NOT my choice, actually...

Some of you might recall Father Terry mentioning the readings we chose for mass and noting specifically that he could tell that I had chosen the first one, due to certain substance the message conveyed.

Well, I wish I could have corrected him at the time, but that might've ruined the moment I'm afraid. The first reading we chose was NOT the one from the Book of Sirach, as he had chosen to do instead. We chose the following reading from the Book of Proverbs:

When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
She brings him good, and not evil,
all the days of her life.
She obtains wool and flax
and makes cloth with skillful hands.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her fingers ply the spindle.
She reaches out her hands to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her a reward of her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.

The funny thing was that when my sister Wendy saw the reading that she was told she was supposed to read, she said, "This isn't right. Jennifer would never pick this." My coordinator came to the limo where I was waiting to walk down the aisle and told me what was up. I told her that I didn't know if anything could be done about it at that point...it was a couple of minutes before the wedding was set to begin. I don't know if anyone ever communicated the mistake to Father, and since he'd already set his homily around it, it's not like anything could have been changed anyway.

But I wanted to set the record straight. While I can appreciate the undercurrent of sentiment behind the Book of Sirach reading, I never would have chosen something that stated so specifically that a woman is some sort of present that's being GIVEN to the man she's chosen to marry. And then when it goes on to say that, "A gracious wife delights her husband..." etc, etc...without ever saying anything about how a husband returns the favor of "delighting" his wife? Well, call me a feminist, but doesn't that seem a bit archaic of an idea? Especially one for ME to conform to? I know it's the Old Testament we're talking about here, but that's why I didn't like that reading.

Anyway, that's the story behind that. Shoulda been a different reading, but everything went beautifully anyway. Yay!

Holy cow...

Ok, why didn't people tell me that I looked like a clown on my wedding day? Didn't want to upset me? Wanted me to have my face look like that of a hooker immortalized for the rest of my life in the photos taken during the day?

Fantastico...
Hell, at least the dress looked good, though, right?
And my flowers...
And my sisters and everyone else that were in town for the event looked FABULOUS...
More pictures to come as I get them. Thanks again to EVERYONE that helped make the day as special as it was. And the weekend as FUN as it was! I hope you all had as great a time as Jesse and I did. It was truly a blessing to have such a wonderful crowd of family and friends around us at such a special time in our lives! Hope everyone got home safe and sound...

Just stating the obvious...

Ok, so I've been busy. And sick. But mostly busy. (Although being sick hasn't made that very fun...)

The wedding is this weekend, and I cannot WAIT to see everyone that will be able to come! The only down side is that I'm already sad when I think about everyone leaving on Sunday. *sigh!* The fact that I'll be heading back to work on Monday doesn't help much, but I'm hoping that the honeymoon in the not-so-distant future will help to cheer me up again.

Not that I won't be happy already once this has all passed, and Jesse and I are finally man and wife...I'll be ecstatic! But still...there's a bit of a melancholy aspect to it all that we have to acknowledge.

The blog won't go away after the wedding, by the way. I'm sure I'll have lots of updates after the fact, and there will be pictures to post, and all that good stuff. So if I don't update again before the wedding, look for posts after!

Gettin' there...

Well, it's closing in on us now, so there isn't much else to say. And unfortunately, there hasn't been much time to say anything much, anyway! Work has been more than a bear. This week is the week of our move for our department, and between the meeting shuffling, the party planning, and the packing, it's been brutal around here.

And then my boss's dad had a heart attack.

So he had to leave quite suddenly yesterday to go to where his dad is (not within driving distance, unfortunately), because he was going to have a quadruple bypass surgery. And I still haven't heard from him this morning, which scares me, and I hope I hope I hope everything is ok!

But as far as planning for the wedding goes, we're pretty much up to speed on it. We're meeting with the photog tonight to go over our last minute bits and pieces, and to make sure we all have the same schedule in mind. And then Jesse and I will be putting together a checklist for ourselves for next Wednesday and Thursday, so as to make sure we don't forget anything. I'll be giving everything we have for the reception to the coordinator on Monday, so that'll be out of our hands at that point. And other than that, I just have some goodies to pull together for the out of town guests this weekend, and I'll be DONE!

In fact, I need to go write a little something to accompany those treats right now, so I'm off. Maybe more later...maybe not. I only started packing my desk up yesterday, so I've got to get that finished up! We cannot WAIT to see everyone, and even though the leaves won't be in full swing next week (we haven't had our first frost yet, so the leaves are all still green...which is better than nothing I guess!), it should be a beautifully fun time for all of us. So excited...so, sooo excited...

On and on and on and on and....

I am still playing with table arrangements. For the record, that's 3 days in a row that I've been thinking about it. Uh-huh...

I went to a local jewelry store today to have my wedding band sized, have both the wedding and engagement ring cleaned and to have their stones secured, as well as to request an apparaisal for the value so I can have them both insured. Which I've been remiss in doing thus far. (Bad bride-to-be! Bad, bad! I know, I know...at least they've survived this long without any problems, though! Good sign, since I don't usually wear much jewelry at all.)

I'm going to be without my engagement ring for almost 2 weeks while they get everything done, and I'm going to miss it more than I realized! I have a temporary one on right now, but it's bothering me because it feels so different and weird. *sniff!* Can't wait till I can get my real one back again!

At work, things are finally calming down. We had a large charity drive going on over the past couple of weeks that I volunteered to help with (the boss asked me, and I couldn't say no!) which comes to an end today. We're also moving our building around next week...no, not the ENTIRE building itself! Just the people in it. My boss and I, along with everyone else from our team, will be moving to a central location as of next Friday. Should be interesting.

I was a bit worried because a couple of managers on the team had brought up the idea of having a "Team Builder" on the day of the move, since we aren't supposed to be in the building after 12 p.m. that day. They thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do something like this! I didn't. It's the week before my wedding. The LAST THING I wanted to do was plan another party and deal with hosting and making sure everything went smoothly the day of. Not to mention I'm the move coordinator for our team in this location, so if someone needs help/something goes wrong during it, I would be the go-to person for that. And did I mention that I didn't want to plan and deal with another party?

So I looked into some things, and then we discussed it again and everyone expressed their interest in still doing it. But I noticed my boss's interest wasn't as strong as it had been. He was coming over to the dark side, and all it took was a little time. (Mwahahahahahaha!)

Finally, I sent a note out to the team last night, letting them know that I'd heard from some people that were aware it was a possibility that we were planning a Team Builder, and they weren't really interested in doing a Team Builder, and then alerting them to the fact that one of the managers wouldn't even be here that day...

So. It's been decided that we should NOT have a Team Builder. Our team doesn't need building. (They do, however need windows. Lots and lots of windows. Which is something I learned during this coordination of the move process. Kind of annoying quality on their part, I found...)

This helped my stress levels a great deal.

Happy weekend, all! 2 weeks to go, and I can't WAIT to see everyone!

A new day, a new burn...

Ok, I believe I've worked out the table issues. Thanks to a coworker who happened upon my desk yesterday afternoon when I was looking particularly frazzled over it, she made a suggestion within about 30 seconds of me showing her what I was dealing with (I made a little PowerPoint version of the room so I could see it better...I think I mentioned that yesterday, but I'm not sure), and that little suggestion solved EVERYTHING! Then she and I went for a quick walk around a bit of the campus outside our building...the fresh air did me good.

I can't believe how burned out my brain is over all this stuff, though! GAH!

Jesse and I went and got our marriage license yesterday, so now we're legal! Well, once we get married, we are, anyway. :) Last night he welcomed me legally into his life by socking me in the arm while we were sleeping. We clearly need a bigger bed. (There was a comforter-being-stolen-issue...it was 3 a.m....when I reacted to the comforter being pulled off of me by grabbing it and pulling it back, he hit me. I yelled, "OW!" and he apologized and rubbed my arm where he hit me, and I whimpered for a bit more, and then we fell back asleep. I told my trainer about it today. He then told me about the time his fiance punched him in the face while he slept. So I guess I have it pretty good...)

Jesse has also taken to counting down the days 'til the wedding. I'm still looking at it as a couple of weeks away, so it throws me off when he does it. I guess his mom mentioned it the other day when they were talking, and he's been keeping track that way ever since. It doesn't bother me...don't get me wrong. I just think its funny. I don't know why. Stupid story, eh? Ok then...

I'm heading out to lunch with some coworkers, so I'd best get moving. More fun from the wedding-brained bride tomorrow, I'm sure. It's crazy how much stuff there is to talk about, even at this point in the game!

Heartburn...painful.

I'm working on the table assignments right now. I should be doing other things, but I promised to have this info to the print vendor yesterday afternoon, so I'm already slacking as it is. The problem isn't where we're going to seat people, or what table to put them at. The problem is how to arrange the tables we've now managed to assign.

[Cue pulling out hair and running around in a circle screaming at the top of lungs.]

Why is this so hard? So stressful? So hair-pulling-out-inducing?

I don't know.

I mean, it's for dinner, right? People are sitting at their respective tables, eating yummy food, talking to their family or friends or what have you, and then they'll get up and mill around and dance, maybe go outside for a bit, get another drink, etc, etc...and everything should be peachy, right? So what's my problem?

The heartburn sucks...burning away at my soul, it is.

Last minute purchases

Being down to the wire like we are, at this point I'm pretty well ready to just throw up my hands and say, "Do we have the space? Check! Do we have food ordered? Check! Do we have alcohol to serve? Check! Alright then...we're done!"

But there is that small part of me that wants the details all tidied up and looking nice, so we continue to push on to collect them together and make sure all is well in the land of menus, kids' sections, and coordinators on the ball.

With that in mind, it was finally time to put our nose to the gridstone and pick out a cake-cutting set and some toasting flutes, already! I've liked the following cake-cutting set for a while, and finally purchased it today at BB&B...

I, however, feel that the matching flutes are a bit too girly with their "Love Knots" theme, since they had little bows on them at the top of the stem. For some reason, I couldn't see my fabulous husband-to-be holding a glass with a bow on it in his hand to toast our marriage together. So we finally took some time to visit the extensive fine china section at the local Bed, Bath & Beyond together last week, and we found some options that might work well.

He honed in on a particular glass that I didn't have a problem with, and so we finally found our flutes!

It's about 30 inches tall* and they look really elegant and will definitely be a special addition to our glassware collection after the wedding. So I'm pleased we were able to come to a conclusion on that issue. I had wanted to go with a champagne saucer myself, but Jesse was kind of anti-saucer for some reason. It was getting tough to find a cool one that was going to be available to us in such a short period of time anyway (I could have ordered the ones I wanted had I started thinking about this sort of thing 3 months ago...they hand-make them in Italy, or somewhere), and I wanted something that made us both happy. Eh voila! C'est finit!

Now if we could just get our first dance down, we'll be golden.

*Ok, not really. But they are pretty tall comparatively! It's going to be fun to have them...

Table Fun!

Jesse and I sat down last night after a fabulous trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond to find shelving solutions for the kitchen to help me stop losing my mind with our pantry area, and we worked on our seating arrangements for the dinner portion of the wedding reception.

I have to admit, I honestly thought this task would be much more difficult than it wound up being. I started with our own table, worked my way through my side of the family, then through our friends, and then Jesse's family, and then more of our friends (it was the way the invite list was laid out, which kind of explains the meandering back and forth...at least in my head it does), and then we were done! We're pretty sure we've done a good job of it, and hopefully we've accounted for everyone that will be attending. We do have a couple of RSVP cards that we never were able to account for who they came from, but I think we might've worked them out. Hopefully.

If not, let my first wedding day nightmare ensue! But I'd imagine it would be something the coordinator could handle in a snap, so we'll just be prepared in case we get any "extra" people we didn't place specifically. There's still room at a couple of the tables to place 1 - 2 additional people, as some of the tables have 10 at them, some have 9, and some have as few as 8. So it should work out.

I'm so glad to have that task done, though! Now comes the fun of naming the tables and getting ALL the info over to the printer. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!