Countdown to “I Do”

by Colleen Oakley

We just got back from a weekend in Savannah where we finalized a bunch of stuff for the wedding, which is 18 DAYS AWAY. I can’t believe it’s so soon. I picked up Fred’s wedding ring yesterday (we had to bite the bullet and buy a clasp ring because of his grotesque knuckles). Last night, he wore it during dinner and while we watched TV. It was so fun to look over and see him with his ring on! I didn’t have my ring on, though, because I finally took it to get sized. He joked over dinner, “You should be ashamed of yourself—eating with a married man.”

I think I’ve worked through most of my depression/cold feet and am now just full-blown excited thinking about the day and our honeymoon. I’m pretty sure that for all my wanting to be the anti-bride and different and laid-back, that I have turned out to be a textbook case. If a psychology student wanted to learn about the mental state of a typical bride, he could have put me in a cage and studied me for the past year. “Ah, yes,” he would say, making a notation as I’m banging my head against the metal bars. “The bride has just realized that she will never be having sex with another man. Ever.”

So let’s see… the things I have been stressing about this week:

We still don’t have a final list of guests. About nine people haven’t let us know for sure if they’re coming.

The tickets to our honeymoon are somewhere in our local post office. When we moved, our mail was put on hold for some bizarre reason and we’ve been calling the post office to no avail.

I need to finish unpacking and getting settled in to our townhouse, so when we get back from our honeymoon, we don’t have work hanging over us.

I still need to buy Fred’s groom gift. Not a clue what to get him.

Other than that, things are going pretty smoothly. And 18 days can’t get here fast enough.