Sorry, This One is All Wedding

Whew. Lemme just sit here and catch my breath a minute.

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Hi. I just had a whirlwind of a week. My parents came to visit, so I gave myself permission to more-or-less take the week off from school and work. That's the great thing about the way I currently earn a living as a graduate student: ever since coursework ended, schoolwork is entirely optional (the dissertation has to get done eventually, but nobody is breathing down my neck about it...yet) and since all of my assistantship work is of the "as long as you get it done in a reasonable amount of time, you can do it whenever you feel like it" category I can make my own schedule every week. So last week I adjusted accordingly and crammed all of the absolutely necessary work tasks into Monday morning so that I could take the rest of the week off. I'll have to play catch up a little bit this week since I only did the bare minimum last week, but it's no big deal.

In a way last week was restful since I was doing nothing but fun-having (Penn always refers to "fun-having" for some reason), but we stayed really busy. Much of the running around was wedding-related. First of all, Kiki came down from New York and she and my mom and I went wedding dress shopping! That was so much fun. It didn't make me as emotional as I thought it might. It felt a little bit strange to put on that first white dress and reflect on the fact that, wow, I'm actually going to have the experience of having a big white wedding. For a while there a few years back I thought a wedding honestly wasn't in the cards for me, so it's always a tiny bit surprising when I remember that I'm the bride-to-be and I have an almost-husband. But for the most part this just seems like the next step in a very natural progression, so it doesn't feel strange to be trying on wedding dresses. It just feels like what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

It was so much fun to go through the racks and/or books of wedding dresses and say, "I want to try this one, and this one, and, oooh, bring me that one." If anything, I got emotional because I realized I'm only going to get to do this once (well, hopefully, God-willing, I'll only do this once!) and it was a bummer to realize that there are so many gorgeous dresses I'll never get to wear. I asked Penn if we could renew our vows in ten years so that I can pick out a second fancy white dress, and he just laughed at me, so I guess that's not going to happen.

Anyway, after two days of dress shopping at three different bridal salons and trying on about 30 dresses, I think I found the one for me. I ended up really surprising myself. All winter long while I looked at dresses online and in magazines, I thought two things: 1) I want the dress to have a lace overlay and 2) I absolutely, positively DO NOT want a strapless dress. Well, lo and behold, I tried on a bunch of dresses and the two I loved most don't have a speck of lace on them and they're both strapless! I tried on dresses with halter necks and cap sleeves and shoulder straps, but I just wasn't feeling any of them. It turns out strapless dresses look better on my body. Before trying on dresses I'd been afraid that a strapless dress would give me those weird teeny little rolls where the dress meets my chest (ladies, you know what I'm talking about, and unfortunately they happen no matter how skinny you are) or, worse, that I'd have to be hiking the dress up all night to keep it on. Well, it turns out I was wrong about both of those things. Wedding dresses with built-in corsets are ahhhhhhmaaazing. I'm relatively thin in the first place, but the first time a salesperson laced me into a corseted dress I was like, "Whoa, hello there, waist!! And boobs!? Where did you come from?!" I was suddenly super skinny and yet I simultaneously got curves in all the right places. I've never loved my body so much. Right now I'm seriously wondering why on earth corsets ever went out of fashion (Note: I may feel differently about this after being laced up for eight hours on the wedding day!). Also, it turns out that once you're laced into your dress it's absolutely not going anywhere. Even not custom-fitted for me yet, those dresses all fit like a second skin. And I can adjust it just perfectly so that I won't accidentally flash anyone but so that it won't make my skin pinch awkwardly where dress meets flesh. In short, I am a convert and will very likely be wearing a strapless wedding dress after all.

The life lesson in this, I guess, is try things even when you think they are not for you. You may be very pleasantly surprised!
I narrowed it down to two dresses, but I can't stop thinking about one of them, which I think means I need to go put it on again and see if it's The Dress. They're both beautiful and I'd be happy wearing either of them (I'd be happy wearing almost any of the dresses I tried on, actually) but one of them just seems more special. It has a bit more drama, and that suits me, as it turns out that the only thing I DIDN'T change my mind about when wedding dress shopping is that I want a dress that screams "Wedding!" and that is not something I would ever be able to wear again. Why not go all out on the one day in your life that you're encouraged to be the center of attention?

Well, I was going to tell you about other things that happened last week, but my almost-husband just went to bed and that seems like a wise idea so I'm going to join him. I'll try to be back soon with more stories. I have tales about trips in limousines and secret service agents and hockey playoffs and my own personal Meet the Fockers evening and dislocated knees (not mine or Penn's, thankfully). You'll wait with baited breath, I'm sure.