Thursday, June 28, 2012

Devil in the Details

Hey Squares. What. Is. Up. This girl had a rough day, you guys. I don't plan to go on and on about wedding stuff, as I'm sure 50 percent of you don't care (Fine! Then you're not invited! Hrmph!) but today was kind of the beginning of what I'm afraid will be an avalanche of me pouting and overeating out of frustration. Here's how it all went down.

My apartment is FINALLY put together enough that I could invite my parents over. Sure, there was some last-minute crafting and rearranging furniture, but whatevs. I had some crackers, cheese, salami and iced tea out so I could use all my fun dishes. My mom and dad showed up right on time and gushed appropriately about my place and pretended to ignore my hoarding of packing paper in the front closet. It was lovely!

Then we went out to get some dinner across the street. I was all "Ooooh, Michaelangelo's is supposed to be good!" So we walked over to the the so-called "good" restaurant. Turns out, the inside was a Chuck E Cheese. There were, hmm, approx 154 kids screaming for like the first hour we were there. Peaceful! 

Finally, the kids left and my mom said "Woo! Now that we can finally hear ourselves THINK, how's the wedding planning going?"

This is where the night went from fun to frustrating.

Geo and I thought we had a pretty good plan in place. We couldn't please everyone, but we tried. I had confirmed availability with places and knew that our plan could work. What I DIDN'T plan on is everyone not agreeing with me.

No. There were objections almost immediately. My parents were like "Whoa, okay, slow your roll. You haven't thought this through. That place is too small and disjointed." Like any adult, I got defensive immediately and secretly fumed while Geo sat mute next to me. In hindsight, what did I really expect him to say?! My mom and I were butting heads on a few things - little stuff, you know...like the RECEPTION - and we were going back and forth for a few minutes while Geo and my dad quietly prayed that they could be transported anywhere but a dinner table with two women planning a wedding.

Despite my hours of work on spreadsheets, venue tours and emails it was brought to my attention that I may have missed a few details.

What, like I'm supposed to just KNOW how much things cost?! What am I, an accountant?!

I was so frustrated. I've spent a lot of valuable time trying to figure out a venue plan for a wedding. And, if I'm being honest, a lot of the time it felt like I was doing it alone. So when Geo and I finally came to an agreement, I thought it would go off without a hitch. I wanted to say the plan, have everyone love it and be jealous that they didn't think of it themselves, and then toast to my genius. Was that too much to ask?

But, it wasn't solved by the end of dinner. However, my dad and Geo finally spoke up and were surprisingly, and annoyingly, level-headed and rational. My dad, always the logical one, helpfully mentioned that I needed to figure out how much stuff costs. My mom pleaded with me to consider the ugly details - you know, the boring, realistic, unglamorous, logistical, mathy details. Eventually, we agreed that I needed to do some more work, which made me start to cry a little inside. But, we  finally went back to normal and headed home.

Then, 20 minutes later, I was sitting here, contemplating what my parents had said. I started rethinking things I thought I was sure of. I cracked open my mind a bit and decided I could see their points. Then, my mom called. She and my dad had driven past a venue we disagreed on. (I loved it, they were not crazy about.) But they drove by it tonight and my mom was calling to tell me that my dad "loves it, too". And tasked me with nailing down some details.

However, now I'm afraid I'm back to square one. Now I'm not even sure about that which I was so sure of an hour ago. I feel like I need to just start all over. And it feels horrible. So, instead, I think I'm just going to break up with Geo and scratch this whole wedding thing. Ta da!

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