Is it over yet?

There are two things I don't do well, waiting for an exciting event... and Lent (partly because Lent is in fact waiting for an exciting event). The fact that one of them is almost over helps dramatically. I'm one of those horrible sinners that tends to find penance so discouraging that I have a harder time completing the basics. Sigh, one week left.

Oh, on that note, next Saturday will be my 7th Liturgical anniversary of being (fully) Catholic! I came into the Church on March 26, but it's the liturgical calendar that matters in this one, so it doesn't count. I've worn my Easter dress every year for Vigil (okay, except that one year). It's a weird feeling knowing that I may not be able to ever wear next year... (ya know, if I end up having one of those miniature versions of adults inside of me...).

So, on to the newest wedding woes. We have fired YET ANOTHER photographer. I don't know if I mentioned the first one or not, but they were seriously irritating. They contacted me once every two weeks from the get go about engagement shoots even though I told them that I didn't want to think about that for several more months. Anyway, this new guy was... heh.

James had told me that he wanted to make sure we didn't have someone who was like, "move your chin to the left... okay now to the right just a little... no that was too much" So I looked for a last minute replacement that didn't look like he would do that. I found one who was willing to negotiate the rate and hey... he was a photographer. So we went to our engagement shoot and she was trying to get us to act all funny and silly and stuff. Well, nothing will irritate my beloved more than taking the formality out of formal events. So we tried to talk to him about how we wanted more formal pictures, and this guy just couldn't get it through his head. We ended up just standing next to each other for just about all of them. He was completely unable to pose people. James looked up this style of photography and he found that it's called photo journalistic photography. If we had known about that, we would have looked harder for a "traditional" photography expert. Anyway, James looked this time and found this guy with a thick German accent. James was like, "he's European, he's in" Okay, it's a little hard for me to tell accents, but let me tell you this guy LOOKS German. He takes really nice photos, and he's cheaper than the other guys discounted rate. Unfortunately, we lost a couple of hundred dollars by cancelling so close to our date. Sigh. Anyway, we are going for our second try-engagement shoot on Wednesday.

Also, James sprung on me that he wants place cards. I'm like... ahhh! But then he said he'd do them all himself. I'm like, okay, but these better be cheap...

I'm trying to design the programs for the wedding... any suggestions? We will have to get them printed since I don't have acccess to a printer myself. We will need about 100, maybe 120 so that we'll have many extras.

It's looking like we will have about 15 too few people to get the room we reserved for the reception hall... AHHH!

Just shoot me

Whoever decided that little girls were supposed to dream about the perfect wedding from the time they were five should be shot. Here I am, most wedding plans going smoothly, then suddenly...

I had this perfect plan. We wanted the reception to be close to his mother who can't travel (yet) out of the house. We hope that by having the reception close to her house she'll be able to get used to driving short distances and be able to share a portion of her son's special day. I told James this when we started dating that I wanted to have the wedding near her (when we thought we'd be in the southern half of the country) for this reason. I can't imagine not be able to go to my son's wedding, and I wanted to lighten that as much as possible. Our great idea was that there is this hotel down the street from her that has a beautiful design. She could be transported there and spend the night there the night before, hopefully taking care of her transportation problems, and then she could stay for as much of the reception as she could handle. Well... it turns  out that there is a convention going on the weekend of the wedding. I'm very disappointed because I really thought it would be perfect there, in that guests could stay at that hotel (the church is 40 min away, but in a rough neighborhood) and it would be uber convenient for everyone.

The upside: There is a reception hall even closer to his mom's house that has availability for our date. They seem to be affordable (though we're going to have to pay through the nose to have it for more than 4 hours). I just am not sure. I need to look inside of it to really know what I think about it. The pictures online don't show anything about how nice it looks inside. I don't even know if it's anything better than a shack, really. The floor plan indicates potential, but I just don't know. It also fails for the uber convenience of being able to transport her over a day or two early to make sure she's able to enjoy what she can. *insert sadface* Also, there's only two small hotels nearby and I don't know if the convention is going to take up any of their rooms, too. Well, at least it looks like we'll be able to work something out. I don't know why this bums me out so incredibly much, but as soon as I found out I couldn't get the hotel, I felt like the whole infrastructure of the wedding just collapsed.

In other news, for some reason I've been really moody lately. I'm constantly offended by anything James says (admittedly he has foot-in-mouth syndrome, but I'm taking it worse than usual). I have been sleeping at least 10 hours a night this weekend, after sleeping 7 hours a night during the week, took a 2 hour nap today, and still feel dead exhausted. I don't know if it's just the fact that I need to get used to 9 hour days with 1 hour (one way) commutes, or what. Ugh, I'm seriously thinking about moving and offering my current apartment to my friend who is getting married next month. I kinda hope I get around to telling her this before she reads it on my blog... I just want more time to... live. James has been around more and tensions have been high the past few weeks. We're both going through a lot right now.

In even other news, my medicine seems to be working! I'm off of my old medicine completely now and I have no pain in my side! I'm a little shy about putting the name of the med online because people all seem to have very strong opinions about it, and I don't care to get into a debate. There are one or two side effects that are concerning me a little and I'll talk to the doc about them in a month or two (sooner if they get worse). James is concerned about the potential of birth defects on children (oh, the internet...) so he's gonna come with me and talk to the doc about the medicine details. I don't think my recent grumpiness is a direct result of the meds, I have my ups and downs, but we'll see how long it lasts. I've found I struggle to adapt well to change. And as great as my job is, it's a HUGE change on my life and the amount of time I have. Combine that with wedding planning, low finances (due to lag, I don't get my first check till December 1st), and general womanness and you have a life worthy of a reality TV show.

At some point when I get a free moment that I'm not sleeping then I'll post about St Joseph. I'm actually really excited about it. I've learned so much already! Hagiography (the lives of the saints)  is one of my favorite subjects!