School’s Out! Let the Planning Begin

The chorus of that song keeps running through my head, “And I’m freeeeee! Free fallin’!” I know this song isn’t referring to that feeling of elation on the last day of school, but it should be. I cannot even put into words how excited I am for the school year to be over. There are many benefits to summer vacation like sleeping in (I am not a morning person and I HATE waking up at 5:30AM), not dealing with disrespectful adolescents, going to the beach, having time to exercise, and spending time with family. But it also means that it is time for serious wedding planning.

I have a lot on my checklist for this week: Mom and I are going to continue the hunt for a wedding dress. This time we’re heading to Milford. My grandparents live just outside of Milford and my church used to lease space in a building right in downtown Milford so I have a lot of memories from that area. It’s a beautiful little downtown and there are two bridal shops there (one called Gina's, the other called Clothing Cove). We have been told that both of these shops are very nice and they make you feel like a princess. And I am all about feeling like a princess.

We want to use the summer to get a lot of the time consuming activities done like buying and printing invitations (we’re making our own) and putting together the slide show. I have seen slide shows done at the past few weddings I’ve been to and I really enjoy them. They start out showing pictures of the bride and groom as babies and go all the way to the present. Not only are the pictures fun to look at, but it gives guests something to do in that awkward time before the food is served. I have never seen pictures of Carl as a baby because they’re all at his mom’s house, but I have heard about them. One day, I was telling Carl that my mom never took any embarrassing naked pictures of me. Carl said that in any picture where he or his brothers are naked, his mom took a sharpie and drew little shorts on them. I am sure these pictures will be adorable and humorous. The slide show will be cute and nostalgic, but there will also be something unique about our slide show, and that is the creep factor. See, Carl is 10 years older than me. I never planned to marry someone so much older, but life surprises you sometimes. Needless to say, we get made fun of quite a bit for the age difference. So we think it will add an extra humorous element to the slide show to put the pictures in order by year. It will start out all about Carl, and then stay that way until he turns 10 and then baby Stephanie will come along. The pictures of my first day of school will appear right when Carl’s entering high school. The creepiness factor of age difference isn’t as big of a deal now, but it certainly would have been when I was 15 and he was 25. But since we were born before digital cameras, a lot of the early pictures of our lives will have to be scanned into the computer. A daunting task for sure, but I figure if we both do a few a day, it will go by much more quickly.