Wedding Planning - 4 months out

The wedding is definitely creep creep creeping up on us. It feels like our to-do list is pretty never-ending. I’ve learned a ton about our relationship though. Someone wise once told me abouthow in many relationships, one person is the CEO and the other is the CFO. I think I’ve finally nailed down our relationship – I am the CEO, the CFO and the janitorial staff. The Grige is the art director, the chef and the stress management counselor. The stress management position is actually a job share with a great guy named Johnny Walker, but they make an excellent team. Thankfully, between the Grige and my mom, we have beaten my “I must do everything myself” syndrome into submission and I still think we are reasonably on track to have a successful wedding. When I say successful wedding I simply mean that we will be married at the end of the day and there will be food, drink, and invitations to alert guests of the time and date. Low expectations are the key to success. Please note: low expectations are not the same as low standards.

Us, Happy.

My biggest gripe is the fact that I spent hours – nay – tens of hours, working diligently on our website. I wanted to make sure that the answers to all the questions could be found quickly and easily in one place. I also brayed incessantly in multi-colored and bolded text about how important it would be to book hotels early (not surprisingly, I am having this EXACT SAME ISSUE with the event I’m planning at work, but more on that later…). I guess I should have defined “early” more clearly, because at least 5 area hotels are already sold out for our dates, and many important guests are still not booked.

Now, I know I can’t make people do anything. I constantly remind myself that this is not my problem. But, But! I made it so easy! And when I get panicked phone calls about what hotel to book, what airport to fly in to and “why is everything there so EXPENSIVE???”, I want to scream profanity that only the daughter of a serious sailor would know. The craziest part? The people who keep pretending the website doesn’t exist (even though it’s plastered in reminder emails and on the save-the-date) are the millenials! All the folks in my parent’s age bracket have raved about how helpful it is. All of the kids who grew up using Google to answer every question are like – huh? You have a website? So if you’re attending our wedding and you are reading this, please, I beg of you, just go to the website. I worked very hard on it so that I would not have to be worried about your travel plans when I have things like bunting, budgets and bridesmaids dresses to focus on.

This is not the face of an unstressed person. I am making this face NOW.

In addition to the wedding, I’m also planning a massive event at work – dinner for nearly 500 guests and 2 days of meetings. Thankfully, I’m not in charge of everything, but I’m in charge of enough to make me never ever ever want to see an event timing spreadsheet or RSVP card ever again. I never thought I could be sick of excel, but I definitely am.  As an addendum to my earlier post on wedding planning as project management experience - I am never mentioning my event planning skills at work again. Doing this event and the wedding at the same time SUCKS. I keep having nightmares about where I will seat the firm chairman at our wedding reception.

And also, MOVING

Yep, I’m still pissed about it. But at least I’ve given notice and started pricing boxes and trucks. Has anyone out there ever used pod movers before?