Where We Are Now

This Friday marks three months from our wedding day, and there is still an incredible amount of work to do. I shouldn't complain, though. I recently saw pictures from a friend's wedding, and she literally put the thing together in just a few days. I noticed that her centerpieces are freakishly similar to the ones I spent weeks planning and still don't have assembled. Actually, her whole reception space looked freakishly similar to what we have planned so far, and yet I talk about how I can't possibly get everything done in the next three months.

I'm going to remind you that by our wedding day, our engagement will have lasted 14 months. Having this surplus of time has brought out a perfectionist in me that I didn't know existed, and has actually come up to bite me in the ass. Let me explain.

As of now, we are priest-less. As many of you know, our priest at St. Thomas Aquinas is a military chaplain and is being deployed at the beginning of October. He sometimes misses Mass due to training, and his substitute is a great priest (I'll call him Priest II) with great heart. The trouble is that Priest II's voice sounds like he lost it right around puberty and never gained it back. So when Priest I called us to break the news of his deployment, he naturally offered Priest II as a substitute. Naturally.

But this newfound perfectionist (bitch) quality inside led me to think we could refuse and go out to find our own replacement. We spent so much time picking our readings and planning our ceremony so that everything tied in together, and all I could picture was a church full of confused guests who couldn't quite figure out what this guy was saying. And besides, we know and love Priest I, but we have never even talked to Priest II. Don't you want somebody who knows you, at least a little, to perform your wedding?

The answer is clearly yes, but sometimes, life doesn't work that way. We contacted the following priests:

1. Priest III- The retired priest from St. Thomas Aquinas: Will be in Hollandale that day.
2. Priest IV- Josh's mom's distant relative: Performing a wedding that day. Not ours.  
3. Priest V- My mom's cousin: Being relocated to Missouri? 
4. Priest VI - Didn't answer our calls for a week. Finally answered. Performing a wedding that day. Not ours.
5. Priest VII - Not performing a wedding that day. Perfect. But he compared our relationship and the fact that we live together to a guy in the bible marrying the whore of Israel. Like I said, definitely not performing a wedding that day.

More and more, I'm realizing that if I even end up walking down the aisle that day, it will be next to a miracle. I've found myself picturing our wedding ceremony with Priest II performing the Mass, and it makes me laugh. Yes, people will have a hard time understanding him. Yes, our hard ceremony planning might be for nothing if nobody gets anything out of it. But by God, I will be looking at Josh, he will be looking at me, and we will be laughing because we actually made it. It will actually be happening when three months prior, it didn't seem possible.

That is, if Priest II is available. We still don't know for sure. But really, I learned my lesson. I can't control everything that will happen that day. I used to have these premonitions of my wedding morning:
I wake up in my hotel bed in a room filled with my best friends and sisters. I'm holding my breath, freaking out, crying, scared to death. Not because I'm marrying Josh, but because I'm just getting married. There's really no turning back. When I remove myself completely from the situation, and disregard how much love we have for each other, getting married is a BIG DEAL. The biggest deal. The most important and expensive day of my life. Why wouldn't I freak out? Why wouldn't I want to have every little thing go perfectly?

But post-priest I through VII-fiasco, I have these same premonitions. I wake up in the hotel, surrounded by my friends and family. The sun is blasting through the curtains, but this time, I'm relaxed. I'm excited. I'm ecstatic, actually. I've realized that I'm there for the biggest day of OUR life. I'm there for Josh. I'm not there for a textbook wedding, where everything works out the way people expect. Our relationship isn't textbook, so why would our wedding be?

Until next time,
-The whore of Israel