Two Months and counting...

I'm alternately excited and stressed out by the wedding. We're days away from the two month mark. That's great in some ways - in less than three months, it will be over. Hurrah.

The part that is a hassle is a trillion little decisions and details. I mean, I still haven't decided what the wedding cake will look like. Do these decisions really matter?? No, of course not. And yet I'm interested enough to have an opinion. I've left the flowers entirely in my mother's hands, because she has good taste and I'm certain whatever she decides will be beautiful. I have claimed not to care what the flowers look like. But, as someone pointed out the other day, if the flowers are yellow carnations and red roses, yes, I think I would hate that. After all, my dress is pink champagne - yellow will clash.

I don't really expect yellow carnations from my mother. However, I'm learning my expectations are sometimes wrong. I had expected...well, for her to be excited, and happy about the wedding, but I have yet to feel that. There's a big part of my mother that spends time pressing me - as in, to keep me from being irrepressible, she presses. She hushes and shushes and generally tries to tone me down. I think she wants to make sure I don't think I'm too big for my britches. I should probably tell her the constant shushing has convinced me no one cares what I have to say, but she'd probably just criticize my negativity.

A good example that she believes her own shushing - she and my Dad bought a BMW a while back, because they were retiring and my Dad wanted a car that would last ten years. My mother decided they shouldn't drive it to visit her family, as her family would view it as her rubbing it in that they make more money. She didn't want her success to make anyone feel bad.

Now, this is nonsense, of course, and she eventually relaxed this rule as it became impratical. (Now they drive the BMW everywhere and she apologizes for it.) But I feel like the wedding is being treated the same way - this big, potentially fun event has to be hidden away and kept quiet so that no one feels bad and so that Elizabeth doesn't get too obnoxious.

My fiance is worried that no one is making enough of a fuss of me. His buddies are talking about a weekend in Vegas for him, and he frets constantly that I'm not having a shower or a bachelorette party, or various other things. I don't mind about the parties - his relatives very sweetly want me to go north to throw me a shower, but I'm not a huge shower fan, and now there's just no time to get up there before I have to be in SC. I might organize a bachelorette party, but since both my bridesmaids are very far away, they can't come, so that's kind of a bummer. And who really wants to throw a party for yourself?

What is hard is that everyone, my parents included, has so much going on right now that I feel guilty asking for attention. My friends are dealing with their own crises, my brother's family just redid their carpets (NOT a ephemism) and have two small children, my Dad just lost his mother, my mother's got 40 years worth of stuff to clean and is trying to keep her own mother happy. There are other weddings, brand new babies, sick family members, breakups, job upheaval, and aging parents. EVERYONE has stuff. I want to be respectful of all the stuff. I want to hear about it, to commiserate, to advise, to listen.

But there is a part of me that just wants to find an open space and scream:

THIS IS THE ONLY WEDDING I AM PLANNING TO HAVE AND WOULD YOU SHUT UP FOR JUST ONE SECOND AND ASK ME ABOUT IT??????

Now, before you get all huffy and write me a nasty post, know this: both my bridesmaids are wonderful, and I talked to both of them last week. They listened, they asked questions - they had both called me, even. They both said all the right things, and I am thrilled they'll be with me when the wedding rolls around.

I never expected everyone's life to stop just because I was getting married. Heck, I'm just happy some of my friends can come to the wedding.

I don't need a party or to go off to Vegas (that would be fun, but we're all too broke right now). But I think I need my mother to be excited. To pay attention. To be concerned with what might make me happy.

And I don't think she will be.