Four Months To Go

Four months from today, at this time, I will probably be having some kind of panic attack, because in four months and about four hours, I'm getting married.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what getting married means and why I'm doing it. Surprisingly, this is a question I get asked a lot. We're not having a religious ceremony, which is part of what throws people off. (It's also interesting how many people think--or imply that they think--that if you're not doing it for religious reasons, there's not much point in doing it.) We're not having a religious ceremony for a number of reasons, most of which relate to his family's Catholicism and my family's agnosticism-via-Presbyterianism. Instead, we will be married by a judge, who is the father of the friend who introduced us, and who was Mat's Scout leader as a child.

For me, getting married will be about two things. First, getting married is about making a promise to my partner--a promise of love, strength, determination, and caring--in front of the people that we love. Second, getting married is about celebrating that love and that promise with an awesome party. The next time that I have that many people that I love and care about in one place will probably be my funeral, which I likely won't be in any position to enjoy, so I want to do things right this time.¹

All of the crazy stuff about getting married--all the things that I've found stressful these last few months--have all been related to social expectations about weddings and getting married. Everybody has an opinion about every single aspect of the day, and I find myself needing to be reminded that no one is trying to be difficult or stress me out. Everyone is only offering their advice because they love us and they want us to have a good wedding. (Then I breathe deeply and knit frantically until I calm down. This mostly works.)

I am designing and making my own invitations using supplies from Cards & Pockets. (I actually just ordered them tonight. The shipping to Canada is quite steep, but the quality of the cards more than makes up for it. ) I'm a bit of a stationery nut, so I've really enjoyed looking at all of the different types of invitations. It turns out that it is not necessarily all that much cheaper to make your own. It can be, of course, if you buy the boxed ones and just print them, but I was shamed into doing more than that by my mother. Her exact words were: "I just can't believe that someone with your creativity wouldn't go all out on these." I appreciate the sentiment, but I anticipate this will be a time consuming endeavour. Right now the big decision that I have to make is whether to pay someone with mad photoshop skillz to make me an invitation, or to figure out how to do something on my own with my limited design skills.

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¹ Unless, of course, all the stuff that happened on the LOST finale is actually real; in which case, awesome.