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03 05 00
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All right, all right. Confession time. The last few days have been pretty damn pathetic, and I'm stressed out. Weddings are expensive. And complicated. And confusing and stressful. Why do people bother? Today I went to the library and checked out a few books on wedding planning. After struggling with the computerized card catalogue for a while (and realizing the computers were down) I found four books and seemed promising and took them over to my parents' house. Basically, I was trying to get some idea of how much this whole shebang is going to cost. My parents aren't wealthy by any means, and the "national average" wedding budget of $18,000 is going to be right out. We've found some ways to cut corners. Instead of serving a full dinner, we can have the reception in the afternoon and serve a meat/cheese platter deal. My mom will make my dress and the invitations. A friend of the family owns a florist shop; perhaps we can get a deal on flowers. Cake, rings, beer, photography... As it all started to add up, I could see my dad preparing for a heart attack. "Can't I just give you some money and tell you to elope?" he asked. My mother immediately protested. "I want to see my baby get married," she whined. "Does she need a dress?" my dad asked. Oh yeah. This is going to be so much fun. Yippee. But in spite of myself, I'm starting to get into it. I love planning things. The books I checked out have lots of charts and lists that I can recreate in my spreadsheet program. If need be, we can email the budgets and lists between families. I'm looking forward to calling places and getting prices. I'm looking forward to calling my minister and asking her advice (she's getting married in July, so I plan on picking her brain for ideas.) Yeah, I'm a horrible tomboy. I never pictured myself having a nice wedding. But now that it's my turn to get married, I want to be princess for a day. For one day in my life I want to be totally female, giving up my jeans and hiking boots and baseball caps. I want to be dressed in a long flowing gown, carrying a bouquet of flowers. I want people to say, "She's so beautiful." And, of course, I want to throw one hell of a party. grin We'll see how things fall together. It might not be the drag-down party I've dreamed of, but I'm determined that it'll be fun. Excuse Me? I am a Unitarian Universalist. It's a liberal religion, with no definitive creed. I was, however, a little surprised by a paragraph on Unitarian Universalism in one of the books I checked out:
This is not a church, per se... Excuse me? Not a church? Per se?? Screw you! Granted, Unitarian Universalism is a bit of a black sheep in Judeo-Christian religious circles. The main tenet is tolerance, and members are allowed to explore other faiths. Many people, such as myself, have constructed individualized spiritual beliefs, supplementing them with a strong, supportive church community. We have pagans, Jews, Catholics, humanists, neo-shamans and atheists in our church. It can get a little tense sometimes, but we all collect under the welcoming door of the church. And is is a church. So there.
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Revealed My credit card debt was revealed to my father yesterday."You've paid off your credit car, right?" he asked. "It was paid off," I said slowly. "Was?" he asked. He's sharp, he is... He was upset that I'm running a (high) balance on it again, but the world didn't end and he didn't kill me. Whew.
______ of the Day Today's gasp is: "How much does a cake cost??"
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