Nine Months To "I Do!" & Still So Much To Do



Greetings, Life Lessoners!  Life has become incredibly hectic over here at Lainey's Wedding Planning Headquarters...oops, I mean Lainey's Life Lessons.  The last month is almost a blur.  So much has been going on and almost all of it has been wedding related.  We've booked the church and the reception hall, met with the officiant, and registered for pre-marital counseling (a must for all good little Catholic girls, which I guess I am).  We've also met with the florist, hired a DJ and a photographer and had engagement photos taken.


And by we, I mean that my mother made most of the calls, printed up and handed me forms that needed to be filled out, and generally rules my schedule for the forseeable future. 

My Bouquet Inspiration Board
created on theknot.com

Never underestimate the motivation and determination of a Catholic mama that is getting ready to marry off her thirty-something daughter.  Between my mom and the wedding checklist at theknot.com, I am well on my way to being an organized and efficient wedding planner.  The Knot and I made nice once it stopped telling me I had forty things overdue that needed to be completed ASAP.  Did you know it lets you delete items that you don't need to do?   Once I had pared down the to-do list, created a few inspiration boards to get an idea of what I wanted our wedding to look like, and let my mom take over like the total Type-A personality that she is, everything started falling into place.


Nine Months to "I do!"
a.k.a. 270 days to go

The pace of wedding planning has been grueling.  I'm spending my evenings chained to my laptop looking for wedding ideas on The Knot and my weekends accomplishing a myriad of wedding tasks.  The weekend before the hurricane was no exception, other than the weekend wedding planning started earlier than usual.  Thursday after work I had to call my family's former parish priest and schedule a meeting with him to begin planning the ceremony side of things.  From there, I rushed out of work and raced home for a quick dinner with my fiance before my mom whisked us away to look at a reception hall.  The reception hall was huge, which is good since my family is large, and included an open bar with all of their reception packages.  Not bad!  Plus, it had the added benefit of never having been used before by anybody in our friend group, so it wouldn't seem like I recycled someone else's wedding reception.

Friday after work, my fiance could see that I was worn thin from all the wedding running around and nonsense, so he grabbed a couple of movies and treated me to a relaxing evening of snuggling on the couch while watching old movies.  We watched Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein" and Albert Brooks in "Defending Your Life".  It was a much needed respite before Saturday's wedding mayhem began.  I think we will have to make Friday date nights a "must" between now and the wedding.

Saturday was H-E-double hockey sticks!!!  It had the potential to be a totally productive day of wedding-related activities.  In the morning, I was scheduled to go try on wedding dresses for the first time (with my mom and my maid of honor tagging along) and then in the afternoon my mother had scheduled engagement photos at a local park with a photographer that my sister-in-law recommended.  Neither event went off quite as planned.

Let me preface this next paragraph with a disclaimer.  I am a curvy girl.  I was really nervous about going to try on wedding dresses because I always have a hard time finding things that fit my curves. Okay, I'll say it.  My fiance is a lucky man because my chest is too big to fit dresses that fit me everywhere else.  I had good reason to be nervous. 

Bridal shops only care a limited range of sizes in store.  They'll be happy to order you any size you want, but they don't necessarily have every dress there in every size to try on when you come in looking for your dream dress.  Due to this limited vision on the part of bridal shops, they have a horrid practice prepared specifically for the event that the dress you want to try on isn't available in your size.  Clips!  They squeeze you into the too small dress and because it won't zip in the back they clip the edges of the dress to your bra in the back.

Someone should shoot the evil troll who thought up that brilliant idea!  I can't even describe the experience of being pushed, pulled, and crammed into a dress that is two, three, even four sizes too small and then having it clipped to your bra, with the back hanging open like a breezy hospital gown.  All I'm going to say about it is that this bride-to-be did not smile so much as once while trying on any dress during my entire visit and left the store in tears.  Evil sizist bridal boutique trolls!

And after all that fun, I had to go get engagement photos taken.  It took a ton of make-up to make it look like I hadn't spent a good portion of the morning crying, but even with a new face plastered over my own I still wasn't the smiliest of girls.  I can't wait to see how the photo proofs turn out.