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Princess Obvious makes an announcement: weddings are expensive.

They are not the kind of expensive that makes me want to save up my money and splurge eventually. They are the kind of expensive that makes me count how many Apple products we could be buying with this unheard-of sum, and then quote that number at inopportune moments.

“Two.”
“Two?”
“Two iMacs. That ALONE is going to cost us TWO IMACS.”

But the sum has been heard, many times before, and will continue to be heard as long as we as humans consider this tradition an important part of our culture. I know I can’t think of these numbers in daily-life terms.

The difficulty I am having, I have pinpointed, is feeling like I am worth the fuss of something this expensive.

Not that I think I’m worthless, no! But perhaps I am worth just a little box of money, not a big one. Money has always been a complex emotional subject for me, and the wedding is throwing it into sharp relief. I have to get over it soon, or the next eleven months are going to be much more difficult than they need to be.

[wedding] initial palette for gown

Originally uploaded by cygnoir

When my mom arrived on Monday, she asked me all sorts of questions about the wedding. I knew that I should have answers to at least some of these questions already, but I didn’t. I left her with a lot of blanks to be filled in shortly, so that when I took the day off work on Friday we could deal with some preliminary logistics.

Bridezilla I am not. Our wedding day, though magnificent I am sure, will be a day, not the judgment on the rest of our lives together. The world will not implode when (not if) we have to compromise on some of the details. As a result of all this realism, I found myself at a planning loss. I couldn’t visualize anything specific that would help to kick my planning mode in gear.

So there we were in Britex, looking for colors for my wedding gown — “just colors,” Mom said, not pressuring me one bit — and before I knew it a salesperson had yanked out two fabrics, put one on top of another, and my eyes filled with tears.

It finally hit me, the full force of it, right there in Britex. We’re getting married! And some switch just flipped, so look out: here comes Ultra-Planning-Mode ‘Sted.

Administrative note: I have created a “wedding” category for these posts so you can safely ignore them, or ignore everything else, depending on your preference.

There are so many words and photographs I want to share with you about Scotland, but I am a perfectionist and so those will take a while to percolate.  Yet something monumental happened during our trip, and I do not want to wait any longer to share it.

When I shared it with a friend yesterday, he told me how happy he was for me, “…particularly remembering where you were, lifewise, less than two years ago. Things Get Better. A lesson for us all.”

Things Get Better, better than I had ever hoped. This beautiful ring from my beloved symbolizes the start of our second chapter, during which we prepare to become husband and wife.