good for planning purposes.

Just as with the bud vases, I didn’t agree to the magnets and there was a certain amount of facetiousness attached to “let’s print them at home” statement.

And furthermore, I fully understand what all of the other robots do with their save the dates. A small card with no info that gets sent out to make everyone look at their pretty (or not) faces a year before the wedding. I think it’s a waste of money to only send out a save the date with no other info. Chances are if you are inviting someone to your wedding you will keep in touch so there is no need to send out a mailing when you could get on the horn and yak their ears off.

By including a postcard in the packet and not as a separate mailed piece we still get to show off our pretty faces but I don’t have the postal service defiling my design with government mandated markings, i.e. postage stamps and routing info.

That all being said: Stop. It’s Hammer Time. </rant>

Further Clarification

The packets we discussed were for the welcome bags in the hotel room. We never actually discussed mailing them out. — JLK

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write this post. Just goes to show how crazy things are around here.

I bought my dress over the weekend. It was an amazing stroke of luck.

I made appointments at two salons, both in Waltham: Bride’s Choice and Yolanda’s. In that order.

Sarah and I headed out about 11 am for our noon appointment at Bride’s Choice. We got there about 15 minutes early. There was no one in the front room, except for a few mannequins displaying tuxes, bridesmaids gowns, flower girl dresses and, yes, wedding gowns. We looked around a bit before finally venturing upstairs.

At the top of the stairs was a doorway into what can only be called a warehouse of dresses. Row upon row, all bundled up in plastic. I have never seen so many dresses in one place.

The room at the top of the stairs had a mirror with a pedestal on the right and dressing rooms on the left. A counter displayed tiaras and other jewelry.

A small Italian woman was helping another girl with a dress. She said she’d be with us in a minute, and we just looked at tiaras for a while.

When she was ready for us, the saleswoman turned us loose in the warehouse and said to pick out anything I wanted to try on.

Sarah was my runner, bringing the dresses I picked out to the front of the room. I must have picked out about 20 dresses, each of which weighed about 25 pounds. Sarah later said she was glad we decided not to go to the gym that morning.

I was exhausted after going through all those racks. Now I had to try on all these dresses I picked.

The saleswoman set up a dress for me in the dressing room — literally. She set it up so it was standing on the floor and all I had to do was step into it. These dresses were so big!

I stepped into it and came out. She zipped me up and helped me to the pedestal.

I was transformed. A big grin came over me. There, in the mirror: I was a bride! I felt elegant and beautiful. I really couldn’t stop grinning.

The first three dresses I tried on I went over to the big mirror to check and the saleswoman began to worry that we were going to have to make this trek for all of them. But as I tried more on, I was able to see right away whether I liked them or not. Alright, I liked all of them, but some were definitely better than others.

The saleswoman culled a bunch for me, too, based on the floor sample size. She said some of them I just wouldn’t be able to try on at all because they were too small. They can, of course, order larger sizes, but they were having a floor sample sale, so any of those I picked that clearly wouldn’t fit she got rid of.

In the end, I kept coming back to the second dress I tried on, a Mori Lee floor sample that fit perfectly (a size 16, which I tried not to notice; I’m somewhere between a 10 and a 12 in street clothes, so this could be upsetting if I think about it too much). It was also the cheapest I tried on. Both Sarah and the saleswoman were pulling for it (I don’t know if she works on commission, but I really appreciate that she told me she liked this one best even before she looked at the price tag).

I cancelled my appointment at Yolanda’s: I bought it. I know I said I wouldn’t, but the price was too good: $350, with tax. I had the money and I was not going to find anything like this at this price, not even online (I looked!).

As for alterations, it will need very few: The straps tend to slip off my shoulders and it’s a little long (though Anne and Sarah think that if I wear a crinoline and heels, the dress might not need hemming). My friend Kara’s mom already offered to do it for me. There’s no beading at the hem, so it should be pretty simple.

But now I have to worry about it not fitting if I lose weight! This seems so backward.

I can’t believe there is a wedding dress lying on the bed in my guest bedroom. I keep sneaking peeks at it when I go by. James has seen some of it, of course (it’s in clear plastic and we live together; it was unavoidable), but I’m trying to keep him from looking at pictures of me in or even looking at it too long. I’m not horribly superstitious, but it makes me nervous.

I hit another milestone: My first wedding-related nightmare.

Okay, nightmare is a little strong. Unpleasant dream would be more accurate.

And it wasn’t actually about the wedding. Instead, it was about some sort of one-year-til gathering that we were having. Everyone important (family, friends, those types) got a room at the Wake Robin so that we could do a bunch of planning stuff.

But I got the wrong room. And I was all set up in the wrong room and ready to share it with Kara when I remembered James was coming and we were supposed to be in the honeymoon suite.

So I dragged all my stuff there, but the sheets hadn’t been changed and the cleaning crew had left for the day.

And then everyone showed up: Mom, cousins, friends, all hanging out in our hotel room. And James said he just wanted some time alone with me. He asked if we could go out for drinks.

So I try to get everyone out of the room and notice that James is now missing. When I find him, he says, “Don’t make everyone go. I’m trying to hang out with them.”

I woke up a ball of stress.

This weekend is trying on wedding dresses in Boston. I’m going to try to take some photos, but these boutiques can be pretty strict about that. They don’t want you to copy the design somewhere else, or find it online. Would I do that?

Today is exactly one year from our wedding. I’m calling it our negative anniversary.

We went out to dinner to celebrate.

It’s amazing how much stuff we have figured out already:

date
ceremony location (and officiant)
reception location
menu
wedding rings
engagement photos
photographer (though we haven’t officially asked her yet)
wedding party (though we haven’t officially asked them yet)

I feel like we’ve got a lot of the major stuff out of the way and just have the details to figure out.

Yay! One year to go!

Over the weekend, we got a postcard in the mail from our local jeweler, Elizabeth’s in Millerton, N.Y., announcing a moving sale. They’re building a brand new store a few blocks away from the current one and should be moving in three weeks.

I told James we needed to go look at rings NOW. We had already planned to buy from them (part of our “shop local” wedding, plus I interviewed the owner for the paper and really liked her) and we really should take advantage of the sale.

He reluctantly agreed.

The reluctance was, I think, because now he has to make a decision. He always seems nervous about picking out things that he’s going to wear. He wants to look good and doesn’t really trust his judgement, though if you ask me, he has good taste. I mean, just look who he’s marrying (wink).

So we went over at lunch time. I made James try on just about every ring they had. He was pretty tight-lipped about what he liked (though he did offer that he didn’t like the hammered look), so I just picked my favorite. Both James and the clerk agreed.

We chose a white gold band with lines around (I just don’t have the right vocabulary to describe jewelry — I was going to bring a camera, but I forgot it). The lines are highly polished while the rest of the ring is more matte. It’s classy and understated, exactly what James was looking for.

I found a band that I really liked the last time we were in Elizabeth’s and I had Betsy write down the style number for me. It took a couple of minutes to find it again, but once we did, I remembered how much I liked it. It’s white gold with a few small diamonds (much smaller than what’s in my engagement ring). The band has a wheat pattern that compliments the detail work on the engagement ring.

I have standard sized fingers, apparently, because this band fit right off the shelf, too. James’s is a size too big, but since the sale only applies to items in stock, we got it anyway and will have it resized. The clerk said that the manufacturer will do that for free within a certain time span.

Also, we decided to put the rings on layaway. Since we don’t need them for a year, it seemed to make sense to pay for them more slowly and let the money sit in the bank account acruing interest for as long as possible.

We saved a good chunk because of the sale and will hopefully be saving more because of the layaway plan.

And I loved the way the ring looked on James’s hand. I think I’m almost more excited about his ring than about my own.

…and no I will not re-tape your computer’s power cord. Time to buy a new one.

-Signed, The Sane One

For those concerned (myself not included in this group) all tests came back normal; holter monitor, echocardiogram w/doppler and color (awesome to watch by the way) and my blood work.

Apparently there is nothing wrong with me. If I keel over suddenly before the wedding I leave everything to Jenny.

Doctors,  bah!

-Signed, The Sane One