Back in February, we started weighing the pros and cons of various wedding dates. We took a pass on autumn when I remembered that my latest nephew was due in August (hi, Robert!), and it looked like winter for sure, until I found out that the site that we were leaning toward had openings next June–and charged the same amount for them, in utter defiance of common wedding wisdom.
During these deliberations, I set up an account at The Knot as a part of my effort to be appropriately wedding-crazed (there was also an ill-fated wedding-planning-book-thingy experiment along the same lines). And they have this checklist, you see, and I put in “June 14, 2008″ just for fun, and looked at what I was supposed to be doing. “Begin envisioning your wedding,” it said. “Decide on a budget,” and “Insure your engagement ring.” And I’m pretty sure that that was about it.
I knew–I just knew–that switching to the earlier winter date would make me crazy. But Nick looked so sweet and sheepish when he asked, “Do you really want to wait so long?” that I was willing to overlook his follow-up: “Besides, it would just make so much more sense for tax purposes if we marry this year!”
When I told The Knot about our change of heart, it retaliated by informing me that I had about 40 tasks for February, and at least 15 of them were already overdue. Nifty.
Every month since then, I’ve dreaded loading up the page. We started this race tragically behind, and have never made up the ground. And yet, somehow, today I don’t feel rushed or harried or neglectful. It could be because it took all of five minutes, in the end, to find a baker and choose a cake…and that was done from a continent away. Or it could be because I now have confirmation that there will be both music and adequate lighting, or because the photographer I was campaigning for has committed to the date. Most likely, though, it is because I found out yesterday that the first of the invitations has actually been received, and, no matter how many hundreds of new items have just appeared in my checklist, there is no doubt that we are off and rolling.