Breakout

The hair is all over the place.

The skin is breaking out.

After all the weight loss followed by all the stress I think I piled on a few pounds.

The shoes I ordered haven't arrived in time.

The music person we arranged has had a bereavement and cannot make it to the wedding.  Then something happened the backup.  Don't ask.

The fun socks 'n' cufflinks I ordered for the dads and things will not arrive in time. 

My godfather isn't making it to the wedding now for some unknown reason.  Worrisome. 

The special underwear ordered never materialised, if you pardon the pun. 

All we need now is the ash cloud to come back and cancel the honeymoon.

This may sound bitter and evil but I hope they all feel very guilty for making me go through this.  Guilt made me do it.  It's time it bounced back on them.  Coz it's so not worth it. 

A Day Off

Handsome One is bringing me to the cinema later.  I insisted that we have a wedding-free evening so that's what we're going to have.  I hope you enjoy yours :)

Bride-to-Be Guide to Handling Pre-Wedding Stress

You may as well know, a host of things will probably go wrong as you try to organise your day - big wedding or not. I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic. Suppliers may falter, family may cause hiccoughs, people may pass away unexpectedly, an ash cloud may descend! The point is, you have to be able to take care of yourself and not let all the stress get to you so much that it takes over your life. It's only one day, remember?

Some ways that I have been able to survive:

• Substitute camomile tea for some of your cups of coffee - less jitters, less nerves
• Before you go to sleep, use some lavendar moisturiser on your shoulders, neck and hands so that is soothes you to sleep - you don't have to go to L'Occitane and spend a fortune, Boots have a lovely one!
• If things do start to get to you and you feel anxious all the time, pop into your local pharmacy and talk to the nice ladies behind the counter.  They may recommend a natural plant/herb extract which could help you relax, such as Kalms - they're not that expensive and the wee bottle lasts for ages
• Try to make some non-wedding time for you and your spouse-to-be; by this I mean, go back to something you used to love doing before you got engaged.  Be it a walk on your favourite beach, dinner in your favourite cheap&cheerful, a trip to the IFI or a match in your local GAA/soccer/rugby club to get the blood pumping. It's amazing how helpfully refreshing a match can be. I screamed and roared at Leinster in the RDS last Sunday and felt amazing afterwards - so relaxed!  Forgot all about the venue from hell for 2 hours and just had a blast with my betrothed - cannot recommend it highly enough to ease the stress. 
• Politely ask people who ring you 7 times a day about wedding things, to please not call you quite so often as you are quite busy, and need to structure your wedding-talk time a little more.  So only call at lunchtime or after work about wedding stuff. 
• If it helps - turn off your voicemail!!  Similarly annoying, 7 messages a day when you dial 171 can get to you.  Your mobile beeping, emails whizzing in, landlines hopping - it all works against you to create an atmosphere of pressure when lets face it - that's not what it's meant to be about.

Ultimately, communication is key.  If anything is getting to you, tell the people around you - that's what best friends, bridesmaids, sisters, aunts, grannies, cousins and mums are for.  They love you and will only be too delighted to help in any way they can. Sharing is caring, right?!  

Delegation is also extremely important.  Try to put anything that goes wrong into a category.  If it is family related, get your Pops onto it to help sort it out.  If it is flowers-related, get whoever in your clan is the best gardener to have a word with the florist and sort it out.  If it is food related, get the cuddly-grub-fan in your group of mates to help you with some suggestions.  NB: Ask. For. Help. 

This is not what you want:

You want to be like this!!!!

Or like this!!!

A Plague!

Email inbox - full of unresolved questions from suppliers regarding minute details

SMS inbox - full of messages asking (a) if we have a wedding list [no] and (b) what the accommodation situation is for the night of the party

Office line - constantly ringing from work and non-work peeps asking about wedding related things

Dreams - full of wedding related themes

Before I fall asleep - wedding related anxiety, asking questions in my head, running through to-do lists

Remember at the start of this blog, 15 months ago, I said I didn't want a wedding?

FORFCUKSAKE!

Who was I kidding. This is bliss!* Wonderful, seriously, who wouldn't want the stress. Turns out, even though I no longer have time to play sports or plan a diet (eating on the hoof is the WORST for me), turns out you burn calories in a direct correlation to the size of the knot in your stomach.

Cool.

* denotes sarcasm

Temporary Panic Sets In...and Out again

I seem to be cruising along just fine in the run up to the last couple of months to this day out. I think maybe it's because I tap into the to-do list almost every day and get emails from various suppliers to make sure we're all on track.

I do update The Handsome One about this - also on a daily basis - but I think perhaps it just goes over his head.

Why?

Well...because this weekend he was hell bent on spending time "on the wedding" and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what he meant. All the appointments have been made, for fittings and adjustments and collections and viewings and checks and all that sort of thing. I was *sure* we were on course!

He sat, at my laptop, for about an hour and a half going through the budget, the to-do list, the running order for the 3 days (wedding-eve prep, wedding-day fun, post-wedding responsibilities...), the "who's paying for what" list - everything. I asked - only twice - "whatcha doin?" to try to figure out what he was at but in the end just wandered off and left him to it.

90 mins later he meanders into the kitchen (where I was left to prepare dinner - again!) and gives me a big hug. There was genuine relief in that hug. I think he just wanted to see where we were at, and was pleasantly surprised to see that everything was on track and running as smoothly as it can under venue circumstances. Even the safety nets and plan B's are in place at the moment; I've contingency coming out my ears.

So back to it.

...what's next for today...?

Wedding Stress

Strange...

The only people who are not getting cranky about the weddings coming up are, in fact eh, those of us getting hitched!

Thank goodness for that, eh?

As for the rest? "Have you got your flowers yet? Have you got your DJ yet? Have you got your shoes yet? Have you lost enough weight, it doesn't look like it... Have you confirmed your invitations yet? Have you negotiated the overnight rate with your venue yet? Have you got a list of taxi companies from there to the local guesthouses yet? Have you spoken to the organist yet? Have you got the car yet? Have you..."

Do people not realise how ANNOYING IT IS TO KEEP ASKING the same questions over and over and over again? I'm a good project manager, I have a fricking to-do list, I'll get to it when I fricking get to it!

Listen - if I have news, I'll share it with you. IF I feel like it. If I feel your contribution would be welcome in some way. If I'm bored out of my tree and I have NOTHING MORE INTERESTING TO TALK ABOUT!

There is so much more going on in the world that is SO MUCH more interesting than fricking buttonholes. I'll button your hole if you keep it up.

*sigh*

I wish I could say that to some people, I really, really do.

THIS is why I didn't want a wedding. The amount of stress it involves for people who - let's face it - just aren't up to it. All the people I'm surrounding myself with - good friends, lovely cousins - all perfectly content to have the occasional wedding-conversation but - most importantly - go back to normal chats directly afterwards. I love them. It's the other folk (who I've been trying to avoid and I think it's making things worse) that are driving me up the walls. I even like talking about the weather more than church music and flowers. But there's rugby, there's Easter, there's Paddy's Day, there's friends' birthdays, there's family business, there's work, there's being-there-for-people, there's even the banking crisis and general political disasters to discuss, not just wedding favours and what colour bows go on the invitations. I just don't care! Give me a pretty invite that will get people to where the party is. That's all we need for crying out loud!

I'm so sorry if this rant seems out of place grating. I've absolutely had it with people creating fuss out of nothing. Yes I know I've a lot on at the moment but I'm not about to stop focusing on the dayjob so that I can work on one day in my life.

It will be a magical day, regardless of how many flowers you can fit in a vase on a table which sits 8 people.