For a good chunk of days there, it was like I had no wedding to plan. I stopped all my planning, all my phone calls and emails and researching and ordering and confirming.  It was like I couldn't muster the time or energy or mental space to deal with any of it. Basically, my ADD kicked in and all of a sudden, I just could not focus on anything having to do with the wedding.

This happens with everything, the moment where everything about any given project feels too overwhelming and my brain shuts it off, and I just move on to something else. The hard part is getting me back to whatever I abandoned, which takes an inordinate amount of self-pleading and prodding. My wedding, it turns out, was not any safer than anything else.

To be fair, though, I was also sidelined by a medical emergency, what can best be described as "my ovary exploded," and looking back now (that was two weeks ago), I think the extreme pain I was in might have had something to do with my abruptly halting the wedding planning.

My ovary did not actually, explode, by the way, but that was exactly what it felt like. If you've been following along here (and given that I've been at it six years now, if you have, I want to take you out to lunch and give you a medal), you know that I've had PCOS half my life, and what happened was exactly what could have happened at any point over the last 17 years: one of the cysts was big and mean enough to burst in an excruciatingly painful way, and it did. Actually, no one knows if it was one huge cyst or a bunch of smaller ones all bursting at once. By the time I had an ulrasound, all that was left was the aftermath. Either way, the truth is, this happens on a much smaller scale all the time (how often, I don't know, since I can't feel it) when you have PCOS, so on some level, I knew this could happen.

So I was in awful, awful pain for days, hyper-alert to the fact that if the pain worsened it could be a sign of internal bleeding, and I guess the wedding fell off my radar.

But then about a week in, the pain subsided, a crazy week at work eased up, and I remembered I had that wedding to get back to.

I'm really enjoying this process, but honestly, I need to wrap up one big thing (the flowers - my florist dilemma is making me ill) before I can be all, "I have this in the bag, man!" I mean, I'm not losing sleep over this (although, the night we booked our honeymoon flight I had the worst, most harrowing flying-related nightmare EVER), but still. I want this to be all fun and exciting, and then bumps pop up along the way, and I'm just like, "EFF THE FLOWERS, I'll figure something else out!" I remain a bit frustrated at how some vendors I've encountered just don't get the notion that I want a SIMPLE event and don't WANT elaborate centerpieces or letter-pressed table numbers or any kind of "extra" or "upgrade." gggrrrrrrrrr

The inherently bi-polar nature of getting married has officially claimed me as its victim.

Since I last wrote, I've swung from full-on panic to full-on excitement. It's truly strange and bizarre but infinitely amusing to me to see how excited! and happy! and thrilled! and SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! I am about all this. I would say, "this is sooo not me," except that this IS me. This is the me I hold in tight control all the time to spare myself the crushing heartbreak that has followed every single time I've ever felt excited and hopeful about anything. It's just that at least this once, I don't want to be like that. And even if I wanted to be, it doesn't feel like I can contain this. I've never known this kind of happiness, and I AM thrilled to be marrying my great Jevo. This wedding is just the fun way we're going to kick the rest of our lives off.

The wedding plans are now full-blown underway. Venue? Booked. Honeymoon? Booked. Menu? Confirmed. Color scheme/event theme? Check. Invites? Designed, order to be placed this evening. My dress? Fabric picked and initial meeting with my aunt the seamstress held.

This last one is a boon for me: I'm getting a custom-made dress! Wheeee! I wasn't sure if my aunt would be able to make one for me, but she can, and I'm thrilled. This same aunt has made me a number of dresses throughout my life and fixed countless items that needed alterations. Not only am I happy to have my aunt make my wedding dress, which we've talked about her doing since I was a child, but I have to admit that I love having stuff custom-made. As a teen I'd design the dresses and she'd make them. Same for this dress, though it's more like I'm borrowing different ideas I've seen and liked and designing something from all that. (Ah, in another life I'd be a fashion designer and stylist....)

I'm now moving on to the fun stuff - flowers/decor, music, a fun surprise we're planning, and the ceremony itself.  My early misgivings about putting all these things together from scratch have given way to excitement over the fact that I get to put everything together from scratch! I guess my creativity was finally sparked and I'm in the zone. Just this morning I picked my walking-down-the-aisle song, and all I can say is that Jevo is going to love it. Seriously, if that man doesn't burst into tears, he's not human. That's how I'll discover I'm actually marrying a robot.

There is just one thing weighing on me, which happens to almost everyone planning a wedding: the guest list. I'm officially having nightmares about it. On the one hand, what a blessing to have so many people to celebrate with. On the other, it's too damn many people to celebrate with. I hate how it all boils down to economics, but the plain truth is that we have a set budget that has no wiggle room. This isn't a mommy-daddy-are-paying wedding, or a put-it-on-the-card wedding. We're paying for this ourselves, which is what we want, but that also means that there's a specific amount of money, and once that's used, there's no more. And this is all just fine and a non-issue in all areas except in trying to keep the guest list manageable - which is made extra difficult by how adamant I'm being that this be a small, intimate, simple affair. Between that and the political and sensitive nature of this issue, we're so the perfect candidates for elopement. Too late for that now, though, so we better figure this out soon.

Ah, but even with this, what a fun time this is turning out to be, much more so than I expected. I keep trying to picture the day and hope it's as fun in reality as it is in my head. And then I think about after the wedding, and it's all I can do to not break out into a song and dance and swoon like a nutty ol' fool.