Something blue

Sean and I (and let’s not forget the all-important hands that hold the checkbook) have been shopping for wedding venues since the weekend after we got engaged. And it’s seemed like all the ones we visited have either been too ugly, too choppy, too expensive, or simply too “meh” for at least one person’s tastes.

The biggest problem was that Sean and I had very specific notions about what we wanted: a wide open room in a stand-alone building that would absolutely wow our guests as soon as they walked in. Unfortunately, fulfilling those specifications turned out to be much easier said than done. For one thing, what we wanted doesn’t really exist in DFW—pretty much all you can get in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States is a hotel ballroom or a country club that seats twenty people per room. And the few places that did fit the bill wanted to A) dictate which caterer we used, B) force us to have our rehearsal during business hours on a Thursday, and C) charge us a $7,000 rental fee and $25 a head for house wine and Bud Light. And I’m sorry, but no one in my immediate wedding planning circle can fathom spending $14,000 just so that my four year old cousin can walk in the door and have a glass of Merlot.

Everyone says couples should book their venue at least a year in advance or risk hosting the blessed event in the backyard, so I was thrilled that Sean’s relatively early proposal gave me a good 15 months to plan. And then our venue search started holding up the whole show. Since we didn’t have a venue, we didn’t have a date, so we couldn’t book our vendors. (Not that we knew what kinds of vendors we’d need anyway, since so many venues come with laundry lists of preferences and regulations.) We were getting so close to the wire (our negative one-year anniversary is next week, after all) that I couldn’t think about my wedding without a roll of Tums, a handful of Zoloft, and a shaker of vodka.

On Saturday Sean and I visited the only remaining viable venue within a 50 mile radius of our residences. Sean thought it was the nicest venue we’d seen so far, I liked it well enough to sign on the dotted line and just be done with the whole ordeal, and my parents were prepared to pay the deposit. When I went to bed on Sunday night, I felt a mild sense of relief that I would no longer have to fret about location and a nagging sense of fear that my wedding was turning into this big, ugly monster that was stomping out of my control. And then on Monday morning, the festering boil on the butt of my matrimony finally burst—all over my place of business.

I was two minutes away from my office when I got word that the venue that I thought everyone had finally agreed on didn’t pass economic muster. And then I spent the first two hours of my workday completely despondent—I sent countless distraught emails and texts and prayed that my coworkers wouldn’t notice my watery eyes or my quivering bottom lip. By the end of the morning, I’d actually gotten the green light to book any venue I wanted, but the damage was already done. Worries about the venue had been polluting my wedding planning experience for so long that they had finally rendered me completely numb to the whole event. I just wanted to skip it. (I know I’m prone to histrionics, people, but believe me when I say that at 3:00 Monday afternoon, the only five words I could speak about my wedding were “I don’t give a shit.”)

When I finally got face-time with my fiancé after work, I practically begged him to pick the venue. After all, he’d been super involved since day one, so surely he could be trusted to propel us through all the mucky muck to the blessed end. But no. He was also so disgusted by the whole process that he refused to play along. Plus he was adamant that his bride-to-be be happy with her own wedding, so he wasn’t about to chose for me.

The conversation that followed would have made George Banks blush: Why couldn’t we find a venue that suited us? Why are weddings so offensively expensive? Why do venues try to control so much of the couple’s day? At one point we were talking very seriously about jumping on the next plane to New Orleans and swapping vows in the French Quarter. And that’s when Sean said it: “I’d rather just rent out a bar and have a big freakin’ party with all of our friends and forget all this wedding crap.” Cue the light bulb moment. Why in the world would we spend an arm and a leg on a venue if we were both at the point of not caring? Shouldn’t we just go with a less expensive place that we’d seen and get it over with? And if we were going to go with a less expensive place, wouldn’t we then have money in the budget to create the wedding that we wanted? And since the less expensive place couldn’t care less about who assembled my cheese platters, couldn’t we just throw a party that’s super fun and super us instead of an overblown reception? WELL OF COURSE WE CAN!

Yesterday morning I called my mom to inform her that Sean and I had finally settled on the venue of least resistance. By yesterday afternoon, my mom had confirmed that it was available. And as of 1:00PM today, I can finally tell you where the party at! And when—October 15, 2011! Save the motherlovin’ date, y’all, because it’s finally freakin’ official.

The venue we’ve booked is pretty enough to stand on its own, simple enough to support our personal touches, lax enough not to micromanage every aspect of our wedding (no list of permissible caterers, no prohibitive bar packages, no stupid premiums that would prevent us from having our wedding during the popular month that we wanted) and priced fairly enough that we might actually be able to serve food to more than half our guests (so, out-of-towners, you won’t have to stop at McDonalds after all!).

Since I now have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want (and money in the budget to fund it), I’ve decided to make the whole event all about us. I’m going to stop trying to make it the greatest wedding reception ever and start thinking of it as the biggest party Sean and I will ever throw. What kind of food would we serve, what kind of alcohol would we drink, what kind of music would we play, what kinds of treats would I bake if we were having twenty friends over to our apartment? Take that, multiply it by ten, move it to a neutral site, and bingo! Cake cutting fees and corking charges need not apply.

Who cares if the venue doesn’t have all the pomp and circumstance we thought we wanted? In the end, and with a little elbow grease, what our venue will have is the distinctive flavor of Sean and Sarah. And wouldn't you know it--I suddenly and profoundly give a shit about the wedding again!

Queen of the Over-Share: New York Trip, part 1

**Once you’ve blogged about boob surgery, not much else is sacred. So in keeping with recent tradition, this post is full of TMI. Fair warning: it’s about some medical things; it contains a few blood-and-guts references (Just kidding! No guts were involved!); and it’s technically part one of my New York story. (If you choose not to read it, however, you won’t be lost when part two comes out.)**
    
It was 9:00 on Monday night. I was packing for New York in a fury (last minute as I am wont to do) in hopes of finishing in time to watch a bit of TV and decompress before hitting the sack early (my flight was scheduled to leave at 7:15 the next morning). My mom was about to leave for the grocery store (for reasons that are irrelevant to this post but still mysterious at 9PM) and she stopped by my room to see if I needed her to pick up anything. Snacks for the plane ride? Band-Aids for my New York feet? Xanax for first-day jitters? I needed none of those, but I did request a bottle of cranberry juice. “For what?” you and (she) ask? Well, I was having some troubles, you see, in the lavatory, which I won’t explain in detail but THIS IS THE BLOOD REFERENCE I WAS TALKING ABOUT Google “urinary tract infection” if you want to know the other symptoms.

After I explained my situation to my mom she was all, “Um, yeah, you probably shouldn’t leave the state like that. See if any doc-in-the-box clinics are open on Memorial Day.” The results that turned up initially looked something like this: “haha yeah right,” “not on your life,” and “die, sicko, die!” so we decided to just hope and pray that an industrial sized bottle of cranberry juice would do the trick, my mom headed off to the store, and I started in with the “WHY ME!?”s. I was indescribably nervous about starting a new job, you see, and even more nervous about navigating a new airport and a new city not known for welcoming newcomers and oh great all of a sudden it feels like I have to pee all the time but it hurts when I do and there’s blood and what’s that sharp but unrelated pain in my foot? If I’m going to die I hope I do before tomorrow so I don’t have to suffer on the plane or in a cab. 

Two seconds (I kid you not only a little) after my mom left, the straits in the loo got direr (MORE EXTREME BLOOD REFERENCE!). So after a good bit of fit-pitchery, I moped to the closet to find an outfit suitable for sitting around in the ER for the rest of the night (I was, of course, dressed to pack and sleep). But then, a breakthrough! Sean found a local clinic that was open until 10:00, so we booked it to the garage just in time to meet my mom (with two bottles of cranberry juice and cranberry pills in tow!) and sped off toward the clinic.

After I’d filled out a fair bit of paperwork, a very surly young nurse called me back and started mumbling a series of hard-to-understand questions at me: “howmuchdoyouweigh?” “currentlytakinganydailymedications?” “anymedicalhistory?” “peeinthiscupandbringittome.” Then she led me to a brightly colored exam room and said “thedoctorwillbehereinaminute.”

When the doc showed up, he asked me (clearly!) why I thought I had a urinary tract infection, banged around on my kidneys in hopes of eliciting a reaction (nope), and told me he’d be right back with the results from my urine analysis. And right back he was with the obvious UTI diagnosis, the promise of meds (hooray!), and the unfortunate news that the grouchy nurse was on her way with a shot. A shot in the hip! “Thisisgoingtostingalittle,” the nurse said as she swabbed me with a numbing solution, reared her arm back, jammed the syringe in as hard as she could before anything was actually numb, and screamed “damnyouformakingmedomyjob!” Actually she didn’t say that, but I bet she wanted to, just like I wanted to say, “Look lady, I did not contract this UTI 12 hours before I was scheduled to leave for a business trip across the country just so I could screw with you on Memorial Day, so take it easy!”

After she spent what seemed like hours administering the painful shot she shooed me back into the waiting room while she tracked down the doctor. When she returned, she handed me a sheet of paper with a prescription for antibiotics and one for a pain reliever that she said would “turnyourpeeafunnycolor” and sent us on our way.

Mom and Sean graciously volunteered to fill the prescription for me so I could finish packing and continue peeing every five minutes. (They call this symptom “urgency,” and boy is it ever!) By the time they’d returned, I’d finished packing, drunk half the bottle of cranberry juice, taken two cranberry pills, and driven my parents’ water bill to record heights. I downed the antibiotic and the pain reliever with another glass of cranberry juice and was finally able to do the TV decompression thing. When I wasn’t in the bathroom, that is.

Stay in school, kids. Forever.

Have you ever crashed head first into the U.S. tax system on Sunday evening (self-employed people have to pay in HOW MUCH each quarter!?); spent all but three hours of Sunday night/Monday morning working to meet a (recurring!) deadline; tried and failed to spend 5:00AM-6:30AM napping in preparation for Monday; gotten an email requesting a job interview within either seven or twenty-four hours; spent Monday working furiously to please clients, visiting the dentist, tutoring, prepping for a very important Tuesday doctor visit, and compiling a portfolio for the very unexpected Tuesday job interview; discovered at 11:30PM that not a single one of the four printers in the house worked; stayed up until 1:00AM waiting for drivers to install while wishing you didn't have to wake up in less than five hours and stress out all over again and wondering just how long it would be before Aunt Flo showed up to make things really interesting? I wouldn't recommend it.

Sarah Elizabeth and the THNGVBD

I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (replete with tear shed at the most inappropriate times--on the way to pick up my girls, on the way to a meeting, thisclose to in a meeting [omgwtf, Hump Day + post-grad angst + PMS!?]) and then the craziest thing happened! I got on the dreadmill, watched the first 45 hilarious minutes of Too Young To Be a Dad, and received a veritable treasure trove of job postings from my sweetheart-cum-personal-job-hunter, and wouldn't you know it? I don't feel so bad anymore! Bless you endorphins, Lifetime, and best boyfriend ever. Bless you.

Annnnd wouldn't you know, my mom just walked in from her Wal-Mart run and handed me a Martha Stewart (eeee!) Weddings magazine and a tub of cotton candy, presumably as balm for my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Suddenly I'm feeling even better! I'm also so eating all 4 Points of that cotton candy. In bed. With Martha. Bless my mom and her Band-aids, too.