Shhh. I am hiding in my office for a quiet hour in between classes and meetings and I thought I’d take a moment to write a bit. Don’t tell anyone. I am surely supposed to be grading tests, grading papers, writing lectures, or reading any one of the 87 different reports/meeting minutes/announcements sitting in my inbox. Let’s just pretend I am actually doing that.
The past couple of weeks, this week in particular, have felt absolutely insane to me in terms of work and busyness. I don’t really know why: my work responsibilities are roughly the same as they were last fall and last spring, but for some reason I am finding it necessary to spend more time on them. CW thinks I’m just putting in more work because I’m more invested and am improving the way I do things. I wish I were improving things to be more efficient, but I guess I’ll take it.
Wedding planning continues to be mostly low stress, but the number of small errands and tasks keeps mounting. I enjoy things like addressing envelopes and deciding how a cake should be iced and choosing gifts for the wedding party, but running all over town placing orders and picking things up and dropping things off and waiting in line at the post office just takes time, you know?
Recently, we have: booked our photographer, booked our rehearsal dinner, ordered our cake, sent out invitations, bought rings. I have: picked up my dress from the tailor, ordered bridesmaid gifts, got some new makeup (obviously a necessity!), and found but not yet ordered a potential cake topper. We’re working on: choosing readings and music. We’ll be tasting the reception food and finalizing the menu next week.
Relatedly, two questions for you, if you care to opine or suggest: 1) what do you think about flowers in hair vs a feathery fascinator? 2) can you think of any unexpected pop songs that would make for good processionals or recessionals?
So, anyway. There’s school work (I’m in the midst of creating, giving, and grading midterms right now) and wedding planning and just general life business. Like for example, why are we always running out of almond milk and olive oil? And when is the landlord coming to replace our other broken smoke detector?
My to do lists are not only multiplying but are also starting to glare at me reproachfully from the corner of the desk where they sit, feeling neglected. My supply of candy corn is both too large and too small. Also, we’re out of bourbon.
In spite of all this, life continues to be good. The busyness of work and wedding planning are happy things with which to be occupied (I have a job in which I’m invested! We’re planning an exciting life event and celebration!). I just feel like I might need to stop and catch my breath soon.
Raveling Out 
Yeah, wedding questions!
1) I like them both, but I would caution against real flowers. If they wilt, that is not cute, and there are some impressive fake flowers out there nowadays. My SIL had a feathery fascinator, and it was so cute, BUT. It was ginormous. When the hair girl put it in her hair, SIL was like, panicking at the bigness. So we did the logical thing and plucked feathers out of it, one by one, until it was satisfactorily thinned.
2) At my sister’s wedding, she picked acoustic guitar versions of pop songs for the dinner music, and it was awesome. I never would have thought of that. It’s cool how songs like “Hey Ya” sound in that style. Not that I am suggesting that song, but like, acoustic arrangements go a long way, is what I’m saying. There’s some acoustic guitar guy who comes up on Pandora sometimes with really covers (Rihanna and the like), but for the life of me, I can not think of his name. I will do some googling and see if I can dig it up.
2b) I went to a wedding once where the recessional song was “Send Me On My Way,” by Rusted Root, and I LOVED IT SO MUCH. It also works well as a last song at the reception, I think.
Yay wedding! I opted for flowers in my hair, which was just easy and since we ordered flowers in bulk, we had plenty of them lying around. They were white carnations, which seem to be fairly hardy – no wilting, though I’m pretty sure I lost the flower half way through the dance party. No regrets.
For ceremony music, we used a cover of a Feist song from the Vitamin String Quartet. They do lovely, classy instrumental versions of familiar songs. Definitely worth a listen!
One of my favorite things about having no intention of actually throwing a wedding means I get to think about what I’d do without having to make decisions. Or stand in line at the post office, I guess.
But if I ever change my mind, I’ve been quite settled on walking down the aisle to the theme music from The West Wing and then using about the last 30 seconds of Accidentally in Love by Counting Crows as the recessional. Or Signed, Sealed, Delivered, which is not an original idea but it does make me really happy.
Thanks for the ideas, y’all!
Mel, I suggested “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” but was totally shot down. Womp, womp.
I think I found a fascinator…just have to pull the trigger and order it already.