good on paper

i'll need it

A lot of people say that if it rains on your wedding it's good luck, but I think that if you have stupidly gone to your office by yourself late one night to catch up on all the work you have neglected due to having spent all your time planning your wedding and happen to look out the second story window into the parking lot directly below you and see two guys smash your car window and steal your radio and it scares the pants off of you and you huddle under your desk while calling the police because you are a girl and all alone and yours are the only lights on in the whole deserted former factory building you happen to work in and the two guys can probably hear you on the phone with the police two weeks before your wedding, it's even better luck, right?  It has to be.

is nothing sacred?

A favorite joke of my dad's is to call me and Ted on the phone and ask if we have decided whether to invite him to the wedding or not.  He does this weekly, and not only finds it hilarious but assumes we do, too.  And don't get me wrong, we found it funny, you know, the first eight times, but then it just got us to thinking....

Anyway, Ted and I are not serious wedding people, so we're kind of taking it light.  When it came time to address the invitations, I briefly considered writing my mother's name and then "& Guest" instead of my dad's.  I know he would have gotten a big kick out of it, but part of me hesitated.

A few weeks ago I was driving home from Boston late one night after a weekend of visiting friends.  I had been driving for about two and half hours and was about twenty minutes from home, when I drove through a fog area.  There was a little sign to mark it and everything.  It's around exit 11 on 91.  There was no fog on that particular night, but there was a little dip in the road, and trees on either side, and I guess the slight difference of grade combined with the micro-climate that a group of trees can create is enough to generate fog even when there is none elsewhere. 

In my late-night haze I found it reassuring that there are aspects of the world which are stable, conditions that give the same result over and over, enough so to make it worthwhile to put up a sign marking it.  For the past couple of years Ted and I have floundered around in our lives wondering where we should go, what we should do and how we should do it, all potential, no limits.  But here was a physical condition of the world that was unmovable (short of cutting down the trees), something to work around, something that provided a structure, something course-altering.

Getting married is a fog area, a rock in a swelling sea.  It was this feeling that swayed me from making the joke on my parents' invitation.

The reply card came back.  It said, "Mrs. Stefanie Hals and Male Companion."

days of my hives

I recently recovered from a nasty bout of hives.  They appeared and disappeared in various places on me for about two weeks, and have vanished as mysteriously as they came.  During the two weeks, however, when I did not know that they would vanish, I racked my brain trying to think of what was new in my environment that could have caused them.  The only thing I could come up with was some sort of seasonal mold.

We got rid of a wool carpet, and I ceased all laundry operations in the basement, but nothing really helped.

Then one morning I walked out the back door into a yard filled with tiny, papery mushrooms, like Japanese parasols.  I had never seen them before, and it put me in mind of a single solitary mushroom I had seen last year growing under our hammock.  It was red with white spots, just like in German picture books for children. Apparently those are the most poisonous, but Germans have never been known for pulling their punches when it comes to scaring the pants off of children in story form:

Anyway, the mushrooms are gone and so are my hives. 

wrong direction

Yesterday Ted and I met the wedding caterer at the church we will be married in to discuss food and details.  We brought the sound man/photographer (my brother) and the florist/maid of honor (Rachel). 

Our caterer began regaling us with stories of unusual events he'd catered, including a divorce party which featured a "naughty" pinata.

"You know, instead of candy, there were all kinds of other things."

Rachel perked up and asked, "Like what kinds of things?"

It was clear that everybody knew what sorts of other things he was talking about, so I had a fearful pang of bridely panic that my maid of honor was asking for specifics.

The caterer, who was hesitant to get too specific said, "Well, the kinds of things, you know, a woman might need with a man no longer around the house."

My brother: "An electric drill!"

Me: "A socket wrench!"

Rachel: "A step ladder!"

quick on the draw

My coworker Aaron and I have had to get some drawings out to one of our clients for a while.  We have not gotten them out yet because things seem to be in an ever changing state of flux on that particular project.

The client called up with some further changes and said he needed the drawings the next day.  We realized that the changes he requested could be easily and quickly done in plan, but might take longer to update in the building elevation drawings.

Aaron and I agreed that it was probably okay to send them out as long as the plans were accurate, regardless of the elevations, because these drawings were simply for in-house review purposes.

Aaron offered this pearl of wisdom, "Look, if wants the drawings fast he has to realize that they're not going to be totally accurate."

Because the client had been asking for the drawings for several days I added, "Or fast."

hairdresser on fire

My wedding will not be terribly fancy, but I do want to put flowers in my hair and have it done in some pretty way.

To this end, I visited my hairdresser, who shall remain nameless.  I've been seeing her for about four years, maybe more, and she never quite listens to anything I say, or rather she willfully misunderstands everything I say.  This has resulted in some surprising haircuts, but on a day to day basis I don't really care what my hair looks like.  It just does whatever it wants anyway, and I simply don't have the inclination to spend any time on it.

But my hair on my wedding day is a different story.  I am willing to spend a little time and money to have things go right.  So I made an appointment with her for the morning of the wedding and was told that I should also schedule a consultation, which would be free. 

To make a long, irritating story short, at the consultation she told me why my idea for my own hair at my own wedding simply wouldn't work and with her usual passive aggression molded my hair into an alien french pastry helmet and couldn't understand why I hated it.  In the ensuing discussion she pushed and pulled it until it was no longer even any kind of hairstyle, just a bedraggled mess of product and bobby pins.  She then charged me fifty dollars for it.

"Fifty dollars!  Your receptionist told me this was a free consultation!"

"Well, the consultation was free, but the test run of the hairdo was fifty dollars."

"But I thought that was part of the consultation!"

"No, I did the hairdo.  That was fifty dollars."

Long pause.

"I'm sorry you misunderstood."

I think what she really meant to say was, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that doing the butt ugly hairdo that you didn't even want would be fifty dollars, but I wanted the fifty dollars."

I think if she used that money toward a new toaster that she could accidentally drop in her bathtub it would be money well spent.  Money I'm more than happy to pay.

do I?

Ted surprised me with a weekend at a tiny romantic bed-and-breakfast in Cape Cod.  At dinner, he pulled out his grandmother's wedding ring and proposed to me.  I said yes.

That was five years ago.

We've been alternately discussing a wedding and forgetting all about a wedding since.  Part of the problem was the timing feeling right.  We were only about a year and half out of graduate school, living in New York with no disposable income or energy to put into planning a wedding.  Not much has really changed, except the New York part, but suddenly everything felt right.  Things have been falling into place and we will be married on October 7th, 2006 here in Connecticut in a lovely old church renovated and turned into a residence by Ted and the architectural firm he worked for last year.

Five words:  Magnolia bakery cupcake wedding cake.  See?  Everything feels right.