The Green-Eyed-MOH-Montster

As obsessed as I am with my own potential nuptials, there has been another wedding that hasn't been far from my mind over the past 9 months. I am currently serving as MOH for my little sister, J. 

Her wedding will be in the fall of 2011, and her planning is just really getting underway.  Since I've been to numerous weddings and she and her fiance have only been to a couple, I am giving them lots of input (when they ask for it of course!) about what I have seen at other weddings, what worked, and what didn't.

I love my sister dearly.  I think her fiance is wonderful and that they will have a very happy life together.  I can't wait to be a part of their wedding and look back on it for years to come.

However, I have a dark secret to admit.  I wasn't always so excited about this.  I'm not very proud of the story I'm about to tell, but I think it is something that many waiting girls have to deal with, and since I've mustered some more insight and maturity over the past months, I feel comfortable sharing this.

Right around this time last year, I found out that my sister would probably be getting engaged soon.  We didn't know exactly when, but my mom alerted me to the fact it was coming sooner as opposed to later.

I lost it.  Like tears, and gut wrenching sadness lost it.  I sat there thinking to myself "I am the older sister.  I am supposed to go first.  It's supposed to be my thing to do first."  I was so firmly implanted in my own misery I couldn't bring myself to be happy for my sister.  The thought of her getting engaged, and therefor getting married before me brought out this intense, visceral reaction.

Completely irrational?  Yes.  Immature?  You betcha!  Could I control it?  Not so much.

I forgot about things for a little while, but then when my sister actually got engaged in mid-March, all the feelings returned.  Yes, I was able to put on a happy face, and tell her I was so excited for her (which I was) and accept her invitation to be her Maid of Honor, but inside my heart was breaking.  I don't know why but it really made me feel like a failure.  I selfishly concluded that her being engaged first would somehow reflect poorly on me.  I don't know where the feelings came from, but once they reared their ugly head, it was increasingly difficult to quiet them down.

Of course, I am not delusional.  I know I was being extremely petty and jealous.  Not to mention self centered.  It became consuming, I was having trouble concentrating on other things.  I would break down in tears.  I knew it couldn't continue.  I had to find a way to make sense of these feelings and move beyond my jealousy and immaturity.

I ended up having a talk with my sister about things.  I wanted to let her know that I was very happy for her and supported her, but that this was also very hard for me in some ways.  She was very understanding, which I appreciated.

Over the next couple of months, I kept my composure.  The sadness remained, but thankfully started to diminish.  I was able to have some constructive conversations with G. about our own engagement timeline.  And although I am still waiting, I was able to come to terms with it a bit more in the months that followed.  I focused on quietly allowing myself to daydream and pre-plan, and convinced myself that it would all work out for the best.

I am getting to benefit in some ways - I'm going to tastings and meetings with my sister, so I'm learning a lot about how things are done.  I'm able to keep a mental list of the caterers and dj's and photographers she likes so that when I am doing my planning, I can use this knowledge to help me.

Yes, I am going to have to wait longer because of this - I'll have to allow enough time after her wedding, before mine - but I am feeling much more zen about it than I was.  Learning of my sister's engagement brought out something really ugly in me, and I am certainly not proud of it.  I am glad I recognized how crazy I was being and tried to change it.  I certainly don't want to look back on this exciting time for my family and think that I wasted it by being so upset over something so silly.

thinking spring things

Unlike some of my fellow waiting ladies, I don't have a specific date in mind for us to get married.  I do have specific thoughts about seasons though.  I think I'd most like to get married in the spring ,when you can be outside without it being too hot and when everything gets all nice and green again.  I love the romance of spring, and I think the season would go well with the other images I have in mind.

When it comes to color, I alternate between a couple of general color palettes.  I found this amazing website called The Perfect Palette that has all sorts of great inspiration boards for any color palette you can imagine, and it's led me to thinking toward two different schemes.

All pictures in this thread are examples from Perfect Palette - not my own!  :)

First there's the very pastel, romantic route...

Source: The Perfect Palette

I love this combination of the aqua blue and the pale spring green.  I *love* green flowers - especially things like green roses and orchids.  This palette is clean and fresh and seems perfect for a spring ceremony.


Next is something a little brighter...

http://theperfectpalette.blogspot.com/2010/07/orange-aqua-island-wedding.html

I think this is perfect for a beach wedding...which I won't be having...but I still really enjoy the color palette.  Take out some of the orange and add in some yellow and this is something I would consider.


If I wanted to get married in the fall, I would totally go for something like this!

 

 

 

 

http://theperfectpalette.blogspot.com/2010/03/western-wedding-shades-of-orange-teal.html

 

 

 

Love it!  So rustic and rich and awesome.  If for some reason we end up having a DW, this will be a leading color palette.

What color palette puts your imagination into overdrive?

Very thankful indeed...

I haven't been good about coming here to blog!  I think there have just been so many thoughts racing through my mind that I couldn't figure out how to begin to get them out in coherent sentences.

Thanksgiving was wonderful.  G. came here to spend the holiday with my family.  Lots of people came from out of town.  We made tons of delicious food, enjoyed a couple of hockey games and even got out to do some holiday shopping.

My big Thanksgiving wish came true!  G. *finally* talked to my Dad.  I knew this was something that would be a prelude to us getting engaged, and it was the big sign I was waiting for to reassure me that things were underway.

Permission has been granted, and much to my complete and utter shock all signs point to things happening before the end of the year!  I was totally resigned to waiting through the holidays, and now my heart is all aflutter with crazy anticipation.

I'm leaving bright and early Tuesday morning to venture back to the great white north.  From there G. and I will travel to his familys house in Texas.  Then I'll return home before the end of the year.  This could mean that sometime in that three week period my wait will come to an end!

It's left me feeling both incredibly excited and a little scared.  This will be the beginning of so many huge changes.  There's so much gravity to it all that it sort of overwhelms me when I think about it too much.  I've lived in the same city and surrounding suburbs since I was 4 years old, and in about a year I will be moving thousands of miles away to a city I have dreamt about living in.

It's a lot to process - absolutely amazing and almost too good to be true.

I really want to make sure I enjoy every minute of what's to come.  I'll be opening a whole new chapter of my life and saying goodbye to the place that's been my home for 26 years.

In a lot of ways, even though I am an "adult" I still frequently feel like a kid.  Part of it is still being in school, part of it is my personality I think.  Either way, moving forward with this huge step in life makes me feel very adult all of a sudden, and also really old.  Not in a bad way at all - I am very thankful and excited about what is to come.

So...I feel slightly more justified in my wedding daydreams.  The crazy part is that it may not be too long before I can be planning for real!

All a-buzz for my fellow bees!

Having been a waiting lady, pre-occupied with pre-planning, I've logged a lot of hours over the past 6 months or so, perusing the immense, extensive, and highly detailed amount of wedding planning information on the internet.

I'd known about The Knot for quite some time, pretty much ever since my first childhood friend got married around 6 years ago.  I'd visit there occasionally over the years, just for fun, or when I needed to consult the gift registries of various friends, but I never really spent a lot of time there.  The information and pictures seemed to remain pretty much the same over time.  I needed more to sate my wedding appetite!

As a total newbie, I figured there must be some good wedding blogs out there.  Simple google searches led me to Green Wedding Shoes and Style Me Pretty among many others.  Just by chance, I clicked on a link to Weddingbee and there I found not only an imformative and fun blog full of posts from all sorts of women, but also an incredibly active message board community.  Jackpot!

I'm a self-proclaimed internet junkie, and I love getting involved in online forums.  This awesome "hive" of Bees seemed like a great place to get involved.  As I lurked for a while at first, I saw evidence of the community of posters, sharing ideas and thoughts, helping each other through hard decisions and celebrating with each other.  I figured I would wait to register an account until I was "officially" planning a wedding...no one would take me seriously as a gal without a ring.  What could I possibly add to the community without being engaged and planning?

It was there that I was very wrong.  Weddingbee has a place just for girls like me - it's their Waiting board.  A location specifically designed for women who aren't engaged yet, but have caught the wedding bug, or are maybe just looking for a little support.  There's a great deal of anxiety, self-doubt, and frustration that comes with this territory, and the Waiting board is a great antidote to the insanity.  I'd grown embarrassed about bitching and whining to my close friends and family.  They wanted me to shut up about it, I wanted to shut up about it, but the word vomit just wouldn't stop.  The Waiting board has given me, and many other women a place to come, and under the veil of internet anonymity spill their guts and vent. 

Every weekend, I look forward to seeing if any of my fellow Waitng Bees get engaged.  I smile at their romantic proposal stories, and even tear up from time to time.  I feel genuinely happy when these strangers that I have never and probably will never meet finally get to say they are engaged to the man of their dreams.

Most of all, it's just nice to know that I'm not crazy - that other women feel this way too.  It's not something society really "accepts" per se, so I am very thankful to know that I have a place to go that helps to ease my waiting blues.

waiting for the moon to come and light me up inside...

As a 29 year old female, I have found myself firmly lodged in the time of my life where lots is happening - both for me and those around me.  It seems like everywhere I look there are engagements being announced, new wedding pictures, or a scan of a sonogram.  Granted, my semi-obsessive Facebook habit facilitates this.  When in history have we ever been able to be so in tune with the lives of people we barely know?

Right now, I find myself obsessed with weddings, and well, with love in general.  I'm helping my younger sister plan her wedding.  I'm starting to casually pre-plan my own as well.  Thinking and daydreaming about colors and flowers and dress styles as well as song playlists and menu choices.  I read wedding blogs, post on wedding related message boards and watch wedding programs on TV.

There's only one problem.

I'm not engaged.

That's right - I am a Lady in Waiting.  I have been with my boyfriend, G, for almost two and a half years.  We've lived together, shared our lives, and talked about our future together.  We intend to get married, but he hasn't popped the question yet.  I know it's coming, he has assured me of this, and all that's left for me to do is to attempt to be patient, carry on with my life, and keep otherwise occupied.

Easier said than done.

Many women can tell you about this feeling - knowing you have found the one you want to spend your life with, and yet having to "wait" to start truly planning the beginning of that life.  Due to dictates of society, the ball is often in the mans court when it comes to the proposal of marriage.  It makes sense to a certain degree - so often, women take the helm in planning the wedding and making all those decisions.  The proposal is the one wedding related area where a man can have complete creative control of the situation.

G, as progressive as he is in many areas, is very traditional when it comes to all this proposal stuff.  In one of my less-than-patient moments, when I tried to get some information out of him over the summer, he revealed to me that he really wants his proposal to be a surprise.  In his words "I believe that every woman should have a great story to tell about the day they got engaged."  Well, that statement certainly helped me quiet down.  I am a feminist, and I like to consider myself to be pretty empowered as a woman, but I'm not going to lie - the thought of my guy planning something memorable makes me smile and makes the waiting a little easier.

So here I am.  I've been "officially" waiting since about this time last year.  G and I have discussed everything, and all systems are go...but yet, I am still waiting.

Let me be completely honest for a minute here - it's driving me nuts.

Everyone around me is telling me to calm down, be patient, and stop obsessing.  It's pretty much impossible.  And frankly, I don't think I should have to stop obsessing about it.  I've found the love of my life, and I can't wait to declare that to the world and officially begin our lives together.

I haven't booked a venue or bought a dress or picked a date or anything like that.  What I have done is started some constructive daydreaming about what I would like our wedding to be.  Some pre-planning, if you will.  I've found a pretty supportive message board of other women in the same position as me, and through communicating with them and pre-planning, I find that my wait has been made much easier.

I hope that this blog will be a place for me to share what I have found in my pre-planning, to post inspiration pictures and probably a vent or two and hopefully, to sooner as opposed to later turn into a real wedding planning blog.  I'm super excited about this time in my life, and I think it would be pretty cool to be able to look back and see how everything played out.

So there you have it...I'm a waiting gal, but I'm otherwise engaged with pre-planning, daydreaming, and working to make every day count.

hello!

Hello world!  I'm Miss R

On a summer night in 2008, my world was turned upside down.  I met a boy whose kisses made me tingle to my toes.  I had never believed that a fairy tale romance could happen to me until he swept me off my feet.

Now I dream about the future...