T Minus 5 Days and Counting

Since college, I’ve always been a list girl. Sometimes I write my lists down, sometimes the lists only exist in my head. Most of the time I make the list because I am stressed out and sitting down and writing out a list of things to be done soothes that anxiety by giving me a sense of control. Then the feeling when I cross things off the list once their done...priceless!

Of course, throughout all the wedding preparations I have made endless lists. The last list I made before the wedding was something like this:

-order whole roast pig

-shop for groceries

-prepare/cook food for wedding

-clean bathrooms

-finish setting up patio (tables, seating, candles, etc.)

-make reservations for dinner Friday night (for people arriving early for the wedding)

-make reservations for breakfast Saturday morning (so parents can meet for the first time!!)

-make reservations for Sunday brunch (for people who have not left yet)

Not too bad, right? Except, if you look closely, you will see that a few of the items like “shop for groceries” or “prepare food for wedding” is quite involved and probably required sublists in and of themselves. But, I was still in my “oh everything will turn out ok, because really, what has gone wrong?” state of mind, completely blocking out the fact that in the last 18 months I had lost a baby, haven’t been able to get pregnant again and found out I will probably never be able to have my own biological children. But, hey, it was my wedding and every woman has delusions about how perfect her wedding is going to be, right? And, honestly, as I think about it now, I think I was almost purposely testing Life. I could no longer have delusions that I could have anxiety-free sex, get oops! pregnant, stroll through 9 months in a state of bliss and have a baby in my arms. But that wasn’t going to stop me from having delusions of a dream wedding. How was I going to cook for 80 people and still feed them on time, after the ceremony? It was just going to happen. How are we going to set up the house in time, when there were still a million boxes of random things lying around in every room and the carpet still needed to be vacuumed, the bathrooms cleaned, the tables to be set up and a thousand other things done? It was just going to happen. This wedding was as much about believing again that good things can happen in my life as it was about becoming legally husband and wife. We didn’t know how things would get done, but I had my list and we had a group of people we knew would be showing up to help in the last few days. And.It.Was.Just.Going.To.Happen. Whatever gets done, will be it. We may not end up having every last detail we hoped for (I may have had my delusions, but I was also realistic), but whatever we ended up with was going to be good. Wonderful, even. So what if I had never poached a whole salmon in my life and didn’t have the proper pans to do it? It was going to happen and I was determined to believe in it to the end.

Whole Roast Pig? Ordered, paid for in advance and pickup time determined.

Shop for Groceries? My cousin (same cousin we are considering to be our donor) and good friend who came to help me cook kept me sane by driving me to the grocery store when I could no longer think complete thoughts let alone drive. One read the grocery list while I directed them to the right location in the store and the other managed the shopping cart. They kept me going and on track and helped me get the shopping and cooking done.

Poaching that salmon? A friend's husband, who is a chef, lent me a gigantic pan and a wonderful recipe.

Clean the bathrooms? Well, kind of. Good enough anyway and there is a (now) funny story that I will write about in the wedding day post.

Reservations for various meals? All cancelled! Why you ask? Long story (again will be told in an upcoming post). But, in the end it was all mostly for the best.

I learned many things during the last few days leading up to the wedding. But, most importantly I learned that it is good for me to make my lists, to lean on other people if I need to in order to make the things on those lists happen and then I need to let the list go.

Because I can still end up happy even if there are things on that list that never get crossed off.