The wedding hiatus

I apologize for not writing for two weeks and please forgive the brief hiatus from Hullaballooing- it is due to the fact that I am ridiculously busy with wedding planning. I'm not sure if it will settle down once I'm married but at least then I'll have wireless internet in my house and be able to write any time if I wanted to.
16 days until my wedding! And not just a wedding. A life change. A name change. I'm not sure at this point if I'm nervous or excited or stressed or all three. A wedding is a horrible thing to plan; I don't recommend it unless you have a couple of years and infinite patience and only 3 relatives. Failing all those, it will be worth it if it's what's required to start life with the person you're crazy about.
I discovered there are ways that things are done and there are ways that things are JUST NOT DONE when it comes to planning weddings. For example, you have to send thank you notes for presents you receive. I didn't know about this custom and I am used to expressing my thanks verbally and in person, but I have been educated about thank you notes now and will most likely send them out asap.
I went into a florist's the other day to choose flowers for my wedding. AFter being told that I needed to order the flowers I wanted weeks in advance in the right quantities, colours, etc., and get them made professionally, I decided to just go on the morning of my wedding, pick out what looked pretty, tie it together with a bow and go with that.
It apparently takes a minimum of 6 months to get a wedding dress- it must be shopped for, ordered, sized, and altered. Of course, that doesn't count if you have a friend like Yvette Smith, who looked at a picture I tore out of a magazine, made up a pattern, and sewed the dress of my dreams in four days. That including a sewing machine breakdown and a simultaneous packing for family camp.
Of course planning a wedding in 8 weeks is not everyone's cup of tea, but from what I've seen in other friends, no matter what the length of time before their wedding, they get majorly stressed out. I was told, by the time your wedding comes, Heather, you won't care about anything except marrying Robin. It is true. At this point I just want to marry him. Perhaps the elaborate social construct of weddings and wedding planning and brides and all that fluffy lacy fancy crap just serves the purpose of making two people see that all they really care about in the world is being together, and if they can survive wedding planning they can survive anything.
So, yes, everything is coming together for my wedding and it's going to be a good time, I think. I told Bob (who's going to marry us) that if it rains during the ceremony our plan B is to hold umbrellas. And if he mixes up our names or nothing goes right during the ceremony or reception I don't really mind. It's just a wedding. I have the rest of my life ahead of me to be a family with Robin Mercer and that's what I care about most.
So anyway, I can't guarantee that in the next three weeks there will be any blog postings, but please do keep reading after that because I'll still be happy and I'll still be in a hullaballoo and I'll still need to write to get it out.

Of boats and weddings

Can you believe I'm getting married in less than a month? We contemplated taking our time and planning a wedding properly, but Robin described a wedding to me as a door to a house. Why would you spend years and countless stressful hours and so much money just building a fancy door and forgetting about the house?
But the reality is that I am going to have a fancy wedding. I squirm at the thought of it. Of course like every girl I like to dress up, and I used to dream of a fairytale day when all the littlest details would be perfect.
But when it comes down to it I just want to marry Robin Mercer and move into his apartment and be a family with him. And I'm much more comfortable in flipflops and a sundress. And I'm scared that the waitresses at my reception will be better dressed than me.
I suggested to Yvette that I was a classy girl and she laughed her head off. So maybe I'm not classy.... but maybe I can pretend that I am for a day and have a proper wedding.
We seriously considered eloping on our boat trip last week with my whole family. In the end I'm glad we didn't because after 8 days with 18 family members on a 30-foot boat, I just about went crazy. Add a honeymoon to that mixture and I'm sure I would've jumped ship.
We sailed around the gulf islands and fished and crabbed and shopped and slept and threw up (I did most of that on the boat) and explored and played games (including a 4 hour croquet game) and fought and laughed. (I'm pleased to announce that my fiance came out on top in the fight).
And I love my family a lot. They are not all easy (and you wonder why I get accused of being difficult! At least I come by it honestly). Yet they are my family, which is something you don't choose but get stuck with, unless it is your fiance, which in this case I think God chose us for each other and made it impossible for us not to get together. At any rate, they are my family, and I love how diverse we all are. I love that my brother Sam has the creativity to design a croquet game involving jumping your ball off a tire ramp through a hoop. I love that Alpha brought enough clothes for a month, which came in handy when I didn't bring enough; and somehow she seems stylish even when camping. I love that Will sat on the front of the boat with Robin and Alpha for 3 hours, getting soaked by waves and chilled by a bitter wind, while only wearing shorts and bare feet. I love that Kiara and Betsy are both so beautiful and cute but in different ways. One dark and exhuberant and the other blond and sweet. I love that my Mom can be suffering from a concussion and a detached retina and seasickness and mothering woes and the loss of her own mother and yet, hardly ever complain. She is a soldier in the truest sense.
I love that my Dad can pilot a huge boat that he's never had proper training for and he can catch pots of crab and do all sorts of things by the seat of his pants, and that he loves us all enough to do it for us. And that he loves me enough to plan me a beautiful wedding.
But I am a Davies first of all which is why I won't be surprised if a fight breaks out on the dance floor and the rings don't show up and our get-away car is an '87 Volvo and my siblings put money on who will be the first to cry during the ceremony. It's my last month to be a Davies. I am happy and sad all at the same time.