The Ceremony

As on top of things as I feel like I have been throughout this wedding planning process...there is one little item that I feel like I haven't paid much attention to: the actual wedding ceremony.  Just a minor detail...as it turns out, this isn't just a fun party we are throwing, there is actually a point!

This conclusion became glaringly obvious to me after Matt and my visit to Simon Estes Amphitheater for Valentines Day.  Up until that point, it seemed only natural that the ceremony would go flawlessly, why should I worry about it?  So as I'm tromping through the snow toward the stage, Matt brings up the interesting point that there are no stairs on the front of the stage.  Good to know, otherwise I would have had to make a human pyramid out of the groomsman to get myself up there!  (I don't exactly have a 5 foot vertical, especially in a wedding dress.)  Next issue - curved, intersecting sidewalks.  Pretty, yes.  Conducive to walking town the aisle...not so much.

The beautiful but slightly inconvenient sidewalks

I decided I needed the help of an expert, so I emailed the wedding coordinator at the adjacent Embassy Suites asking for her input.  Out of the goodness of her heart (because she's not getting my business due to scheduling conflicts) Hailey was kind enough to give me the run down on how weddings typically go.  These are not insurmountable obstacles, we'll figure it out.  I do think I'm going to ask her if she has any upcoming weddings scheduled that I could watch from afar to see how they do things.  I'm not above being a creepy wedding crasher.

So now that my attention is turned to the ceremony, I'm feeling better about the fact that this wedding will be organized and hopefully flawless.  We'll see!

The Honeymoon Debate

Since we got engaged, Matt and I have been constantly answering the question "where are you going for your honeymoon?" with a shrug.  We know this: beach, warm, sunny, lots of activities.  I hate laying on the beach (if I am anywhere near water, I need to be in it) and Matt goes crazy with nothing to do.  After gathering and sorting through an overwhelming pile of materials, we have decided on Jamaica.  Done.  So yesterday we decided to sit down and book the trip.  Easy, right?

...Wrong.  You would think booking an all inclusive, adults only resort would be a piece of cake.  Little did we know that every brochure we looked at would seem like the perfect place to go, and that there would be 75,000 different resort options!  I'm pretty sure we need to take about 7 honeymoons because I want to go to every single place!

I would like to go right now, please!

We are now in the debate of Sandals vs. Couples.  Both similar...both with multiple locations, both with lots to do.  It seems that Sandals has slightly nicer rooms, but Couples has more included in the way of excursions.  How are we ever going to make this decision?

The other debate is how long to be gone.  I've heard from several of my recently married friends that they got tired of sitting on the beach after about 5 days.  We are thinking about Tuesday - Monday.

Reader feedback time!  Where did you go on your honeymoon?  How long is too long?  Sandals vs. Couples?

Settling down

I think that my overzealous planning has caused me to now be in a bit of a lull!  I'm sure there should be things that I am forgetting about...worrying about...overanalyzing.  At the moment, however, I'm at peace with the wedding planning and taking a much needed hiatus.  (For maybe a week until all the things I'm forgetting about come crashing down.)

Next items on the agenda once I resume planning:  accessories, flowers, shoes, centerpieces.  I'm not ashamed to admit, these are not my strong areas.  Consequently, I'm avoiding them for as long as possible.  Be prepared to give me feedback once I inevitably have to start stressing about them!

Crazy co-workers

My co-worker Brent called me up and told me that he needed some help because he was going on a big date the next day.  He asked if I would come on the date with them to make sure that he didn't mess it up.  I said that I would, and then he said that he wanted me to coach him the day before so that he knew what to say, so I needed to play in a golf outing with him in Ottumwa.  I was getting ready to head to Ottumwa when I realized that my wedding was the next day so I had a few things to take care of.  By the time I got to Ottumwa, the golf outing was almost over, so Brent decided that he should just go to a bar in Des Moines while I gave him advice.  As soon as we got to the bar, he immediately got food poisoning and had to go home.  After I dropped him off at home, I went back to the bar where my family had arrived for the wedding and wanted to give me a fancy bridal shower.  I told them all that it would have to wait because I had to go to work.

When I got to work I could smell something funny and realized that there was a carbon monoxide leak in the building.  I went downstairs to investigate and found that all the buildings had been evacuated except for mine because the alarm didn't go off.  I went back upstairs to tell everyone to leave, but no supervisors were at work so no one would leave the building.  I went to my co-worker Anna's desk and started asking her lots of questions but she was being very vague and wouldn't answer them.  I couldn't figure out what was going on until another co-worker, Duane, walked by and told me that Anna had quit but she didn't want me to know.  I convinced Anna to leave the building and walk around with me.  During the walk, I started asking her lots of specific questions about the future.  Finally I cracked her and she said "Fine, I didn't want you to know, but I got a new job."  I asked when she was leaving and she said "I'm not telling, and I won't tell you where I'm going either."  She got in her car and drove away.

Packing up

The downside to getting things done early is that lately I've found myself with very little planning left to do!  We have been busy lately moving some of the furniture and other things that I don't use regularly over to Matt's house in preparation for my house going on the market.  The biggest excitement has been moving my cats to Matt's house so that I can get things cleaned and ready (and not have them in it when they start to show my house next week).  The cats are getting used to their new environment, Matt is getting used to having them around, and my house is feeling emptier and lonelier. 

In other news, for Valentine's Day we celebrated by ice skating at an outdoor rink that is a couple of blocks away from where we are getting married, so I talked Matt into trudging through the snow to take a look at the amphitheater.  I hadn't been there since getting engaged, so it was interesting to see it from a realistic perspective.  We have some logistics to think through, but I'm excited!  Less than 5 months!

Here are some photos from ice skating and a nighttime view of Simon Estes Amphitheater from our walk.  It kind of made me wish we were getting married at night since it is so pretty lit up! 

 

John goes to Target

Matt and I were on our way to Target to register for our wedding when he suddenly realized that he had to go out of town on business.  He called John, his best man, to go to Target with me in his place.  He gave John very strict instructions to pretend to be Matt though, because Target will arrest you if you register with a fake groom and he didn't want to bail us out of jail.  When I met John in the Target parking lot, I gave him some quick instructions about how to act like Matt and we went inside.  We were assigned a registry consultant to walk around the store with us and use the scanner gun because they wouldn't allow us to do it ourselves.  John panicked and started saying things like "you and Matt need this" and "Matt would really like this."  I kept kicking him to get him to stop but he was clueless.  Finally he took me over to the section of fringed purses and wanted me to pick on out for Matt.  The registry consultant started to question this, so I ran out of the store leaving John to defend himself.

I ran all the way to my brand new office which was in an architecture firm.  I had never seen it before so I was very excited, but when I got there I realized they had just put up a desk in the storage closet and I had no window.  I saw that there was another empty office in the corner that did have a window, so I decided to army crawl to the corner.  When I got in there, someone had taken a bunch of my personal items from my house and scattered them all over the floor.  I found a dried rose that Matt had given me last year and it was crushed and laying in the trash.  This made me very angry so I yelled out that I was quitting and walked out the door.

Allison's hideaway

A bunch of my friends were at dinner and my friend Allison started telling us about this new apartment she was renting in Ottumwa.  We all wanted to see it, so we decided to take a speedboat down the Des Moines River to see it.  When we got to Ottumwa, she pointed to the water purification plant and told us that they had converted the entire building into apartments/lofts.  The only way to get in was from the river, so we docked the boat and went inside.  When we got in there, she told us that each tenant got one floor of the building, but she had the top three that were all one unit.  As we walked around inside, I realized that there were no doors or walls, just futons and couches laying around everywhere.  There also weren't any kitchens or bathrooms, just living spaces.  The majority of the tenants were men in their 40's who were all passed out on their futons in the middle of the afternoon.

We walked up a flight of stairs and Allison informed us that to get to her penthouse, you had to climb a series of ladders.  I suddenly realized that I was carrying my cat, Autumn, and that I was going to have to carry her up all these ladders.  I put her in the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt and started to climb.  We ended up climbing up one very long ladder, down the hall to a short ladder, around the corner where we had to climb DOWN a ladder to get to a secret floor of the building.  This room was Allison's living room.  She had an old couch and a huge TV.  I wanted to stay there but she told us that we had to see her room on the next floor.  We started climbing up the last ladder which was in a very narrow passageway.  Because of the cat in my pocket I almost didn't fit and I got a little stuck and had to force myself through.  I was very worried about Autumn, but when we got into the room she started running around and was fine.

In Allison's room she had a library full of every book or magazine we could ever want, a variety of movies to watch, and a stockpile of snacks.  Katie decided that she was just going to live in the room, but I knew that eventually I had to get home to feed my other cat, Louie.  I started to panic because I wasn't sure I could get back down all those ladders while holding Autumn.  I mentioned this to Allison, hoping that she knew of an easier exit, but she informed me that people weren't intended to get back out once they entered.  I tried to pick Autumn up so we could sneak down the ladder but she wouldn't come back to me.  So I sat in the corner and cried.