Black hole

So, I am realizing that wedding planning is a black hole. Here I am, 11 months out, and I already have a pretty good idea of which invitation I like and what bridemaids dress I prefer. I'm thinking about flowers and favors. I am investigating photographers and DJs. I'm wondering if live music is the way to go for the ceremony. I have begun setting up a wedding information website and designing a cute save-the-date card. I'm thinking about where to book blocks of hotel rooms. I'm fretting about officiants. I'm thinking of where I can hang lanterns in my venue.

In short, I'm thinking of very little else.

And there's no need--I have plenty of time. Those invitations I love don't need to be ordered for another five or six months. The save-the-dates don't need to be mailed for another four or five months. My bridesmaids certainly don't need to have dresses hanging in their closets for 11 months. Favor frenzy does not need to happen for, oh, eight months, I'd say. It's ridiculous.

But, well, it's fun. I'm starting to see why women get caught up in all the details. I'm not obsessed with making it perfect (....yet), and you won't catch me going bridezilla and demanding my bridesmaids all cut and dye their hair to match (I think my bridemaids would not be shy about telling me to shove it if I do), but the allure of finding just the right touch is very compelling. No one wants their wedding to be generic, and so you start to think about things you can do to personalize it, and it snowballs from there.

And the Internet is your enabler.

You can find anything on th Internet, if you're persistent and you look hard enough. That invitation, for example, was the result of an exhaustive Internet search over several days, and came in the end not from a Google search but a suggestion on a theknot.com forum. You never know where ideas will come from, so you have to look everywhere.

Oh yes: I scare myself.

But, really, the invitation, the bridesmaids dresses, the favors, the lanterns, the save-the-dates are the easy parts. The DJ and the photographer and the officiant--those are the hard things. Those are the things I actually need to be doing now. Those are the things for which I need active participation from my sweetie, and fairly soon.

So, naturally, I am procrastinating. I guess it's good to know my character hasn't changed that much :-).