Our Lady of Perpetual Indecision

A religious haven and support group for maximer women.

I will have you know I have made TWO wedding decisions this week (not without much nagging and whining and overall carrying-on like a 3 year old being deprived of it's candy, CANDY, GIVE ME CANDY NOW.)

1) The Wedding Cake. Of sorts.

I can't tell you how much I had to gather mine and thine will in order to actually get something that I wanted, and not let someone convince me to do something else. Thanks to all thine supportive wills. It only took me 3 trips to make this decision. This is PROGRESS, people.

2) The Bridesmaids Dresses.

These ladies, the glorious women in my life, succumbed to the decision to all wear the exact same dress in the exact same color. I didn't dream it could be so simple. I am still considering mammoth Kentucky-Derby-Style hats as part of the ensemble, but we'll save that for later. You know, for when I've run out of things to torture them with.

Let's focus on not focusing

It seems I'm having some trouble "un-winding" after the exam. I could not have predicted that I would have this problem. Honestly. I thought for sure, that come the next day I would be rested, relaxed, humming dixie and walking with a little enthusiastic hop in my step. Saturday morning, I woke up (with a blistering hangover, thank you margaritas!), and started thinking, "I hope I passed. What about this problem..." Then Sunday came and I didn't know what to do myself. All this extra time on my hands with which I need not study. It's the same feeling I had in college every Sunday around noon when I just knew I had to go back to school to study for the week that afternoon. It always felt like it was cutting my weekend very-unfairly short. Five days later, I'm still having trouble sleeping in the early morning, I get restless. Let's pray I'm not like this for the next 8 weeks, else Andrew might die of annoyance.

The only way I know how to "un-focus" is to simply "re-focus" on something else, so that's what I've done. Maybe eventually I'll get tired of focusing and just pass out for 3 days. This week it's been preparation for a baby shower this weekend (apparently a lot of pent-up creative energy has just be busting open the floodgates, waiting to use any other side of my brain other than the one that solves concrete mixture problems). Next week I anticipate that all energies will be dedicated to wedding cake choices (oh my! so! many! choices! Let's hope this doesn't turn into another wedding-dress-type trauma.) Following week, bridesmaids dresses, then invitations,..... you see where this is going. If nothing else, our wedding has served as an excellent re-direction of focus for me.

Warning: Wedding Trauma Post - Dress Edition

I have a problem.

This problem is called wedding dress shopping.

I should start by saying this is the part of this whole belabored process I was LEAST looking forward to. I have made approximately 10 visits to various bridal shops, and if I must say so, the first couple were just as painful as I thought they'd be. I am no size 8 frame, and that is pretty much the size all sample dresses come in, so it was pretty frustrating to try to "visualize" what I might look like if my chest WASN'T exploding out the top of a tiny frame of fabric. Or if a drop waist weren't resting itself somewhere around my clavicle. This picture pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:

Her name was Lola. She was a Showgirl.

Then. THEN. This wonderful thing happened. I went to a few bridal shops where they were NICE and not PUSHY and would somehow miraculously engineer a sample size onto my body (granted with various clips and such) and I could kind of see, if I squinted really hard, that it might be fun to wear a wedding dress. Before this I had resigned myself to the idea that breathing, on your wedding day, TOTALLY OPTIONAL. After a few dresses that didn't make me cringe, I kind of started to enjoy this process. Maybe I started enjoying it too much. Because at this point, I question every decision. I found a dress that I liked, was in the budget, not what I pictured to start off, but she fits well (even in the sample size which, come on, that is pretty much the equivalent of a regular-size 6 girl being told she just squeezed into a double zero), we'll call her Penelope. Penelope would whisper sweet nothings in your ear.

Every rule I had at the beginning before trying on dresses (no strapless, no lace, no veil, no mermaid cut) went completely out the window once I started finding dresses that some how might work. And then we, on a fluke, went to one of the most expensive bridal shops in the Greater Texas area, and it went downhill from there. The dresses, the most beautiful compilations of silk and satin and hand-made lace I had ever seen in my life. You wanted to lay newborn babies on a cloud of these soft and puffy marvels of fashion. Ofcourse, ever dress at the store, nearly brought me to tears with its exquisiteness.

And then I realized that this had created a monster, and there is no crying in baseball!

Because after hmming and hawing over the choice of having the most beautiful wedding dress in all the land (which will be worn only once), or sending any possible children I might have to college (that's what scholarships are for, right?), I have begun to question EVERY dress. I realized that maybe the guilt of depriving children of a college fund (or the fact that eating Ramen for the next decade might not suit Andrew) was not worth this dress, and just MAYBE, I was creating this dilemma in my head (what? the head of a crazy person? NEVER.)

I will not rest until every shop in this state is scoured, just to make 100% sure I'm making the right decision if I get Penelope. Apparently, this disease I have is called being a "Maximizer" (needing to eliminate every possibility in order to make an informed decision). So the next few weeks are a fevered effort to see it all, bridal shop style. There will be traveling, and sweating, and lots of running around dressing rooms in the nude. Wish all those in attendance luck.