medium crazy

wedding stuff part 1

Throughout the months of our engagement, I was pretty laid back about the actual wedding. I didn’t get too crazy with the planning, and although the month before the wedding was really busy, I was still pretty calm. This all went to hell the day before the wedding.

I guess something had to give at some point, but I didn’t really see it coming. “It” being my emotional meltdown. I guess there was some part of me (the ISTJ part) that cared a lot about things being in good order for the wedding day. And a lot of things were getting done very last minute. Spending so much time replanning our honeymoon the week of the wedding was part of the problem. Some things I couldn’t really help, like putting together our (delectable) chocolate favors, which I wasn’t able to pick up until a couple nights beforehand. Anyway: on the day of the rehearsal, a few little things went wrong. Nothing huge, just things that didn’t go as planned or caused some small complication, like not having time to drop the tuxes off for the guys to try on, or my rehearsal dinner dress not fitting. And then, unexpectedly, I totally melted down. I would suddenly be on the verge of tears while apologizing to my poor parents for being on the verge of tears. My parents were great. They had a completely manic, crying 29 year old adult daughter on their hands and they didn’t even call me names or tell me to shut it. They helped me a LOT with getting everything done. My dad was tying ribbons on favor boxes five minutes before we were supposed to leave for the rehearsal and my mother was a perfect storm of arts and crafts skills, caffeine, and productivity.

Then what happened was, we arrived at the rehearsal. And I walked in and our relatives and friends were there. Our flower girl and ring bearer were running around and my bridesmaids were there and I was so happy to see everyone that I forgot about being crazy. And from that point on, everything else was awesome.

honeymoon in pictures

It’s hard to know where to begin writing anything about our week in Maui, also known as our first vacation together, my first time on a tropical beach, my first real vacation of my adult life, and the Best Week Ever. So to start off I’ll just let some pictures do the talking.

Aloha Maui!

I kind of took a lot of pictures of just the beach. The beach was what I had really wanted, be it in Cabo or Maui or whatever. I’ve always wanted to be at a beach with that really blue, really clear water instead of that dark old New England water. I kind of didn’t get over it all week and kept wanting to take more pictures of it.

The view from our awesome, beloved Napili Surf Beach Resort balcony:

Groceries in Maui are notoriously expensive, but on our first day oranges were FIFTY NINE CENTS A POUND. I told you it was the best week ever. Don’t even get me started on the pineapples.

M. took a surfing lesson. Cute heinie, no?

Also enjoying his new and improved hand.

This sign struck me as kind of hilarious.

It’s like, Warning: you could die here in winter months, kona winds (?), and oh also EVERY OTHER DAY TOO.

We drove the scenic road to Hana which included a visit to a black sand beach, which happens when lava hits cold water and it turns into black rock that eventually becomes black sand.

Saw a few waterfalls.

This is a pearl fresh from the oyster (selected by M.) which is now my honeymoon necklace.

Maybe it was because I had been up all night, but this gave me the giggles. I kept trying to imagine how you could fasten your seat belt while you were not seated.

My experiences on the planet have been pretty limited, but of the places I’ve been, Maui is closest to heaven. Our week was exactly everything I was hoping it would be.

I should also mention that I lost our digital camera on the flight there. I still have absolutely no idea what happened to it but I suspect it was left on an American Airlines plane never to be seen again. So, as soon as we arrived in Maui we headed straight for Wal Mart to buy a new camera because we had to have pictures of our honeymoon. I beat myself up all week about the stupidity of my losing the camera (which incidentally had been a gift from M.) and M. was not the slightest bit annoyed that I lost it or that we had to waste money buying another and he tried hard to make me feel better about being such an idiot. Point being: I married a good one.

screw cabo

So, last night was our last night home together before we are MARRIED, and we spent all night replanning our honeymoon. We did it sort of begrudgingly because we were just so emotionally attached to Cabo at that point. We also had free lodging in Cabo (via a timeshare we had been given as a gift), so it was a bummer to give that up. And above all, we truly believed that the s***e flu would NOT have been an issue for us with where we were going. I think we both really feel that it’s being overblown and we would have been fine at our particular destination. So making that final decision to change plans was hard, and by that point I had a jaw headache that made me want to break my big toe just to distract me from my head pain. But essentially, our families had been asking us not to go, and then on top of that my company let me know that if I went to Mexico, they did not want me back on the premises for seven days following my return to the country, thank you very much. So as a plan B I started looking into flight transfers to other destinations…and guess where it’s going to be rainy next week? EVERYWHERE EXCEPT CABO. Raining in St. Croix, raining in Aruba, raining in Puerto Rico, raining in the entire Caribbean. Just as I was about to call off our entire wedding, I found the only other places on earth that are going to be mostly sunny next week: Baghdad and Maui. We decided to go with Maui. Two hours of research and one easy ticket transfer later and our honeymoon was changed. At the last possible second. And you all know that doing things at the last minute with no planning is how I love to do things.

Moving on: I took the day off from work today and am in last minute wedding mode. I also picked Matt G. to go home last night on AI and he did! Due to the travel craziness, I had to miss Lost. So don’t tell me what happened please la la la la la la la (covers ears).

how i hope our wedding day will go

• Wake up after getting 9 hours of awesome sleep.
• Step on the scale. I’ve lost 3 pounds unexpectedly?
• No zits anywhere in sight.
• Lots of hot water and great water pressure at my parents’ house. This has never happened before, but you never know.
• M. texts me to tell me he can’t believe he gets to marry the most exquisite woman on earth. Yep.
• It’s 67 degrees and sunny? Isn’t that nice.
• Watching my favorite girls get their hair done and damn do they look good in those matching blue dresses.
• I thought I would be sick to my stomach all day…but I’m not!
• Oh, you think I look skinny in my dress? Why thank you.
• The minister shows up.
• M. shows up.
• I manage to cry pretty instead of blotchy/snotty.
• Yes I would like a second piece of cake.
• All Beyonce/Rihanna, all night.
• 11:30 pm: We’re MARRIED and we’re about to go to Mexico. Let’s make out.