The elephant in the living room needs a treat

So the Boy and I are creeping along with plans for the big wedding. Still feeling a ton of budget-related stress, we’re letting that elephant be for a bit. It’s drowsing in the middle of the living room, watching NCIS reruns on the flat screen until we get up the courage to schedule a tasting with the caterer.

In other news, me + Maid of Honor +much, much wine = last night we decided we would make the damn cupcakes ourselves. And the little cake. I have absolutely no feeling for the cake, except that it be white and smooth. We seriously could have a cake made of Styrofoam and I might be ok with that. We can feed that to the budget elephant, but it’s a pretty sorry snack for a guy like him.

[Not sure where this photo came from. Please let me know if you recognize it.]

But on to bigger and better things. Today the Boy and I reviewed the guest list (removed 3, added 2. And I’m pretty sure cousin Christy isn’t on it.) Being inclined towards tricky use of math, I am tempted to assign a probability of attendance to each guest so that I can come up with what I think the TRUE number of attendees will be. We will then feed that number to the elephant as well.

Part of the weirdness of planning a wedding, for me, at least. Is the last walls of ‘am I grown up yet’ are finally falling down. I could rent a car a long time ago. I own cookware, a dog that has to be fed. I care less about politics than in my 20’s when it was cool to be all passionate. Now I just want the hungry to be fed. Is that asking too much? Also, we still had Wellstone then. Every once in a while I look around, especially since we got our very own house, and I feel a little like a teenager playing life dress up. Is this really me? But for the most part, I get it, life’s good. The basset hound is hungry. The elephant is not staying for long. We can deal.

But then you get to this wedding stuff and there so many strange things to deal with. Deciding on church versus non-church weddings. Asking a friend to be a wedding slave. Telling your mom that you will not be using black plastic platters at the reception, no matter how cheap they are.

I have known who my maid of honor would be since she began planning my wedding at an impromptu slumber party early this year. The other maid of honor was an easy choice, the long term girlfriend of a close, close friend of mine – we weren’t up for having men on my side of the aisle, plus the close, close friend will be busy giving me away. My third maid of honor is the Boys only sister. Easy.

For the Boy, it’s not quite as easy. He knows who he’d like to be his best man. Standing there with him in his last moments of freedom. They’re old college friends. They ran track together in school and have run marathons since. A couple of months ago, they actually ran together before work, which I thought was odd. I like sleep. They have taken roadtrips to the hometown of the friend's then-wife’s hometown. A long way away through flat cornfields. They play poker.

They are good friends, but they’ve sort of devolved to a call, don’t pick up the phone, then text back but the Boy doesn’t text manner of communicating. It’s not overly efficient and as a result, they haven’t talked in a while and the Boy is trying to figure out the best way to ask him to be the best man. Voice mail? Text? Circle his house in our car until we see him coming home from work?

Getting married when you’ve already turned the corner and are heading towards 40, we’re in a different place than in our 20’s, when friends were the center of our days. We saw them all the time. Asking someone to stand up for you at your wedding could probably be done while eating bowls of cereal in your fairly nondescript apartment with the ethnic decorating scheme. Or, at the very least, wait for happy hour. But 10 years later we don’t see our friends as often. Even good ones. We know they’ll be there for us, we just don’t’ reach out quite as much. Or at least, that’s how it is for the boy and I.

And even if we wanted to reach out, the damn elephant's blocking the door!

Next up: navigating the hostile halls of county clerks offices and online ordination.