Wonder Woman Wannabe

I woke up early this morning and started making a list of everything I hope to accomplish today.It is a daunting list, and I have just figured out why.

My wedding day coincides with the deadline for filing tax returns.

That is why I find myself having to organize tax documents for myself and Gerard, do bookkeeping for two businesses, and prepare and file an HST return, which is a headache in itself, all while I am printing off address labels and wedding invitation reply cards, stuffing envelopes, conjuring up missing addresses from thin air, following up on people who owe me quotes, and attempting to stay sane.

At the same time, there are other things that I have promised to do today – promises that I have made either to myself or my kids.

I promised James that we could make bread. He received a real chef’s hat at a school field trip a while back, and he takes great pride in wearing it while he helps me bake (I realize that that last statement makes me sound like Martha Stewart, but in reality, my baking happens about as frequently as a lunar eclipse).

I promised George that I would make up some math worksheets for him. The kid has a love and aptitude for numbers that is just staggering, and he cannot get enough of the worksheets. He has already completed all of the spare ones I had a home, so I have to make him some more.

I promised myself that I would bid on all of the writing jobs that are in my watch list. I have worked out that I can make a fair amount of extra cash during my daily commutes, but that’s not going to happen if I don’t bid for the jobs. I will lose some, but I will hopefully win some. Who knows where this might lead?

Before I do any of this, I have to take a shower, load the dishwasher, and throw a load of laundry into the washing machine.

I have to go now. I need to look for my Insane Wonder Woman suit.

Eight Weeks To Go? Really???

When Gerard and I first got engaged, everything wedding-related seemed a little abstract. It was more real than it had been before, obviously, since it was something that was actually going to happen. But it was happening far enough in the future for me have a somewhat lackadaisical attitude about it all. There was no rush and no stress. We were talking about something that was happening seventeen months away.

I watched those wedding planning shows on TV, shows like Rich Bride, Poor Bride and Wedding SOS, and I smugly thought about how my wedding planning would never be as fraught with stress as the wedding featured in those shows.

Now, with precisely eight weeks to go until my wedding, my smugness is sticking in my craw, threatening to choke me.

There is a lot to be done. A scary amount of stuff. The dress is almost complete, the bridesmaids dresses have been ordered, and the church and the reception hall have been booked. Apart from a couple of other minor details like my shoes and my makeup person, that’s pretty much all that’s actually under control.

We finished the guest list last night. Invitations are being printed this weekend and will go out on Monday.

Starting this week, we will be attending mandatory pre-marriage counseling.

Gerard and his groomsmen have to figure out what they’re wearing.

I have to send photos to the person who’s making our cake so she can give me a quote.

Flowers, decor, and guest favours have to be arranged.

I need to confirm a hairdresser.

Transportation has to be sorted out.

The DJ and photographer has to be booked.

We need to decide who the Master of Ceremonies will be.

The rehearsal dinner has to be planned.

And more.

It’s an awful lot of activity to fit into eight weeks.

And so, this weekend, wedding planning has suddenly kicked into full-gear. Out of the blue, Gerard has started voicing opinions about the wedding, and he’s coming up with really great ideas. We have most of the wedding party coming over tomorrow to help us with tasks and ideas. Task lists are being made, ones that have actual deadline dates on them. Our first song has been decided.

Things are happening and a bride-to-be is stressing out.

Somehow, it will happen.

Somehow, we will create a wedding that will, for all the right reasons, be a day to remember.

Taming The “Girls”

The story so far…

December 2009: Gerard proposes to me moments after I become a Canadian citizen. It’s a weird, weird feeling. When I woke up that morning I was an immigrant living in sin. Now I’m a bona fide Canadian living with a fiance in my own country. Sounds a lot more respectable, doesn’t it?

January 2010: Gerard’s Mom, who can work miracles with a bit of fabric and a sewing machine, offers to make my wedding dress. This is an offer I am thrilled to accept. My future mother-in-law will make something way better than anything I’d buy in a store. For some reason, I remember that this happens on the same day on which I get my new laptop and my then four-year-old sweetly asks his Dad, “Where’s the f*cking donut shop?”

August 2010: Me, Gerard’s Mom, maid-of-honour Michelle, bridesmaid Jenn, and Michelle’s daughter Megan brave the wedding dress stores. We go from place to place and I try on several dresses to get an idea of what looks good. Whatever dress we pick will be the one that my custom-made dress will be modelled off of. As it turns out, the dress that I absolutely love the best is the very first dress I tried on, in the very first store we walked into. Funny how that happens.

September 2010: There is a stupid argument between me and Gerard’s Mom. The details are not important, except for the bit where the offer of a custom-made dress is rescinded. I love the family I’m marrying into, I really do. They are wonderful, wonderful people with gigantic hearts and generous spirits. It’s just that from time to time, they turn into drama queens.

October 2010: Me and future mother-in-law have a civilized conversation in which we calmly discuss the misunderstanding. The offer of a dress is reinstated and accepted. We are back on track! Me, mother-in-law, and her sister head to Toronto’s bridal shopping district to get fabric and lace for the dress (do you KNOW how expensive lace is? Baffling!). Within days I am being measured and a prototype made out of cotton is being fitted on me.

And now, the story continues…

About two weeks ago, the almost-complete wedding dress was fitted on me. To say that it looks gorgeous would be an understatement. The lace and beadwork on it is a true work of art, it is cut in lines that flatter my body, the colour complements the tone of my skin perfectly. The only problem was that the bra I was using to try on the dress with was – well, crappy.

Yes, I am indeed discussing my underwear in a public blog. Just thought I’d clarify that point.

It only makes sense for me to be fitted in the dress while wearing the bra I will actually wear on the day of my wedding, and the bra I was using was definitely not it. In fact, that bra is headed for the garbage can very soon.

Last week I went bra-shopping. I did not go bra-shopping in the way I usually do, which is to go to Wal-Mart and pick up the cheapest bra I can find, which generally turns out to be about as supportive as a piece of dental floss. No, this time, I went to a specialist bra shop. One of those places where you get ushered into a change room the size of my living room and offered a pair of slippers and a soft, fluffy dressing gown. The bra specialist (seriously, the word “assistant” is not enough for what this woman does) fussed around me with a tape measure, and then brought me a selection of bras to try on.

It turns out that my knockers are a lot bigger than I thought they were.

I walked out of there with a lovely new bra that I knew would complete the look of the wedding dress. I confess that my eyes popped when I saw that I was paying $90. For a bra! Bear in mind, I’m used to paying fifteen bucks at Wal-Mart, but then again, at Wal-Mart I’m not exactly paying for quality.

This is a quality bra. It will give me all the support I need.

I took it home, put it on, and tried on the dress. It looked stunning. Looking at myself in the mirror wearing the dress, I was convinced that the bra was worth every penny of the ninety dollars.

There was just one thing…

The dress was too loose around the hips. I’m not saying I had a little bit of wiggle room, I’m saying I had an entire gigantic wiggle house. The bit around the hips had to taken in substantially. Once that was done, I looked in the mirror with my mother-in-law beside me, and both of us sighed with contentment.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight since you were measured,” said my mother-in-law. Words that every woman loves to hear.

Today I will continue on my quest for my shoes. I still don’t have the damned shoes!

With These Shoes I Thee Wed

In 102 days – or 3 months and 12 days – I will be getting married.  I’m OK with this.  The list of things to be done between now and then is staggering, but as long as there are more than 100 days to go, I will feel as if there is plenty of time.  Lots of time to get the wedding dress finished and make sure all of the bridal party have their outfits sorted out.  Time to book the DJ and the photographer, and get our invitations sent out. Time to arrange hair and makeup trials, speak to the florist, decide on guest favours.  There is time for us to make up our friggin’ minds what we want the cake to look like (we both want something highly original, but we have differing ideas, and mine is definitely better).

As long as there are more than 100 days to go, there is loads of time to take care of this and everything else that I haven’t even thought of.

On Saturday, when there are 99 days left, I will probably go into total meltdown.  I even know what the meltdown will be about.  It won’t be about all of the stuff I just mentioned, which might stress me out, but I know it will get done on time.  Most of it has been started in some form or another.

It’ll be about the shoes.

On Saturday, I will wake up and realize that I have only 99 days to find, purchase, and break in the perfect pair of shoes.

I hate shoe shopping with a passion.  I find it next to impossible to find shoes that meet both of the following two basic criteria:
1) To be comfortable
2) To be pretty

When I look at the shoes that other women wear, it boggles my mind.  How are these ladies able to squeeze their feet into tiny little capsules that compress their toes and are on four-inch heels, and still walk normally?  If I tried to pull that off I’d stumble around like a drunk giraffe and then fall over in a very undignified manner and twist both of my ankles.

My feet, you see, are too important to me.  I am addicted to running, so I kind of need my feet just for the sake of maintaining my sanity.  I need to take care of them, so my shoes have to be comfortable and stable.  I have to have space to wriggle my toes around.

“Open-toed shoes!” I hear you call out.  Yes, open-toed shoes do tend to be more comfortable for me, and in the summer I wear them a great deal.  Open-toed shoes do have a lot of potential to meet the “be comfortable” requirement.  The “be pretty” requirement is another story altogether.

My feet are ugly. I do not say this with embarrassment, but with pride.  My feet with their calloused heels, and with their blackened and missing toenails, are a testament to my running. They tell the story of many hours of training in the gruelling heat and the biting cold, the accomplishment of personal best times, the amazing feeling of triumph at half-marathon finish lines, and most importantly, the funds raised through my running to benefit people with autism.

Yes, I am proud of my feet in all their butt-ugly glory.

They look crap in open-toed shoes, though.

I am looking at getting running shoes for my wedding.  On Friday (when I have 100 days to go) I will start my quest for running shoes with bling. Shoes that will be comfortable and look pretty, and have the added bonus of reflecting who I am.

Or maybe I should just go barefoot.  No-one’s going to see my shoes anyway.

A Case Of Faint Religion

This coming Sunday, I will be going to church. The last time this happened, it was to attend the funeral for Gerard’s 103-year-old grandmother.  I have been to church maybe ten times in as many years, and there has always been a specific reason for it, like a funeral, a baptism, or a wedding.  I’m not what one might refer to as “the churchgoing kind”.

When I was about sixteen, I had a firm belief that I had developed an allergy to churches.  This was based on a very strange trend that started at this age: every time I went to church – EVERY time – I would faint.  Whenever the congregation was called upon to kneel, for whatever reason the blood would just rush from my head and I would be out like a light.

There was a medical reason for this, of course, although I cannot remember now what that was.  I went through a somewhat inconvenient few months where I would faint at the drop of a hat, whether I was at home, in a store, or in math class.  Presumably I wasn’t allergic to all of those places as well.  What convinced me, though, was the absolute regularity of it.  When I went to church – any church – I could be completely relied on to faint and disrupt the proceedings.

I had a theory about this.  See, I was educated at a girls-only Catholic school run by nuns (some of the nuns were very nice, but some of them were MEAN!). Every week, all of us – including the non-Catholics like me – had to attend these religious education classes.  And on the first Friday of every month, the entire student body would troop over to the nearby Catholic church to attend “First Friday Mass”.

In addition to all of this, I was a Sunday school teacher at the Anglican church my family belonged to, AND I went through a phase of regularly attending the Evangelical church that my parents referred to as “happy clappers”.

That’s three – count ’em – THREE churches that I frequented on a regular basis.  That’s a whole lot of religion for a teenager.

My theory was that overexposure to religion had given me an allergy to churches.  Kind of like the time I got 67 beestings in one go and ended up with an allergy to bees.

Because I was allergic to churches and all, I stopped going.  I mean, it was hazardous to my health.  Everyone knows that if you expose yourself to something you’re allergic to, the allergy gets worse and worse.  I just assumed that my church allergy would work the same way.

I couldn’t get out of the First Friday Masses at school.  The nuns were very weird about that.  If a student had an accident and ended up with, say, a severed arm, the nuns would definitely take that student to the hospital.  Right after the student had attended Mass with the severed limb sitting there on the pew.

As an adult, my church attendance has been limited to events like weddings and funerals.  When the kids were born, we joined the local Anglican church so we could get them baptized (what they do or don’t do with religion as they get older will be up to them).  And now, with my own wedding coming up at the end of April, it is time for us to do the church thing again.

When we first started making the wedding plans, I was never really gung-ho on the idea of getting married in a church, particularly since we’ve been living in sin for the last ten years.  It didn’t really make sense to me: Gerard is a non-practicing Catholic, and I am a lapsed something-or-other.  We try to live our lives as good and decent human beings, and although I believe in some greater force, a Karma of the Universe type of thing, I don’t really believe in God in the traditional sense.  When bad things happen to people I care about, I pray for them, but I am not praying to a Biblical God.  I am praying to the forces of energy that shift the Universe around and affect the way things happen.

When I talked about not getting married in a church, my future mother-in-law almost cried.  She is a devout Catholic, and had been holding out hope that we would get married in a Catholic church.  I went along with it, because honestly, I don’t care where I get married. As long as I’m a Mrs by the end of my wedding day, I’ll get married in a bus shelter if it makes people happy.

The Catholic church did not turn out to be a feasible option, firstly because the Catholics are a bit picky about presiding over a marriage where one partner is not a Catholic, and secondly because we don’t like the priest at our local Catholic church.

So we went back to the Anglican church in our neighbourhood, to talk to the same minister who baptized my boys.  We had a lovely long chat with him this week, and he told us that he would be happy to preside over our wedding.  We would be happy with this as well: the minister is really a lovely person, and the church is a welcoming, neighbourly type of place.

We will be going there on Sunday, because we feel that if we’re going to have our marriage blessed in a church, we should at least take the time to show up, hear what the sermons are all about, and get to know some of the people.  We do not want to observe such an important day of our lives in a place where we are strangers.

I just hope I don’t faint.