With Joey, at a bathroom, at school, in a trash can with 17 kids.

Back in the fourth or fifth grade, things were much simpler. We had smaller classrooms, straightforward assignments, scheduled lunch times, music class, art class, P.E. every day and even Spanish class in the mornings on Mondays through Thursdays. All I had to do was show up on time in the morning and the rest was taken care of. Of course, this was not enough for me or the other kids I knew. We would always play little games that strangely enough, brought up the future and what we would do when we grew up. I remember there were different variations of that sort of game. You could take two people’s names and tally up the percentage love they would have in their life if they were to go out or get married eventually. You could fold a sheet of paper into the fortune-foldy thing

where you first pick a color, open and close the fortune-foldy thing again as you spell out the color, pick a number inside, open that flap and the name of your true love or future career would be revealed. (That really was way too popular, with the paper, and the folding and the obnoxious little messages waiting to be revealed. And from my google search, it looks like it’s derived from real fortune telling stuff. Way to teach it to the kids.)

Anyway, the one game that I can’t believe we actually played involved these lists of names, places and numbers (of kids you would like to have when you get married.) There were five categories:

• Name (of the person you wanted to marry. If you wanted to play it safe and not let anyone know who your crush was, you’d pick celebrities.)
• Place (of where you want your wedding to be held.)
• Honeymoon (location.)
• Home
• Kids

Each category would have 4 or 5 entries. The first two would be made by the kid who’s future would be revealed, while the rest would be made by observers, who back in the day wanted to playfully sabotage your future by saying that you would get married in a bathroom and have 20 kids. Once all these categories were filled, the person writing this down would cover their writing hand and start making tally marks on the paper until the victim would yell, “stop!” You count up the tally marks and that’s how many entries you move along these lists before scratching an entry of the list, effectively removing it from your future. If this sounds complicated, it’s because it actually was. I remember some variations of this game had your future career as one of the categories. There were all these rules about how you should list the categories, if you should make tally marks or spirals and there was even an acronym at the top of this mess that threw in about four more entries in to the mix. Was it S.M.A.S.H. or M.A.S.H.? School, Mansion, Apartment, Streets and Hell as places you would end up living in? I can’t remember now since I had to throw out memories like this from 12 years ago to make room for useless things like Navier-Stokes and Fourier transforms.

The whole thing ended up looking like this: Read the rest of this entry.

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Playing catch-up

I notice it’s November. Thanks for letting me know about that tiny detail and how I’ve been MIA since mid October. Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is: I am still around, with this wedding in mind and the July 2008 date still as my target. The bad news: According to my calculations we are now eightish months until the date and without a single dime available, planning has come to a screeching halt. (Can’t really be screeching, huh, if there wasn’t much going on before now?) Regardless, to catch you up on what went on this month in the world of planning:

•  My color choices meant nothing since none of them even made it past preliminaries. I may take the advice I was given over the summer: choose your colors after choosing flowers for the event. Sounds like the way I should go.
• The job hunting looks promising what with employers willing to move my start date until after I get this pesky little wedding out of the way.
• The groom-to-be is now only 30 pounds away from his Slim Down goal.*
• The bride-to-be is now only 19 pounds away from her Slim Down goal.

*I don’t recall listing what his original goal was, but let’s just say 30 is a step in the right direction from the previously targeted number.

Anyway, less than one month left until I go home for my last winter break of college life. Finishing up 2007 is only making the reality of this wedding that much more emphasized in my mind. Dude, I’m totally gonna get married soon. How did we get so old?

Philosophical questions aside, December at home brings the hope that I’ll get 10 to 15 pounds closer to my Slim Down goal and that planning will actually take place whether we have the money or not. (Charge it!) I keep hearing how the dress should be fitted about 6 months ahead of time, the venue reserved x months ahead of time, the caterer secured y months ahead of time and the invitations sent out z months ahead of time. If the absolute values of 6, x, y and z are less than or equal to 8, then maybe this can all still be pulled together in time. Of course, I don’t know what I’m talking about, so there you go. Should a kind financially wealthy individual come across this humble message, please know that you would dreams come true for the low low price of $10,000. I would write you a fancy handwritten letter expressing my eternal gratitude and send you a picture of us with bright smiles on our faces. (Is anyone still there?)

So that what you’ve missed in November in a nutshell. The stagnant phase of a college gal trying to find the right formula that will finally make trees sprout money instead of leaves.  I hope y’all had a great a Thanksgiving weekend.

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Colors of the Wind? Rainbow? Random search?

Last year when I first mentioned my engagement to a classmate, I was overwhelmed with all sorts of questions regarding details like: What song do you think you’ll dance to? Where will you get married? Do you think you’ll go with a huge ceremony? etc. etc. The question that really has come back to mind lately is “What colors are you going for?” Colors? Is it me or does it seem like a lot will be based on what I decide for that question?

I might be making a bigger deal out of this than I should, but I just don’t want my wedding to be an eye sore. I can just picture how uncomfortable it would be for the guests to sit around a mess of jarring greens and reds and yellows. Maybe that’s one way of saving money– Make their eyes hurt to the point that they want need to go home (and/or the eye doctor) as soon as possible.This in turn means your reception will be shorter, thereby saving you money on the rental of the venue based on the length of time of the event. Let’s ignore how these guests would probably never want to see you again for fear that you might expose them to yet another visual assault.

OK, so with the potential risk of choosing colors worse than you can find on the average MySpace page, here I go at picking a set of colors appropriate for a summer wedding. And yeah, I cheated by using the Brides.com Color Studio wheel, but I feel like it’s one of the better ideas I’ve had to lessen the work I have to do in planning. With my engineering background, I’m more likely able to tell you the color’s frequencies and spectroscopy details than whether they would be nice on a bridesmaid’s dress. So thank goodness for the color wheel! Read the rest of this entry.

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