One Week

I'm off to get married!

(If we can do it as well as these guys did, then I'll consider it a perfect day.)

8 Days: Oh, the sappiness begins!

I don't have my ring on today (it's at the jeweler's getting a special polish), and I keep catching a glimpse of my bare fingers and panicking. It's strange how in just a matter of months that ring has become part of my hand. Today is the first day I haven't worn it since G. proposed, and it will probably be the last day in a very long time that I won't be wearing either it or my wedding ring. I feel like I'm just now starting to understand the full significance of wedding rings, of why when H. lost his, he and A. combed an entire soccer field until they found it. It's not just that wearing a ring says "I'm taken," it's that it says "We're joined."

10 Days: Glutton

I wish someone could make me stop looking at the weather forecast for next week. It's getting worse and worse, and I keep looking and looking. I know (I KNOW, PEOPLE!) that even if it rains the wedding will be a success in the sense that G. and I will be married when it's over, but I've spent months and months planning this thing based on a rain-free day. In the past week alone I've spent no less than ten hours assembling placecards that will look utterly ridiculous if it's too rainy to hang them on a clothesline as planned. Not to mention my darling lemonade table that won't be anywhere near as charming if it's stuck inside the barn. These details mean a lot to me. And don't even get me started on the fact that I know from first hand experience how difficult it is for a photographer to get good photos at a ceremony under a dark ol' tent.

I'm freaking out here, kids.

12 Days: Other Honeymooners

When my grandparents were newlyweds, and only 19 years old, their house burnt to the ground. They lost everything, including their wedding and honeymoon photos. Several years ago, another couple who they spent part of their honeymoon with gave them some film negatives from that trip. The type of film used is no longer readily processed, so my grandma was unable to do anything with the negative. Recently she passed them along to me, and I've been working on getting prints made. The negs are in pretty bad shape, but I'm totally smitten by the photos nonetheless. Time has worn down the celluloid and given the images a surreal, romantic quality. Some of them give me chills. My grandparents look young but confident, and in the photographs I can see little fragments of the rest of their lives already etched on their faces.

15 Days: Home Stretch

For some reason, every time I've ever been anticipating something exciting, I always thought that if I could make it to the two week mark, I could survive the rest of the wait. Tomorrow is the two week mark!

P.S. If you want to read about someone's deepest prayer and biggest dream coming true, click on the Superhero Journal link on the side of my blog. It made my day today.

16 Days: Dreaming of Venice

One thing I've found sort of funny about this whole wedding thing is that it involves months and months devoted to the careful arrangement of one day, while the honeymoon, at least in our case, goes largely unplanned. G. and I are going on what is truly my dream honeymoon, a trip to places I've wanted to visit my whole life (Rome! Florence! Venice! PARIS!),and I've probably spent a total of two hours thinking about this trip. We're wildly underprepared to spend two weeks in countries where we don't speak the languages beyond G.'s spotty French from a class he took last year, and my thin grasp on the first two lessons of an Italian language CD I've been listening to in my car every few days.

I love this. I can't wait to stumble around these cities with my husband G., and be sappy newlyweds together.

(I also can't wait to have some photos to post that aren't of weddings!)