What's That, To-Do List?

... You don't like getting things crossed off of you? You don't get the glory of looming ominously over my head?!

To-Do List, you are evil

Well, I am not sorry. I got my ticket to Seattle! Courtesy of my father and his thousands of air miles, and Alaska Air. For some reason, you can use your American Airlines miles on other airlines. It has something to do with "OneWorld", I guess. My amazing, FMIL, told me about it as she sat through a chilly and wet lacrosse game this weekend.

So, I tell my dad, I look it up. I give him flight information, he books it. Happy me. Now we just have to hope that all the return dates are close, the marriage license gets submitted in time, and a judge can see us the day I fly in. Now the question is...

To buy a Little White Dress for the civil ceremony or not to buy? That is the question.

Why, Hello!

Sorry about the rampant disregard for blogging. Projects, school, work and generally being miserable have consumed my life the last few days. Wedding plans have been put on hold aside from planning my trip.

I'll start with the trip: I am going to Seattle in June to get married. Yes, that's right. You heard me.

You are all thinking to yourself, "But, Sara, you told me the wedding was in July?!" Never fear, my trusty followers. The July wedding is still on. However, we are getting legally married in June. A civil ceremony. Why, you ask?

Well, I'm not sure how much you know about military life, but as a civy (yeah, I'm hip and cool with military lingo-- that means civilian, non-military member, etc.) marrying into military life, I have a whole truckload of paperwork that comes due after getting married. Not only can we not get housing on base, but I can't get health insurance, access to base, etc, without being legally married.

Why June? Well, it's late enough that I can make it out there, but still a month or so before I move so we'll have time to get paperwork and housing before we actually make the long journey out there. Plus, if any of you are familiar with 'Gilmore Girls' will understand my love and excitement for a legal ceremony on June 3rd, our target date for said nuptials.

The important thing is, the Texas wedding will still go on. The ceremony there will be more about our families and us than just about getting paperwork done. We've actually agreed to not wear wedding bands (shocker!) until our July wedding out of respect for our families getting to see at least some vows taken before them. I love this idea, and the more I think about it, the better I feel about moving up there. I've already been stalking airfare and I've found an airline that has pretty good fares to Seattle from here. I'm excited.

On another note, it's been pretty hard trying to compile a playlist of songs for our wedding. I've had to think about what our first dance would be, but listening to "our songs" is too hard at this moment in life. I have just tried to compile it from memory, or choose songs that I like to dance (or awkwardly twitch) to. However, this moment in life has also gotten a LOT easier. I received these beautiful flowers this morning:

(personal photo)

This morning, I got a knock on the door at my mom's house. Awkwardly, I opened the door to a man holding these out to me. He says my name... stupidly I raise my hand like I'm back in grade school. I take the flowers in the house thinking maybe someone sent me some congratulatory flowers for the engagement? I don't know. I open the card, and they're from him. Tears well up, but do not drop. I am ecstatic that (1) he remembered my favorite flowers from oh-so-long-ago when I told him, (2) that he SENT me flowers! (3) he planned this before he left and got his mom to help figure out to what address they needed to be sent. A lot of effort went into getting me these flowers and I can't wait to hang on to them until they are moldy and dead.

I love flowers.

I Have No Clever Title

In these early morning moments before work, I have some extra time because I woke up an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off because sleep, apparently, evades me. I'm not a happy camper right now and any plans I had to be productive tonight have now been overshadowed by my need for sleep.

Homework has started to take over my life as the semester is coming to a close. We're only about four weeks out from finals, and thus, lots of projects and papers are coming due. What does this mean for my beloved nuptials in a mere 88 days?

Well, they've kind of stopped. I've not done anything wedding-related (besides blogging occasionally) for a few weeks. No progress has really been made, and I just can't find the time to do anything. Invitations need to be started soon as there is a lot of cutting and printing and gluing required. I'll get there. Time management, people. I've learned it well.

In other news, my loving groom is still unavailable and while I would love to talk to him about wedding plans, I can't. I do, however, talk to my poor roommates and his best man on a regular basis. [Sorry, Nick!] I just need someone to just bounce ideas off even if they don't help in making decisions. They just need to listen.

Sigh. Weddings are tough stuff, but for me, I am just ready to be done and married.

Quitting Cold Turkey

Dear Wedding Blogs,

That's right. Revoke my bride license! I'm through with you! Wedding blogs, you and I are breaking up.

I've had it with you and your crazy budgets. I'm tired of listening to people talk and complain about trying to feed, water and entertain one hundred people for twenty-three THOUSAND dollars. It's ridiculous and you make people like me, furious.

I love looking through your huge galleries of gorgeous weddings, getting great ideas and inspiration, and reading all of your touching stories. But, I'm also tired of reading about these thirty-somethings with their own tens of thousands of dollars to spend, or these twenty-somethings whose parents are footing the bill. Not all of us are like you. I'm really sorry to have to do this to you, but... we're just not on the same page. You live in a world of silver and china, and I live in the nickel-plated and plastic (reusable, not disposable) kind of world.

Some wedding blogs have great ideas for the more "budget-friendly" brides, and lots of great tips for how to stay sane and practical. But, a lot of that is a little too eccentric for me, or just a little too... "green". I love to recycle and use my resources wisely, but I do not want a burlap wedding dress held together with hemp. Nor do I plan on wearing black, fairy wings or being a nudist. You and I, remotely-sane-blogs, we're done too because you just can't fit in my lifestyle.

I'm sorry to do this to you, wedding blogs. You've been so great to me; but my last few months of planning... I want them to be mine. So, I bid you adieu and I will keep my own damn blog.

I promise it's you... not me.

Love,
Sara

Oh-- Hey, Thanks!

[Warning: This post has NOTHING to do with weddings. Enjoy the break.]
Thank you, OU, for making my life just thaaaat much easier. I really appreciate the lack of communication and attention to detail.

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Can you sense my sarcasm just oozing out of your screen? I got some not-so-pleasant news today. Not anything earth shattering, but definitely complicated some plans. Remember how I told you I had thirteen hours left? Weeeellllll, OU kinda lied.

My advisor told me I had 13 hours left. I found that to be ridiculously low considering I thought I still had around 20 hours, but I figured she was the professional, leave it to her. However, I got my degree check today to see where I stood for graduation (which is so soon it scares me!).

Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) I do still have 21 hours left. Three of those are my senior capstone class, but that still leaves me with 18 hours to do. Can I cram it into one Summer? Yes. Will it be mind-numbing and  awful? Yes. Can I do it? Yes. Am I going to? Duh.


My main goal is to be done with my Bachelor's degree by the time I move to Washington, or shortly thereafter. Which means being done in July or August. I do have some options as to how to complete this in time to get my diploma before I'm officially gone, but it's going to be tough. And a lot of it weighs on some "ifs" from other people.

Where does this leave wedding planning?

Exactly the place it was this morning. Moving along nicely. It really only affects me and Trenton. The degree will get done and it will be in my hand, it's just now more a matter of time. It will either be July or December depending on how things pan out. I've already got the ball rolling with these people who have all the power, and best case scenario...

I'll be walking in May, getting my diploma in July and being done with college!

Bridal Portraits--GO!

Thanks to one super awesome soon-to-be uncle-in-law, Mark, I got to do some bridal portraits this past weekend. He first told me of a "vision" of a bride in a street, parking lot, urban area, thing. After first being scared of ruining my dress, he explained the vision and told me what he was thinking. I was totally game!

The entire idea of professional photography terrifies me. I have no idea how to pose, how to stand, or quite frankly, be normal. I was sitting there awkwardly holding my elbow out, standing straight while still trying to maintain a "natural" face. How do those America's Next Top Model girls do it!?

For our shoot, Mark had scoped out a bunch of cool locations, some involving me draping my dress over concrete and standing on towels to protect my train. We started in downtown Dallas, in a residential area.

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The pictures would have the same out-of-focus backdrop with yours truly front and center. At this location, the weirdness started. I was completely awkward and had no idea what to do. My "sultry, come hither" look probably looked more maniacal than gorgeous. They tell me they got a good shot, so we moved on.

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Enter the Stoneleigh Hotel in Dallas. Mark had me in the middle of the parking lot with the marquee in the background. Again, the awkwardness continued, but because this was no longer my novice run, I was a little better at keeping my mouth shut and focusing. We continued here for a while until the bar starting hopping and  we were run off by cars constantly coming into the parking lot.

Even though I couldn't figure out how to stand up straight, smile with my eyes, or keep a straight face, I'm really looking forward to seeing the pictures! I've never gotten my pictures professionally taken (outside of dorky school photos) so I can't say that this was too terrible for a first run.

Thankfully, Mark is a great photographer, so I probably could've been picking my nose and he would've made it look like art. We're lucky to also have him coming to our wedding, so I'm hoping he gets some great shots as a guest! 

Have you had bridal portraits? Did you keep them traditional or go a little edgy?

Once. Twice. Three Times a Lady.

I'd like to take a minute [just sit right there-- lame 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' reference] to talk about in-laws. 

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While you could have an experience of hate [roll film on Monster-In-Law], mine thankfully has been quite the opposite of that. I want to brag on my future mother-in-law. [Family-in-law, really. They're all pretty fantastic!] 

She has helped out so much with wedding planning. She has come along-- willingly!-- to so many appointments. Choosing the venue: She was there. Florist appointment? She recommended the florist! Cake tastings, she helped pick out flavors. The one part of wedding planning she wasn't there for was picking out my dress. As you all know, my dress hunt didn't go quite as planned. I had wanted my mom, my sister, my best friend, and of course, my future mother-in-law. I quickly rushed over with the dress right after we bought it, but still. It wasn't how I had planned.

I talk to her pretty frequently. Mostly about wedding stuff, but also occasionally about our common thread--the man. We're even Facebook friends! [Yeah, she's hip. She's with it!] The day I realized her side note on Facebook said she was a mother to three super boys and one future daughter-in-law [Hey! That's me!], I was beaming. I was so excited to see that. I knew I was a "future daughter-in-law" but I guess it didn't hit me til I saw it in writing.

We have gotten to do a lot of wedding stuff together, and I'm so glad that I've gotten the chance to hang out with her. Most FMILs aren't as great as mine, but I got lucky. She even stuck through the crazy registry lady at one of the infamous registry stores! Great lady? I think so.

Do you get along with your FMIL? Has it always been that way?