Stealth

Planning a wedding is a lot of work.

And I mean, a lot of work.

When you first get engaged, you're overcome by this flood of emotions. My particular inner monologue sounded something like, "Oh my word...I've found him. The man that I've wondered about, prayed for, dreamed of for years is on one knee in front of me with a gorgeous ring and the biggest smile on his face. And he is better than any man I could have ever imagined. He is my best friend, my sweetheart, my partner-in-crime, the constant challenge for me to be better, the man who put his love for God ahead of his love for me. And I can NOT wait to be his wife."

So you spend the next three days smiling like an idiot every time you look at your left hand. You're ecstatic.

And then. You have to get busy.

We've still got over a year before we say "I do" and already we've got the church, the pastor, the reception venue, the dress, the bridesmaids' dresses, an idea for the groomsmen's clothes, rough sketches of decorations, a practice bouquet, and maybe possibly a place to live. I hear all the time about how ahead of the ballgame we are, and while I tend to stress about these things, I know that, when next spring comes and we're mere weeks away from that big day, I'll be happy that we rushed around the year before.

But I still only handle about an hour of "wedding talk" at a time.

I'm finding that I was not the typical little girl. I did not put on pretend wedding ceremonies with my teddy bears or practice putting my last name with the boy who sat across from me in sixth grade. While I was climbing the pear trees along our street and pretending to be a cowgirl on the sawhorses that sat outside our house for the longest time, I forgot to imagine the big sparkly dress that would make me feel like a princess for one day. I see all the time on "Say Yes to the Dress" the brides who have had every second of their wedding day planned out since they were four. And I simply wasn't one of those.

So now when it comes time to pick what color the guys' socks will be or whether there should be a runner down the aisle, I can genuinely say that those details don't interest me. Sometimes I have the tendency to say "OK" to things because I'm tired of hearing about them, but in most of these instances, it sincerely doesn't matter. I keep reminding my mom, "I'm not being a pleaser - I really just don't care."

I've turned my mom loose on much of the planning, and she and my sister have been so helpful with the whole endeavor. We've come up with an awesome system: they come up with ideas and say, "What about this?" and I say "yes" or "hell no." Planning isn't necessarily my thing, but the three of us make an excellent team, and we've made the whole process smooth and painless. And while I'm definitely looking forward to what is supposed to be "the happiest day of my life," I'm really looking forward to the part that comes next, when I stand next to the man of my dreams and start a life beside him as his wife.

That's the key. That's what remains important. At the end of the day, I tell myself, it will not matter. It won't matter who performs the ceremony or what we wore or who was there or what they ate. It won't matter if my bouquet was wrapped in green ribbon on top of black or black ribbon on top of green. At the end of that day, at the end of all this planning, we will be married. We will be starting a journey together that will be exciting, bumpy, exhilarating, and downright frustrating at times.

And we are excited.

This part is the formality. The good part starts next.