Two Weeks...

Two weeks.  As I typed that my stomach did a backflip.

Excited.  Anxious.  Nervous.  Unsure.  Enchanted.  Dazed.  It’s all happening. 

I am striving to be present, but instead I find myself in a near-constant dazed and robotic state.  It still does not feel real.  Friends ask me what I have done, and what is left to be done, and I have no answers.  There is just so much that I have no time to list or explain, I simply do.  Wake, eat, work, and alternate between squeals of joy and tears of utter exhaustion.  

I’ve given up on the idea of keeping the massive amounts of “stuff” contained, and so my room slowly grows smaller and more overtaken with each day that passes.  The strange part is, I'm okay with that.  This is from the lady who used to iron her sheets before bed.  Yikes!  Hopefully these are steps to becoming more balanced.

In two weeks, I will be wearing the most beautiful dress I have ever seen, hugging so many dear and much-missed friends and relatives, and smiling more than I ever have before.  In just over two weeks I will be on a plane, darting through the air for my much-anticipated honeymoon. Those promises fill my heart to the brim.  

The marriage license has been obtained, the programs ordered, the dress altered, the thank you gifts bought and wrapped, and the suitcases (halfway) packed. The tasks are becoming fewer as the days slip away.  My pursuit to hold onto these moments is much like trying to grasp at a wet bar of soap.  The countdown blocks are moving so fast and my mind cannot seem to keep up with them.  

Today is my last day of work.  Well, of the work that requires me to leave my home each morning. I am looking forward to trying to get to bed at a more decent hour and beginning my tasks before the sun shows her face.  There’s lots to be done, and so much to be savored.  I do not want to miss a single, beautiful moment of the next fourteen days. 

For now, I get to go care for my now wisdom-toothless fiancé.  Mostly we are just eating a lot of this soup, which happens to be ahhhmazing!  

Thank you so very for joining me on this journey.  More wedding memories/mayhem coming soon.  Oh, and food too.  This is a food blog, after all. 

Sincerely, 

Pedantic Foodie

One Month...

It's real.  For the first time, it feels like this great, fast-approaching event, that has been nearly a year in the making, might be more than just a dream with a Pinterest board.  Yesterday, as I bid my last goodbyes to summer, we hit the one month mark.  

Over the weekend, my dear aunt helped us assemble the first of our major decorations and my heart took a deep sigh of relief when it really did look beautiful.  Up until now, we have had flowers, sequins, and candlesticks scattered about and I have held my breath and hoped that it would all come together in a seamless, cohesive design. 

Now, I sit at my computer flipping through tab after tab of wedding programs.  Literally hundreds of them.  Yet somehow, I still have not found exactly what I had envisioned.  Whyyyyy?  I think I'm a little picky. 

This week, I shot my last pre-wedding recipe with my mother.  It's a very special recipe, with very special memories and I cannot wait to share it with you.  The coming six-week hiatus of testing, baking, and photographing has been months in the making, but now it's done.  Mind you, I still have so many pictures to edit, posts to write, and recipes to type up, but the most daunting portion of the task is done.  And I already miss it.  

My fiancé might finally have his outfit figured out.  Who knew it would take eleven months to find a dusty-blue bow tie?

I do not know what's happening.  Some mornings I wake up and gaze across the room to my little wedding countdown and it feels real.  I know and believe that so much of the reality that I have known for the past twenty-one years will be turned upside-down, and yet so much will stay the same.  Other mornings I wake thinking that I have not woken at all, but am still heavily immersed in the most wonderful of impossible dreams.  It's all very bizarre in the happiest of ways.

I want to soak up these last four weeks, but at the same time I cannot wait for the day to finally arrive.  I'm filled with excitement as my fingers bounce about this keyboard like timid feet across hot coals.  One month.  ONE MONTH!  

I'm a very lucky lady. 

Sincerely, 

Pedantic Foodie

50 Days...

I just turned a page in my calendar.  

Welcome, September.

I have always looked forward to this month with eager anticipation for the beginning of my favorite season, but this time, this unearthly tidal wave of elation, far surpasses that of its predecessors.  At last, I can finally announce that I am getting married NEXT MONTH.  

That statement feels like a big deal.  To me - to my fiance and I, it is one of the biggest deals we will ever know.  To others it is simply another event, but to us, it's everything.

Nearly eleven months ago Peter Pan beckoned me to follow him out my window and into the dark night that has been this wonderfully delightful, topsy-turvy year, and now, we are just hovering over our very own Neverland, about to descend.  How did this happen?  How did this one person that I now look at with such sweet, comfortable, entranced familiarity become who he is today - my everything?  I have no idea.  One night he finally got up the nerve to hold my hand and like an avalanche my independent existence vanished.  All my illusional confidence faded, all feminist conviction departed, and I now needed a rare kind of life-support that happened to be packaged in graphic tees and dark brown eyes.  Oddly enough, I did not care.  My will for autonomy suddenly seemed foolish.  All I wanted was him.  

And here we are.  Fifty days.  Twelve-hundred hours.  Seventy-two-thousand minutes.  That is all that divides us and the deep, vulnerable, scarily close, earthly bond that is marriage.  It's not the indescribable excitement nor the paralyzing fear I would have thought.  It is glittering, butterflies-in-my-stomach, elated anticipation for a very great unknown with a very great known. I have never lived with this person before.  I have never had to see him, hear him, or serve him twenty four hours a day.  And, as much as I love him, that's slightly frightening to my introverted, selfish, and change-fearing heart.  I know everything will be different, and there is no true way to prepare myself aside from continuing to fall further into appreciation and thankfulness for the man that will be standing at my side. 

Here is what I know.  This wedding will be beautiful.  I have the man I love, a gown I adore, and a wonderful team of helpers that will keep me well-nourished and at ease throughout the day.  But I also know that there are already a hundred things I would have done differently.  Had I known that so many of the people I was depending on and most of the details that were finalized and set in place within our first four months of engagement would be negated through moves, back-outs, and life being...life, this would have been a very different wedding.  

Strangely and happily, I do not really care.  My groomsmen now have pants - finally.  We have a honeymoon booked.  We have a beautiful apartment waiting for us.  It's all come together, just like they promised it would.  Not the way I imagined perhaps, but that's okay.  Life is much more interesting when it does not look like our Pinterest boards, as nice as that may sound. 

I have begun a new job amidst trying to keep on top of my other pursuits and preparing for my new title of "wife."  Though things may look reasonably polished on this site, be not fooled into thinking that I am breezing through this transition with the grace and elegance I would like you to believe.  While I have not cried as much as I would have expected, the meltdowns have certainly been present and most of my anxiety has manifested itself in frustrated tones and snappy comments to completely undeserving loved ones.  Life feels like a lot.  A heck of a lot.  And I am deeply thankful for forgiveness and humbled by my constant need for it.  

I have certainly been making my fair share of mistakes lately, but I am trying (but totally failing) not to apologize for the things that I cannot really control.  So, I will not say I am sorry, but I will thank you in advance for your grace and faithfulness over the next eight to ten weeks as I try very hard to keep this site a pleasant place for inspiration, but will likely need to take things a little slower.  I have some really very exciting changes and plans for this space in the works for the near future, but for now, things may be a bit more...relaxed.  

I'm going to go light all my pumpkin candles now.  xoxo 

Sincerely, 

Pedantic Foodie