One of my favorite parts about this whole wedding shebang is that I have reason to spend money on extravagant things that make me pretty. Normally, I’d talk myself out of these things and put the money in savings (or, let’s face it, blow it on clothes or eating out), but now I get to justify it all with a simple phrase, “I’m getting married in X months and I have to look my best.” Yay.

What are some of these things I’ve been blowing money on, you ask?

Clarisonic Mia

Image via www.beautyblitz.com

I bought this a few months ago to clear up my skin and I think it’s doing a pretty good job. The difference isn’t so dramatic that I’d declare it a miracle worker, but I’ve definitely noticed that it keeps my break outs to a minimum. And with a 15% off coupon at Sephora, I scored it for about $130. Not too shabby.

Waxes

Image via misteemontanye.com

I used to get my eyebrows waxed whenever I remembered to go, but for the last few months, I’ve been going on a pretty strict every 4 weeks schedule to keep stray hairs in check so I wouldn’t mess up anything by plucking.  To go even further, I actually went to a real eyebrow person to shape them rather than the Korean nail salon down the street who rips out whatever they please.  It cost twice as much, but it was worth it to have piece of mind.  As for waxing legs and bikini area…I’d never done it before so I thought I’d get my first time over with well in advance to the wedding.  Ouch.  Worth it though?  Totally.  I’ll be back right before I leave for the east coast.

Dermatologist

Image via www.clear.ca

I’d never had the guts (or the insurance until pretty recently) to go to one, but I finally went a few weeks ago. I had a mole removed from my neck that I’d had my whole life and just hated. Now I don’t have to think about it being in all those pictures.  And as a bonus, he took some liquid nitrogen to some skin tags I had in various places and froze them off. I feel like a new me.

Facial

Image via community.breastcancer.org

I’ve never had one. I’m gonna get one. Probably a week beforehand since I have super sensitive skin and don’t want any lasting redness on the wedding day.

Lush

I’m a Lush junkie and as the wedding gets closer, I turned to them for all my product needs.

Image via lush.com

I get break outs on my back and with a strapless dress, it’s not something I want everyone to see at the wedding. So the last time I was in Lush, they pointed me to Fresh Farmacy. I use it all over my shoulders, chest, and back, and, as they warned me it would, it brought everything to the surface. So I turned to:

Image via lush.com

Grease Lightning. I’ve been slathering it on my trouble areas after I get out of the shower and dang if it doesn’t zap that stuff right up. My skin is becoming crystal clear. Hopefully I can keep at it and it will stay that way until the wedding.

Image via lush.com

Ah, my old Lush standby. Buffy clears up any dry skin on my legs and arms and buffs out everything else. Plus it’s the perfect exfoliant to use after getting waxed. I just replenished my stock with a big Buffy bar that will probably last me to the wedding.

Active

Image via gamerlimit.com

I’m not as skinny as I was when I was a kid. In fact, I’m not as skinny as I was in college. A desk job where you eat at your desk and work really long hours has caused me to gain a lot of unwanted weight. I’ve tried to be active in the months leading up to the wedding- taking the dog for long walks when I can, going to yoga when time allows, and using hand weights when I remember. But so far, not even Jillian Michaels’ DVDs or my Wii Fit Plus has gotten me out of bed to work out before work. At this point, I know I’m not going to drop major poundage beforehand, but I just want something to do so I can say that I tried and be in better shape. Enter the Wii Active. One of my bridesmaids encouraged me to get the More Workouts disc in order to tackle the 6 week challenge (because, as you know, we’re about there). I love it. It mixes up the work outs in a way that no DVD can. I’m two weeks in and have done it every day, plus it’s always throwing out new workouts I haven’t done yet. It’s fantastic. It doesn’t leave me as sore as Jillian used to, but I do feel it. And maybe it will motivate me to throw in that 30 Day Shred DVD every now and again.

Have you splurged on yourself for the wedding? What do you find yourself doing that you’ve never done before as it gets closer?

Okay, so I know that it seems like every post I do lately is some sort of countdown, but work has been busy and wedding stuff has been even busier.  Give me a break, okay?  I promise I have a lot of posts forthcoming dealing with everything from our invitations to more music and more DIY projects.  Yay!

But I had to hop on here and share this story.  I was at the dermatologist this morning, something that I’ll explain further in another post, and he told me that he wanted to see me again in about 6 weeks.  At the front desk, scheduling my appointment, the receptionist looks at me and says, “Well, 6 weeks from today will be August 20th.  Can you believe that?” to which I said, “No, I can’t.  I’m getting married that weekend.”  “Wow!” she says, “Congratulations!  I guess we shouldn’t schedule your appointment that weekend, then?”

Holy crap, 6 weeks.

Two months away from today and there is still so much to do. We’ve done a lot also so it’s a mixed bag of feelings, both accomplished and overwhelmed.

We got, what I consider, a very special two-months-away present in the mail today in the form of 5 response cards, complete with 10 yes replies. Basically it goes like this: we mailed invites out last Wednesday. People in CA received them on Thursday (daaammmnnn, USPS, who says you’re no FedEx?), and the majority of people across the country started getting them on Friday and Saturday. Today is MONDAY, people. Our 5 response cards came from the following states: 1 from FL, 3 from NY, 1 from PA. That means that these people received their invites and turned around and mailed the response card back either the very next day or that very same day. Seriously? That’s dedication, holmes.

All in all, our special 2 months out present? People want to come to our wedding! For real! Yay!! :happydance:

It almost makes all the stress of planning fade away. Well, maybe for a minute. Wait for it…yeah, it’s back. But that minute was pretty good, huh?

Last night I dreamt about the wedding again.  I was there, in my lovely dress, and waiting for the ceremony to start.  Everyone was seated and I was ready to walk down the aisle when I turned to my DOC and said “Why isn’t there any music?  Didn’t the DJ show up?” and she said, “You never told him what you wanted, so he didn’t come.”  Silence.

So you can see where my mind’s been lately.

Sigh, ceremony music.  The last thing I want is Canon in D, or whatever other traditional music you’re supposed to have.  Traditional schmaditional.  We’re doing it our own way.  Only, we can’t seem to decide what “our way” is.

At first we had it down.  Before we even had a DJ we sat down to pick three songs: bridal party’s walk, my walk, our walk back together (I know these have real names like “processional” and “recessional,” but I like mine better).  We dipped into a playlist on my iTunes called “Our CD” that I made for us back in college during the very beginning of our relationship when every song we heard seemed so darn important to us.  This is what we came up with:

Bridal Party Walk – “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel

My Walk – “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice

Our Walk Back – “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” by The Beach Boys

We were pretty happy with our choices, but we weren’t completely sold.  The bridal party walk was a cool song that we both loved, but didn’t seem to fit with, well, the bridal party and, uh, walking.  And even though I was dead set on my walk song, due to our intense love for the movie Closer, Ritchie has never liked how the song ends with “…until I find somebody new.”  Sheesh, he takes things so literally.  The last song we both love for the walk back.  It was one thing we actually didn’t waver on, even though I’ve never really been a big Beach Boys fan.

We didn’t think about this for a long time, until we were driving around running errands one day and I had a Beatles CD on in my car.  We had always planned on playing Beatles songs while people were finding their seats and I commented on how I just love the transition of “Sgt Pepper’s…” to “With a Little Help…” which sparked an idea.  What if we did all Beatles songs for the ceremony too?  “Sgt. Pepper’s…” could transition right into…

Bridal Party Walk – “With a Little Help from My Friends”

My Walk – “Something”

Our Walk Back – “Eight Days a Week” (I know “All You Need is Love” is a typical pick here, but “Eight Days…” is another one of those darn important songs to us)

We liked it, but I felt a nagging in the back of my head.  First, it’s overdone.  Even one of the DJs we talked to had told us that he’d seen it done a lot when we told him we were playing Beatles songs while people took their seats.  Second, it’s a bit of a betrayal on my part.  I grew up with one, and only one, love from the past and it was The Monkees.  My best friend turned me onto them when we were 12 and I didn’t stop obsessing for some time.  Because they themselves are rip offs of the Beatles, it was always one or the other, and I was Monkees all the way.  I never even really started listening to The Beatles until I met Ritchie.  So I was torn.  The 12 year old in me badly wanted to do this:

Bridal Party Walk – “Take a Giant Step”

My Walk – “Sometime in the Morning” (No video, a clip is the best I can do with this one)

Our Walk Back – “I’m a Believer” (this is actually one of my least favorite Monkees songs…but it’s hard to resist here)

So there we go.  I’m totally torn.  Maybe a mix of all three?  My favorite mix might be “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Sometime in the Morning,” and “Wouldn’t it be Nice”  But “Take a Giant Step,” “Blower’s Daughter,” and “Eight Days a Week” is a strong contender too. Or, “Take a Giant Step,” “Something,” and “Wouldn’t it be Nice” works as well. Maybe we should just scrap everything and start from scratch?

Did you have/are you planning on having original music for your ceremony?  Or did you go for something less traditional?

It’s been a trying week (and it’s only Wednesday!) as our invitations arrived on Monday and we dove headfirst into adding all the little touches, stuffing, and addressing in the short time we have before they’re expected to be in the mail.  Putting these together means we are cracking down on our final guest list.

Ah yes, the guest list.  It is basically the bane of my (and many others, I know) wedding existence.  When we got engaged we were on a cruise and over dinner one night, we rattled off all the people we’d invite- people from college we hadn’t spoken to in years, old professors, people we were close with from online communities, all of our work friends, etc.  We were so excited and we reasoned that with all these people, we probably had about 70, maybe 80 people to invite.  Oh what a small adorable wedding it will be!

Ha.  HA.  HA HA HA HA HA.  We were so naive.  When we got home from our cruise, I went to the store to get myself a wedding notebook.  I sat down and wrote at the top in fancy letters “Guest List – First Draft, 11-1-09″  I was so excited.  I began with family and the wedding party.  When I was done with that, I was at 72.  OMG!  72 people in our extended families and wedding party!  When did this happen??  “It’s okay,” I tell myself, “It’s just a first draft.  Push on.”  When I was finished I had 136 people.  I was bowled over.  This was way outside our ideal 70-80 person wedding.  Still, I reasoned that a good chunk of these people wouldn’t come and figured this was an okay place to be.  I’d definitely whittle it down to around 100-115 and we’d be perfectly fine.

Then the parents came in.  To be fair, I will say that there is a major emphasis on parent here as my mother was by far the biggest culprit.  Just before our Save the Dates went out, we asked the parents for their guest list.  We had covered all the bases with Ritchie’s family mostly, his mom added maybe 2 or 4 people.  But all the while she told us to take people off more than she asked us to put people on.  Enter my mother.  Queen of indecision (and I wonder where I get it from).  First she added about 16 people.  It was a blow, but I held strong.  Then she called and took 4 or so off.  Then she called and added 2 back, but took another 2 off.  It went like this for weeks.  She would call and start off with, “Jess don’t be mad…” and I knew it was about the guest list.  Often these conversations went “So and so was like a father to you growing up,” or, “Well, I haven’t talked to so and so in years.”  After I sent out our Save the Dates, it continued to happen.  “But I already sent out our Save the Dates!” “Oh, that doesn’t matter.  I talked to so and so the other day and she said she’d be very hurt if we didn’t invite her.”  Sigh.  I know this is pretty normal from parents, but I’m fairly certain that it’s normal from parents who are paying for the wedding.  While our parents are picking up a few of the tabs, we are paying for the majority of this shindig ourselves.  Every guest that is added a little “Ka-ching, ka-ching!” goes off in my head (the second ka-ching is for the inevitable plus one).  But then again, we’re doing it ourselves too.  Recently I had been back in touch with a close college friend who I really wanted to include on our day, so I added her (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  Ritchie reconnected with an old friend of his, so we added him (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  In the past few months we’ve befriended and become pretty close with our new neighbors (ka-ching, ka-ching!).  The guests continued to add up and before we knew it, we’d added at least 10 people since we’d sent out our Save the Dates ((ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching! ka-ching, ka-ching!).  And of course, all the while, my mom was remembering and taking off people.  I’ve gotten to the point where I literally have one invitation left, which is for our dang scrapbook DANGIT.  If one gets lost in the mail, or more unforeseen circumstances happen, I’m screwed.  As of today’s post we are now up to, brace yourself, 144 people.

It’s tough.  At some point, we had a kind of “eff it” attitude towards our guest list figuring we had so many out of towners that adding people wouldn’t really affect our outcome.  But now that people are starting to book rooms, people we never expected to make the trip, we’re getting a little nervous.  We’re doing the math in our head and we’ve only really budgeted and planned for around 100 people.  We never thought we’d get more than that.  And yet, it’s such a dilemma as we want every invited guest to be there.

So a lot lies on these little invitation’s shoulders.  Those tiny little RSVP postcards hold our fate in their hands.  I can’t wait to release them into the world and see what they come back with.  I’m excited and terrified all at the same time.

Are you terrified of your guest list?  Stuck with an indecisive parent like mine?  Excited about sending out your invites, but afraid to get your RSVPs back?