Pieces of Anna

There are (increasingly more frequent) moments when I feel like a complete failure of a bride. It seems to me that I should be much more excited about this wedding than I am really feeling, and that brings on pangs of guilt. Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to this wedding, but I am much more excited about the actual marriage part than the day of the wedding itself. And is that really so bad? When I am not busy feeling guilty, I spend a lot of time going into mental fits of rage over the ridiculousness of the colossal costs that weddings apparently entail. Especially in Boston. It seems impossible to get married in this city without paying for it with an arm, a leg, and your first born child. I mean, of course it's not impossible - we could just go to city hall and sign some papers, but that's not exactly what we are envisioning for our wedding. And I don't think our vision is so outrageous that we should go into debt to afford it. And yet... we are getting qu...

During my search for a wedding dress, I reluctantly decided to sign up on The Kn*t website (that is not the proper spelling, but it does properly reflect my opinion of it). Reluctantly because I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: "What is your engagement ring IQ? (Are you participating in the Diamond Olympics?) Did you remember to book a calligrapher for your invitations? Are you planning a receiving line? (Huh? Does this have something to do with football?)" But I signed up anyway because I heard they have a pretty good collection of wedding dress photos. Which, it turned out they do, but not so much of the kind of dresses I am looking for. When you sign up for an account, the Kn*t asks you for your wedding date, even if it is just an estimate. So I provided a wild guess estimate (sometime next summer), and it generated a convenient To-Do list for me. As you know, I love check lists, but this one sent me into a hysterical fit of laughter in about two seconds: ...

Wedding planning involves such an overwhelming number of "musts" and "shoulds" that one can go insane pretty quickly just trying to keep track of all these "requirements". Even if you avoid all these prerequisites and start from scratch, it's still pretty difficult to figure out what you want to include in your wedding. However, it's actually pretty easy to figure out what you DON'T want to include, so here is my list. No long, elaborate, poofy gown for the bride. I mean seriously, who wants to put on 20 pounds worth of dress on? That requires assistance to use the bathroom?? A dress in which I cannot dance, let alone move??? Not this girl. I am going to wear a short dress ! No veils or bird cages. I don't really see the point of veils. Am I going to be hiding behind it from my groom? Because, what, he doesn't see me every day? Surprise, honey, this is what I really look like behind that veil! Why don't you look surprised? Yea...

Remember how I said that we are diving right into wedding planning already? Well, it turns out we had to slow down a bit because making decisions together is a much slower process than me making a decision on my own. So while we are trying to agree on the guest list, the budget, and the venue, I figured that I might as well start planning the one part of the wedding that I have complete control over - my wedding dress. Although I don't have a specific kind of dress in mind yet, I do have some ideas on what I want and what works for my body. For starters, I would like a short wedding dress. As in above the knee but not shameless-hussy-type short. And this eliminates a whole lot of options. It seems like most wedding designers don't really consider a little white dress as a feasible wedding dress option. A reception dress? Sure! An engagement party dress? No problem! But no one actually gets MARRIED in a short dress, right? Grrr. Anyway, even taking all those "additional ...

I have a writer's block. In case it wasn't obvious from the lack of posts over here. Partially this is due to the fact that something huge happened recently, and it's been occupying a large portion of my brain lately, but I haven't been able to talk or write about it, which of course is like trying not to think about the pink elephant. But now, it's out in the open, which brings me back to... Guess what?! D and I are engaged! Wooo hoooooo!!!!! And we are diving right into wedding planning, head first, very deep, and without training wheels. Not that anyone dives with training wheels, I just like to blend my expressions into one big metaphorical pile. In preparation for wedding planning, I had to figure out what was the most important thing (to me) about this wedding thing. And with significant help from A Practical Wedding , I easily pinpointed the whole point of a wedding - regardless of the decorations, the length of the dress, the so-called "wedding co...

Back in March, I mentioned that I would be starting a woodworking class in May. Well, that class is almost over, and I got something to show for it! The class I was taking was the Basic Woodworking class at the Eliot School . The Eliot School is located in a quaint old building in Jamaica Plain, and they offer all kinds of interesting hands-on classes, like woodworking, upholstery (!), sewing and drawing. Inspired by my bentwood chair makeover , I decided to sign up for a woodworking class. The project in the class was to make a box modeled on the Amish candle box. This type of box has a sliding lid and was originally meant to store candles away from bees. In class, we learned about different ways to saw wood, different kinds of wood, and how to use various cool power tools. We used a planer and a jointer to create smooth, parallel surfaces on a rough piece of lumber. We then used a chop saw to make some rough cuts in this six-foot-long piece of lumber. Between classes, we stacke...

There are many ideas, plans, doubts, and fears swimming around in my head right now about taking the next step, and making a big change in my life. It is when the fears overshadow the dreams that I look to these words to keep me going:   Images from here , here , here , and here .