One and a Half Months!
Well! It’s coming up quickly. In this last month and a half, we’re just racing to get everything together, especially the finances. One happy thing was getting Pastor Ricky Ryan’s confirmation to officiate our wedding! At first he was not certain he would get back from his Indonesia trip on time, but now he is arriving back in town the day before, and he is willing to officiate the next day, for which we are very grateful!
After much deliberating, I did finally hire a videographer as well. He is Dirk Gates of Studio West Video, who had had a special $1200 videography package at the time, and furthermore, he was willing to waive the travel fee because we had a weekday wedding! We’d originally thought not to have a videographer, but I realised I’d miss being able to re-watch our ceremony from the guests’ perspective, Pastor Ricky’s message, our vows and ring exchange, our parents, the speeches, and our first dances. Since the majority of our guests are dear friends that we rarely get to see, and I’ve always been told that it goes by quickly, I did want to get a chance to remember everybody there.
We also have been dancing Argentine tango, as usual, with Fardad Michael Serry, on Monday nights, and private lindy lessons with Derrick Curtis on Saturdays, which keeps our relationship healthy and active, even when we’re both busy with school and work and, since my move to Goleta last October, living a greater distance apart. It’s amazing all that we can learn from dancing: leadership, communication, balance, responsiveness, all of which we’ve already known from our previous years dancing ballroom and tango. Lately, however, as we work on developing deeper technique and subtlety with our dancing, we’ve also learned about the subtleties of communication, give and take, and more importantly, forgiveness. If I can let go enough when he’s not leading as ideally as I’d like him to, I find that his “mistakes” become not mistakes, but easily turn into creative moments. The key is that I trust him to be able to handle the situation and not be so quick to criticise. Similarly, though I can often be inattentive or not react to his lead as quickly as he’d like, as long as he maintains awareness of my position, my balance, and is willing to wait for me to regain my composure, we can continue through the flow of the dance without anyone else being any wiser about the “imperfect” moment.
We sent out invitations a little over two weeks ago – a whole month after our original intended send-out date. It was somewhat frustrating; though I enjoyed the design process, the cutting, scoring, perforating, hole-punching, and assembling process jut got tedious, and he had been too busy with work and school, as had I, to be able to get together, divide the labour, and get the job finished. Thus, with only a day left before our pretty Bette Davis stamps would be useless (as domestic postal rates were to rise another two cents), we spent the morning at his house busily cutting, punching, tying ribbon, and stuffing envelopes. With the job finished (and the invitations looking quite pretty, if I do say so myself!), I felt a whole load lifted off me.
Nonetheless, that was not the end of the troubles. We’ve received only a fifth of the responses so far, even including from those who live in town. Some of them have also been talking about a big vacation to Japan that they’d been planning/considering, even when they are close to Chris and had been informed of the date over a year ago. “Save the date” apparently meant little to them! That was a great disappointment. Also, when sending out a mass email addressing the confusion that one of the guests had had in responding so that others may not experience the same confusion, along with sending maps and lodging information, he had gotten offended and replied that I had poor taste and judgment. I apologised for offending him, explained the situation, but…the whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth, and in the process I have become rather sick of the idea of seeing him at work and have decided to leave this job. This is not the first time for him, nor is this the only person who can often be quite nice, other times quite snobby and judgmental. I had made no reference to him at all except the confusion that he’d had, so no one except him would have known, and where I commented on an action – a simple, understandable mistake – he had attacked me personally. So while this isn’t very Christian of me, and I know I am supposed to forgive (“bury the ole’ hatchet,” he’d said), it’s going to take a while, and I’ve learned the lesson that I should have stuck to our initial idea to invite only very close friends and family, not just extending the invitation to coworkers and others just because of changes in our guest list.
That aside, there has also been the stress of knowing that Chris has to move out by the 1st of June, but he has not found a place yet. His landlady decided she wanted her daughter to move back into the house a month earlier than his original intended move-out date, so he must bear the rent for a place for both of us (I’ll still be living with my mother) for an extra month while we pay rent at my place as well. The deposit + rent for that month cuts drastically into our wedding funds, especially when all the final payments for our vendors are coming up.
We have just recently started a travel business, however, and we are able to get flights, transportation, and lodging at some quite amazing rates, so not only can we help our out-of-town guests find decent lodging, if business there picks up, we may still be able to handle/afford it all. It may even be a good thing to have a drastically reduced guest list, as that would mean we can spend more time on the people who make it and be able to treat them well, without stretching our funds thin.
In the meantime, we have been helped out a lot by contributions to our wedding money registry, including a large anonymous donation. I would love to know the identity of the donor so I could thank them.
For anyone still to respond, please send in your cards as soon as possible so we can get an accurate head count for our caterers.
God bless, hugs and kisses.
Lots of Love,
><> Elizabeth <><
P.S. The photos scattered throughout this entry were taken by Tim and Cheryl Halberg of Halberg Photographers! Don’t you love them?