The dress. I has it.

Or at least, it is hanging in my mother's closet because I don't actually have space to store it.  But it is no longer at the store and the bustle (after two trips to the shop in one day) is finally done and looks the way I want it to look.

Yeah, that's right. I - me, the girl who has not done any wedding planning since spring 2010 - I have completed one item on the wedding checklist.  Woot!

That said, my veil did is not right so I still have to make another trip to P-cola to take care of that.  The veil itself is super awesome it's just that there wasn't quite enough netting to fit my head so that part needs redone.  Which is cool, because that saved me $60 this trip that I didn't really have so I'm cool with being able to spread the spending over time.  On the other hand, every time I go back to P-cola is another time that I have to tell people that I don't have a wedding date and no, mother, I still don't have a ring.  But I'm getting less spazzy about that.

After a moody week leading up to my trip to pick up the dress, I had a big cry about it Thursday night and freaked out at H and stayed up way too late fighting and pouting and then we worked it out and went to bed and I felt okay for the rest of the weekend.  Despite my mother asking if I have a ring yet, despite having talk to people about missing my original wedding date and not having a new one, despite that I was okay.  Because, hey, it is gonna be okay.

At least, after a lot of freaking out at my fiance because any and all things wedding make me hate my life, I was finally convinced that it will be okay.  Because we're going to sit down and hash out our budget.  We have to do this.  Not our wedding budget but our life budget.  Our current system of seat-of-pants flight was making me completely spastic and despondent.  So that is on the to do list this week: fix the system.  Figure out where the money is going.  Once we get the day-to-day figured out and that feels stable then we'll be able to talk wedding again and I would like that to be sooner rather than later.  So we gotta do it.

Ugh.

Adulthood.  It blows sometimes.

But if you were interested in wedding budget type things perhaps you'd be interested in the following tidbits:

• Cost of dress: $800 + tax (half of which my mother picked up)
• Cost of alterations: $55
• Coast of veil: $60 + tax (to be paid)

Current wedding spending total = $915 + tax OR roughly $950.  And all of that has been money spent on me.  In retrospect, I'm a little ashamed of how much I've spent on a dress when the bills are stacked a mile high and H picked up so much slack when I was without a job.  Now that I'm catching up and I'm eyeballing all the financial fixing I've got to do, the spending seems like something of a waste. 

BUT it looks fucking fabulous.  So to hell with the money.

woulda coulda shoulda

Today is the day that we would have gotten married if I hadn't called it off.  I was much sadder and frustrated about this in the week leading up to today than I am now.  I had several people ask me when we were getting married, give me wedding advice, ask to see my ring, etc over the last week and I flipped out a little the other night and cried to H about it.  Yesterday a fellow derby girl of mine got married and I was sad to think that we would've been having our rehearsal dinner.

But today we got up and H made biscuits and eggs and grits for breakfast.  I swept and mopped the floors.  H oiled the porch swing and cleaned the porch banisters.  We scrubbed down the whole kitchen and made it all shiney clean.  Gave the dog a bath (did I mention that we adopted a dog?) and taught the dog to watch and sit.  I did laundry.  We took the pup for a good long walk around the neighborhood.  I did my roller derby cross training exercises.  We might go out for some Vietnamese food in a bit, maybe watch a movie.  Still need to get groceries.  Generally I feel pretty accomplished.

We've devoted more time to just getting our shit together and being more responsible adults.  So that maybe one of these days we'll have the dough to get hitched and throw a party.  But I'm happy to say that I didn't really think about the wedding that wasn't today.  Except that I'm kind of glad that we didn't push forward.  I don't think I would have been able to enjoy it or appreciate it.  I don't think I would have been in a good place.

Next weekend I go to P-cola to pick up my dress and veil.  Not sure how to feel about that.  Will think about that later.

happy fucking new year!

happy new year, interwebs!


H and I have resolved that we will definitely get married in 2011, one way or another.  it will happen.  we pinky swore.

wedding on pause

So last week was a freak-out week.  Which I'm not proud of.  But there it is.  For those of you who are still reading after all that mess, thanks.  I appreciate the notes and input.

I spent so many weeks trying not to freak out and to stay calm and keep it together that I think it really built up.  And yeah, there are issues.  And I think that H and I should see somebody but that's not really an option when I don't know how I'm going to come up with the money to pay the water bill and there are already old doctor bills and parking tickets and credit card bills piled up.  I just keep reminding myself that if I can get a full time job, a lot of these problems will be solved quickly.

In wedding news, my mother called me Sunday morning with a venue she wants me to check out.  It sounds great but I really don't see the point in looking right now.  It feels like just picking at an infected wound to even think about planning right now.  Even if it is a reasonably priced venue, even reasonable is out of my budget (which is currently $0) and I don't know why my mother would even bring it up when she has so many qualms about paying.  I don't want to look at something that I know I can't have.

So I haven't called.

I'm supposed to back to FL to get my dress.  But I don't have the money for gas to get there let alone the $125 or so that I need to pay for veil and alterations.

All the money issues in mind plus, there is just nothing else to say about this whole wedding thing right now.  There's no moving forward right now.  Not even in superficial ways.

I guess I just always thought my life would be better by this age.  I'd be getting less broke, more focused, successful, etc.  This sudden backward mudslide is really fucking with me.

anybody know a therapist?

I can't even make a turkey sandwich without losing my shit today.  Sobbing like a frickin' lunatic over a jar of mayo.

I'm officially unfollowing all the wedding porn sites.  No more dresses, flowers, inspiration, blah blah blah.  Nothing with tons of pictures of cool weddings that I'm not going to have.  I'm not even trying to plan a wedding so why pretend that reading those blogs is doing anything other than making me angry and depressed at a time when I've got a lot of important things to be angry and depressed about.

What's worse is that I think I'm actually beginning to agree with my mother.  That we're not really engaged.  No ring, not real.  I'd be crazy to plan a wedding.  We're a damn mess anyways, constantly fighting and snarking and flipping out because I don't have a job and I keep getting rejected and holy shit how are am I supposed to pay all these bills and why am I still home everyday with nothing to show for it?  I can't believe that I'm being that girl.  I can't believe that I let this turn so bad.

H and I were joking the other day that our engagement doesn't really count.  That we should have a do-over.  Except that I don't think either of us was really joking.  I think our engagement ended when I called off the January wedding.  And I think I really fucked up and I'm totally trapped by it - just spirally down this bottomless pit of bad decisions and bad timing and bad luck that's become self-perpetuating.

I missed my appointment for my second dress fitting to test the bustle and pick up my veil.  And I haven't rescheduled officially (tentatively November 16th) because I don't know if there's a reason to pick up the dress.  I don't want to put it on again and pretend that I'm planning a wedding when I know that I'm not.  The dress has become my own personal symbol for everything that I can't have and can't give to H.  I can't imagine our wedding anymore.  The idea doesn't make me happy, just like a failure.  I've been a pretty shitty girlfriend this year and an even shittier fiancee.

We don't need to plan a wedding.  We need a therapist.

Or at least I do.