Monday, September 05, 2005

Wedding Part I: The Preparationing


Invitation background
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

The beginning of the wedding saga: a blog too little, too late, and with deplorable timing. But I intend to see it through!

Back in...what was it, February?--when we first decided we ought to get married, I thought I was avoiding a lot of hair-pulling (of the frustrated kind) by having a less fant-see kind of wedding.

I still think this was probably true. However, it turned out to be a heckuva lot of work nevertheless.

If I could have omitted one of my four primary tasks this summer (grad studies, clinical work, moving, wedding planning), it would have seemed manageable. At least that's what I tell myself. Who knows!



Wreckage of Moving
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

The moving was the most onerous of the tasks. For once I had the luxury of having my new place available longer than 45 minutes before my old place needed to be empty, so I decided to avoid the last-minute desperation by moving gradually. Every time we saw each other, I tried to have a load of well-organized boxes ready for transport to TheLimey's place. I still think this was somewhat helpful, but the drawback was that the disorientation of moving lasted for about three months instead of a few days. Try as I might, I could not keep my possessions straight and was forever needing something I had just moved the week before.

Also, since I was expecting an out-of-town guest in July, there was significant move-age that I delayed until after that visit. This meant that August was when I had to do most of it.

Several factors made this the most horrible move I have done in my life:

1. The months-long aspect as described above, 2. Being so busy in general that I had to cram most of the moving into odd hours and days, thus precluding scheduling help from others, 3. The build-up of four years' worth of junk, and 4. the confluence of TheLimey's absence for the two weeks before the wedding with the highest peak of moving & wedding activities & clinical responsibilities combined. Crikey. (Just FYI, today we unloaded the last and final load of my stuff.)

As far as the wedding itself, I had arranged for a few friends to help me out with things such as flower arranging, hairdoing, coordinating, park decorating, and so forth. Thank goodness for all those kind people. I wanted a community/friend/family oriented wedding, and it turns out we both have really great community/friends/family.


Helping Liz
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

The event was on Sunday. I had arranged for the wholesale flowers to be delivered on Friday so that my friends could come over on Saturday morning and help me make them into pretty things. I had also arranged for a local baker to deliver several cakes, not decorated but iced, on Saturday morning so that we could fondant them up, stack them up, and my aunt could decorate them to look more or less like a picture I had found in a bridal magazine (I only had one, I swear--and it was a free one that had been given me!)

Some of our friends who were only attending the reception (i.e. the "fun part") had agreed to show up early and hold our place at the park, as your pavilion could be usurped if you didn't get there by 12, and there were rumors of table-snatching if you didn't get there ridiculously early. We had gotten our license and paperwork ready, I had written out the entire ceremony and sent it to the officiant, and the ceremony musicians (i.e. family members) was mostly in place.

TheLimey was due to return from his business trip on Thursday night, and my aunt was due in on Friday afternoon. So far, everything seemed to be in place, although I had been going mad that week what with moving by myself every minute (so much for avoiding last-minute desperation) that I wasn't at one clinic or another doing all the freakin' assessments that waited until freakin' August to show up.

But it wasn't until Friday that I began to feel that things were tilting slowly but heavily and inexorably out of my control...

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