And I said to myself, "Self...I have some questions for you."

So today’s post may be a bit more sappy and/or serious than usual. But this is the one place where I can be those things and no one can really complain because I’m not filling your news feed. You made a conscious decision to click on the link and read my blog. So HA! (but seriously, thanks for reading!)

Recently, as we near closer and closer to the wedding (13 weeks!! WEEKS I TELL YOU!!!) I have been spending more and more time thinking about the marriage. I have of course been planning my perfect purple flowers, my gorgeous vintage china plates, and spending hours trying to decide what to do for lighting at the reception. But ultimately, at least 5 times a week, I stop and say, “It isn’t about all that. I want the marriage.” Let me explain.

I am so in love with my Andrew. I mean, head over heels, he makes my heart skip a beat, best friend in the world soul-mate kind of love. But recently I had to really take a moment and put all the crazy wedding aside and ask myself all the hard questions. Like, the questions I did NOT want to ask, but felt I needed to. I have been known to be somewhat of a fairytale romantic. And I have also been known to have some pretty terrible awful evil boyfriends who do things like cheat on me with five women. At the same time. You know. The usual.

But with Andrew it was so very different. It wasn’t fairytale at all. Here is a little secret: We work HARD at our relationship. It is not perfect, nor will it ever be. I am not disillusioned to think otherwise. We both have to put forth effort to communicate, compromise, check-in, and truly work on our relationship daily. Never do we go on auto-pilot and assume the kinks will work themselves out. I fell hopelessly in love with Andrew so fast it scared me. I spent weeks and weeks trying to talk myself out of it, thinking it was too soon, or just me being the damsel. But the more and more I got to know him, the more I fell deeply in love with this man who made me believe in the term “soul-mate.” And after two years together, and a wedding on the way, I still had to sit down and ask myself some hard questions.

1. Do I want the wedding, or the marriage?
    
   I read an article today (which inspired me to write this post) and I took away a few quotes from it that seemed fitting. First,
    
   “I want you to know marriage is more than a venue or a menu. It’s far more than The Perfect Day or saying yes to the dress.”
    
   Well, let’s be honest. This wedding has been fun to plan. It really, truly has. And I am in love with my dress. And I am so excited about those dark purple roses. And I DO love the fairytale. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think we SHOULD celebrate love in a big way. But I also think that I needed to ask myself this question. And the answer? I want the marriage. I want the long-haul for our relationship. I want to grow old together and still be best friends and have long conversations. I want the awful, ugliest fights where we scream and yell until we’re blue in the face. As long as we come back to us when we’re done. I want someone to be my partner in making life’s decisions. I want to be there for him to lean on when he is dealing with grief, sadness, happiness, or any other thing that passes through. I want to spend every moment working on us, learning about us, and sometimes failing at us. But when times are hard and dark, then we have to fight that much harder; not walk away. I want it all. And the amazing thing is, Andrew wants this, too. We talk about it, very openly. When we were new and fresh in our relationship and learning about our love, he said to me, “It is so easy to love you when things are good. It is easy to love at the top of the mountain. But I want to see us love each other when we are in our deepest valley. Then climb back to the top of the mountain hand in hand.”
    
2. Am I still a strong, confident woman, or am I defined solely by my relationship? Could I survive without it?

This was my scariest question to ask. I didn’t want to. But I did. And guess what?! After a very honest, soul-searching session, I realized not only am I a strong woman, I am actually strongER and MORE confident now that I have Andrew. What I went through in my previous relationship – what we all so affectionately refer to as my LifeTime movie that puts Sharknado to shame – almost broke me. But only almost. The most amazing thing happened. I had this awful human being put me through hell, and at the end of it I actually felt GOOD. I came through on the other side, looked back and thought, “Well. Huh. If I can survive that then I can handle quite a bit!” And then, even more amazing, I truly began to look at the situation as making me a better person. I suddenly realized my own strength. I suddenly knew what I would and would NOT take from someone in a relationship. I now knew exactly what I needed – not just wanted – needed out of a relationship and settling for less just simply wasn’t fair to me. I didn’t have to have a boyfriend to define me. I didn’t need a man for me to feel worthy. And I most certainly did not have to change who I am, how I act, what I say, or what I believe just to make him like me. I suddenly became….me. Just me. And it felt amazing!! I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all when I met Andrew. Oh gosh, that was the last thing in the world I needed! The comical part of our story is that I actually met him online while I was in the middle of deleting my entire online dating account. But something made me click on him. And I fought it so hard, knowing being in a relationship was probably at the bottom of my to-do list. But it quickly became evident that he was different. We were different. And within one day of us meeting, I laid it all out on the table for him. I told him who I was, what I needed, and basically said if you can’t handle that buddy have a nice life! And he gave it right back to me. And we thought…okay. Let’s try this.

Almost two years later, here we are on the cusp of our wedding, and I am stronger and more confident than ever. I don’t need Andrew in order to define me. I am me, with or without him, in many ways. In that article I referenced earlier, the mom wrote to her daughters,

“Most of all, I want you to know love. The kind of love your dad and I have that lasts through heartache and headaches. I want you to know that you are loved. You don’t have to earn or achieve it. It’s not dependent on a good hair day or bad. It’s not something you can lose. Whether you’re swept off your feet or remain a confidant single woman, you are enough.”

 

I am enough. BUT….how amazing is it that I have this incredible man added to my life, enriching my life, fulfilling my life every day? I choose to love him. He chooses to love me. We choose to work hard. How freaking awesome is that?! Each of us is enough. But together, we are endless.

 

1. Is marriage necessary? I mean, we live together, we love. Why rock the boat?

This is probably not only the question I hated to ask myself, but also the question that I think other people are secretly thinking and don’t want to ask. But I asked myself. And although my answer is a bit redundant in terms of the whole “Do I want the marriage” thing, I will add this. Yes. We live together, our lives are intertwined, our families have pretty much already gotten used to having that extra “son” or “daughter” around. And Lord knows my sisters would be the first to tell me I don’t need no man. (I have six former brothers-in-law. I do not have six sisters. You do the math.)

But it is not just about the relationship between Andrew and I. Although I know many of you will likely be surprised by this (is anyone even still reading at this point!?), one of the biggest foundations of our relationship is God. We lean on Him. We pray together. When we struggle, we have faith as our foundation. And it is very, very important to both of us to take vows and honor them. Not just a repeat-after-me shindig to check off the boxes in the ceremony. But true vows that we are taking, out loud, before God and family. Two become one. That is something we talk about frequently. Again: Two become One. I am making the decision to change my last name to Gehring. I want us to be the Gehrings. Not in some submissive way, or some way all of my feminist friends I’m sure deem demeaning, but because I want to. I want to take those vows, I want to take his name, I want us to be a true family unit. I can re-hash all of the reasons I want a marriage, but I won’t. And I do respect that every woman out there makes her own, strong, confident decisions. I love that! I am simply explaining mine. I don’t want to live the next ten years being boyfriend and girlfriend. I want to be husband and wife, before God and family, and take all that comes with it.

Okay, at the risk of this post being 18 pages long – front and back – I will bring this to a close. That article struck a chord with me this morning on something that I have already been thinking a lot about lately. I am SO excited for everything – this man, this marriage, this wedding – and I can barely think of much else. But in ten, twenty, or fifty years I should hope that we are not still thinking about the color of our flowers or whether or not the ring bearer cooperated. I would hope, and sincerely pray, that we are thinking about our marriage, our faith, and our vows. I hope we are still having conversations. I hope we are still fighting. I hope we are sitting on some porch somewhere watching our children (likely misbehaving). I’ll leave you with the end of the article:

“I have seen how fast time flies. I know the days are long and the years are short. I put away the toys and clothes you outgrow regularly. I know while I write this, one of you is practicing eye shadow upstairs and the other is practicing cartwheels in the yard, and I will blink and it will be time to give you away.

You are just beginning to dream. Don’t stop.

And on this regular summer Monday, I want you to know that my wedding wasn’t much.

But my marriage is more.”

 

I love you Andrew Wilson Gehring. Marry me. J

 

 

A rose by any other name...

Okay, so I know I vaguely mentioned how my mom and I did a major shopping haul the other day. But I wanted to document the experience, because let me tell you. It was a DAY!


Once upon a time....


My parents came up on Sunday to help with some wedding things, and my dad began working on my super special piano project. Mom and I decided to go to Party City and Michael's and begin the process of looking for items. We began with Party City in the hopes of finding everything for the rehearsal dinner and a few odds and ends for the reception.


Now. We walk in and suddenly I am greeted with ALL the things. I think my mind neglected to put the words "party" and "city" together in relation to each other until I walked in this store. I mean there was just floor to ceiling of...everything. And purple everywhere. I suddenly became the most indecisive person on the planet. By the time I gathered my senses mom was half-way down Aisle 6 with a cart full of items. Things that weren't even on our list to begin with we suddenly had to have. Damn you marketing gurus who sit in your offices on bean bags and play ping pong until you're inspired.


The main items we wanted were dinnerware for the rehearsal dinner. I have decided to do a very, very low-key rehearsal dinner. We are having it in the back of the tiny church we're getting married in and all the little old church ladies are preparing it for us. Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, and homemade pies, topped off with Sweet Tea. So I didn't want china plates and anything fancy for this laid back atmosphere, and so we began looking for paper and plastic type items. Well, wouldn't you know they had about 75 choices of purple things. And we couldn't tell how sturdy they were unless we "made a plate" now could we? So I nibbled into a package of plates and pulled one out, only to discovered that in reality it was paper thing and likely would collapse under the weight of fairy dust. We finally settled on some very over-priced purple plates, dessert plates, napkins, and cups and called it a day. But then as we were leaving, I looked over and saw these lovely purple flower plates that were 40% off an already cheap price on the clearance aisle. But they were on the very top shelf and we couldn't reach.


Well, before I could even say the words my little southern momma took off through that store like a banshee and flagged down the first employee she could find. She returns with this high school aged looking girl who looked like she had better places to be, but the threat of my mother's nose holes flaring seemed to make her willing to help us. She looked up and was like, "Those? WAY up there? *sigh* MmmK."


Customer service really is top notch these days. Lovely.


She returned about 10 minutes later holding a pack of the plates and my mom was like "Oooo how did you get those?!" and the girl pointed to a rack that was, oh about 4 feet away from us, full of all the things. We just hadn't seen it. And she says, "There. Anything else?" Nope. That'll do donkey.


SO we put allllll our stuff back and switch to these things and suddenly we are paying 1/3 of what we were going to and everything is just as pretty. Done.


On the way out, over to our left was a Wedding Wonderland store, but we both thought it would be best that we didn't enter this store considering A) how much we just spent at the party store and B) it was raining and a bitch had  a fro already, okay?


We left and went to Michael's with the sole purpose of looking for fake flowers and ribbon. I am using some real flowers in the ceremony, and boutonnieres and corsages and stuff, but I really wanted a ton of flowers for the reception. One of my bestest friends, Matty, has a wonderfully talented mom, Momma Jane, who has SO graciously offered to help make my wedding beautiful. She is making the majority of the decorations for me including centerpieces and some stuff for the church. I am SOOO grateful! But we need her to have things to work with. I mean, prior to our Michael's trip we pretty much had some mason jars, one sad strip of burlap, and a hug to give her.


So. We go into Michael's. Again, wedding planning on crack people. We at first made the (rookie) mistake of going straight to the main flower aisle, whereupon we discovered every individual stem was $9.99. So at that rate, this was going to be a $2,000 haul. And I am PICKY about fake flowers. I refuse to use ones that actually look fake. I refuse to have leaves be of a non-believable nature. I refuse to have petals not look real. I am willing to have no flowers rather than cheap trailer park flowers that somebody done put on they front porch with a welcome sign.


We decided to take a restroom break and re-group. Then we start finding little deals here and there, but nothing too exciting. What we needed where burlap flowers, purple flowers, cream flowers, and some brown accents. And what we REALLY needed were dark, dark purple roses. My mom is making my cake (she used to be a wedding cake maker for those of you who don't know. She is ridiculously talented.) She is using these small purple roses on the cake, cascading down. I found it on the internet (Pinterest WIN) and fell in love. But alas, I am aware that real roses do not come in purple. And honestly, I did not expect to find a fake version of something real that was actually fake. See what I did there? But I saw it on the internet, so it MUST be real!


As we are walking down an aisle, all of the sudden my mother stops and grabs a stray employee and blurts out, "We need purple roses! We are desperate! Where are purple roses? Do you sell purple roses?" I think the woman gathered we were probably looking for purple roses. She proceeds to tell us that is not a "real" thing and that they probably don't have any, and takes us to the fake rose aisle. Pinks, yellows, reds, and some odd colors for sure, but no purple. We are sad. We hang our heads. Then the woman goes, "Wait!" and we went "WHAT?!" and she says, "Follow me!" and we followed. She takes us to an end cap that had the teeeeeeeny little bouquets of roses tied together. And one section of them were...purple! So we were excited, but only just a little, because really these were way too small, and they were lavender, not dark purple. But they were pretty, really pretty, and so we settled. The woman left us to lick our wounds and pull all the bouquets down, and then from across the store she goes, "Ladies!!! I FOUND THEM!!!!!!" and we perked up like prairie dogs and took of running - yes, running - through the store like crazy people. We were so excited and breathless we couldn't find her or the roses. Just the sound of her voice. And a maze of flowers. Then there they were. We rounded a corner and *cue Angels* there, in a big container, was an entire thing of DARK PURPLE ROSES. They. Were. Gorgeous. Stunning. They looked completely real! I would never have known they were fake. And then, it got better. The woman says, "Oh look! They're on sale. 40% off today! And I can get you an additional 20% off your overall purchase." At least that's what I think she said. As soon as the words 40% off came out, my mom was clawing her way through the flower maze and pulled out every single flower. All the things. All the flowers. We bought them all. And then, next to them were more dark purple large flowers. We bought them. All. And then, one row over there were Burlap roses trimmed with shine. We bought them. ALL. And then, it just didn't stop. We discovered we were in their last season Fall clearance aisle, and dark purple was all the rage. So we bought them. All.


Our cart was so wide we couldn't fit down normal aisles. But we walked proudly through that store, and many woman stopped to "oo" and "ah" over our flowers. And when we were in the ribbon aisle, and mom was pretending to walk down the aisle so I could see how the ribbon flowed, people didn't judge. They smiled. And when mom pretended to be a bridesmaid and held her bouquet and three different levels as she walked down the aisle, one woman told us she was excited for us. And when we checked out, which took 20 minutes to do, the cashier all but high-fived us on our amazing haul. I won't say what we spent that day, but I will say this - our savings amount was over $400. We were extreme couponers. We were Budweiser champion horses. We were all the things.


That day with my momma was one of the best I've had yet in planning this wedding. We had SO much fun, and laughed so hard we had to take more then one potty break. I told her that night the best part of the day was spending it with her. I'm saving a few of these roses after the wedding is all said and done. I'm going to tuck them away with my memories. :)

If you give a Mouse a Motorcyle

So I have learned something about myself. The way I plan a wedding is rather similar to the way I wrote papers in college and grad school, in particular my thesis. I get all excited and pumped up in the beginning and write every day. I buy all the colors of highlighters, I do all the research I possibly can and I tell myself this will be the time I get it allll done with weeks to spare and then I will have this glorious period where all I have to do is edit and relax.

In reality, it took me almost 6 full months to write my thesis. It was 80 pages long, and I would venture to guess at least 60 of those pages were written the week it was due. I did, to my credit, do months and months of background work. But my “glorious period” of editing looked more like me not showering for days at a time, locking myself in my bedroom and cursing the world that I went to grad school, probably yelling something to the effect of “A bitch ain’t got TIME!!!!!” and then putting my paper away and consciously choosing to watch all 10 seasons of Friends in chronological order and thinking they have all figured out. And then finally, after weeks of procrastination and faux soul-searching, I finally have my light bulb moment. I realize I need to graduate grad school because that is truly what I want, and I also simultaneously realized I actually COULD graduate and survive.

Anyway, that has sort of been me lately. I jumped on my own bandwagon of planning the wedding ,and then I just…stopped. Like, we got all the big things taken care of – Flowers, DJ, Music, Venues, Dress, etc. I felt like Wonder Woman. And then all of the sudden I realized there were a billion little details to go over. So what did I do? I peaced out. I decided rather than kill myself trying to do it all, I would do what was very clearly the obvious choice: I did nothing. I got off Pinterest, I got off Craigslist, I shut the door to my little “Wedding Room” as we now so affectionately call our guest room, and I just sort of hung out. I mean, I knew I was still getting married. But I just decided it was best to spend my weekends sleeping in and watching Golden Girls.

Then the worry crept in. Followed by fear. Followed by “Holy bitches what have I DONE?! It is too late! I CANNOT CATCH UP NOW!!!” And I even started thinking things like….

“We could just get married at City Hall. I mean, it wouldn’t be THAT overtop to still wear my blinged out wedding gown….and tiara….”

Or…

“Honestly? Who needs a reception? I mean the ceremony is most important. Cake and punch will do just fine….people don’t need chairs do they?”

I would like awake at night and be scared to death to even consider going through any type of to-do list. Do all brides go through this?!? Am I having some type of mid-planning crisis?

But then, one day whilst in the pool in my backyard sipping on adult beverages and playing on my noodle, my sister was over and she gave me the best, most detailed, most intelligent, most amazing advice I’ve ever been given. Are you ready for this?? She said….Make a list. Then do it.

But I….well I….you see the thing is….oh. Okay. Yeah…I can make a list. That doesn’t commit me to DOING anything on the list. But I like lists. I used to make my own version of the David Letterman Top Ten List and pass it around to my friends in school. I like lists.

I decided to talk to Andrew. We had a nice, looooooong conversation that was very open and honest and I discovered the darndest thing….He was freaking out, too!! OHHHH I just KNEW I loved this man. He didn’t tell me I was crazy, he jumped on board my crazy train. We talked about everything, all our thoughts and feelings. All the things. All the feelings. And then, out of nowhere I was fine. I was like, “Bitch, please, ima plan two weddings, one for reals and one just ‘cause I GOT TIME!”

Then, I sat down at my computer. And I made a list. Not just any list. A two-column, six-page, single-spaced list separated by categories that pertain to various aspects of the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception. And as soon as I made the list, it was all over from there. I have become 100% enthralled in this process. I am SOOOOOOOOOOO freaking excited about this wedding. I even put happy little check boxes on my list so I can check them off. And guess what? I’m checking them off. Everything is in motion. I dusted off my “wedding room” and informed Andrew and the dog they are no longer allowed to take naps in there just because it is cooler. Chandler seemed okay with it; Andrew may still be longing for a bit.

My mom came up this weekend and she and I powered through this list. We bought all the things. Well, at least we made a good dent. We had so much fun. She was walking down the “aisle” at Michael’s pretending to hold bouquets, and we were unrolling ribbon and running, literally RUNNING, through the store when a cashier told us she found purple roses. And um…they are gorgeous. Just…..gorgeous. We bought all the things, and when we saw our total I broke out in a sweat. Either that, or I was sweating from running. Let’s face it I’m fat and it was a warm day. But I like to think it was one of those do or die moments, and I did.

We are working on the guest list and the invitations this week. By the way, if you didn’t receive a Save the Date and you feel offended, don’t. We decided not to send Save the Dates out because we decided that was just an extra expense we don’t need. So just good ol’ fashioned invitations will be sent out, hopefully within a month or so. I’m still working on compromising with my fiancé who likes the idea of calling our wedding an “I Do BBQ”. The jury is still out.

Anyway, we are in the home stretch. The wedding is in roughly 14 weeks and it is GO time. It is time to take a shower, lock myself in the computer room, and write that paper. And maybe edit it the week it is due, but still know it is a damn good paper. Because we are going to have a beauuuutiful wedding.

Oh, and in case anyone cares – I got an A on my grad school thesis. An A!!!!