July Facebook Cover Images and wait… it’s already July!? I’m getting married?!

It’s July.  WHAT?!  July?!  How did that happen?!  How is our 18 month engagement coming to an end?  How will I handle calling this fiancé guy “husband” in just 14 short days?

While I am 110% on board with marrying such a catch, I admit that I am so not ready for the actual wedding.  Had I known at the planning stages what I know now, this wedding would look very different.  And yes, that surprises me.  I thought I had a handle on weddings.  And I do.  Stateside weddings.  In English.  That are not my own.

As it turns out, a destination wedding is a lovely idea but one better meant for people who aren’t so anal retentive detail-oriented.  They are better for people who don’t have a million ideas about what a wedding should be.  They are better for people who haven’t been pinning since it was called “tearing out and hoarding away pretty wedding pictures for a wedding in some abstract future with some abstract groom.”  (Listen, I can also write this off as business development, thankyouverymuch!)

I’m not going to lie: I haven’t enjoyed most of the wedding planning process.  Dealing with vendors I don’t know and can’t even communicate with has been frustrating.  Seeing our already intimate guest list reduced to teensy has been heartbreaking.  Knowing that I can’t touch every aspect of the event has been hard.  (Do you have any idea how much I loooove the details at a wedding?)

We are going to Italy sight unseen and hoping for the best.  It will be an adventure.  It will be beautiful.  It just won’t be mine.  My project, my baby.  (I say “my” because Andy only cares so much about the details and would rather roll with the punches for the sake of sanity.  Bless him.)

I think of the pieces that do excite me.  I am most excited about our ceremony.  I have seen so many and feel that ours is so right and so us.  I am looking forward to standing there in the sun, sweaty hand in sweaty hand, saying our vows to be together for the rest of time and exchanging rings.  That feeling has to be amazing.

This brings me to July’s images.  These are our rings.  At first I was a little bummed that they are different metals but then again, why should they be the same?  We’re not the Von Trapp family; we don’t need to have the same style.  There is a tiny thing that ties them together: sapphires.  I used small sapphires from my mom’s old bracelet for both of our rings.  Bario Neal did an amazing job on them – his a hammered rose gold, mine a diamond and sapphire white gold band – and I love them.  I admit that I sometimes sneak a peek at them and try mine on.

Please note these images are made available for personal use only.

Oh jeez…  off in 9 days and I haven’t packed a thing yet!  Deep breaths!

If you want to marry me, here’s what you’ll have to do: 

You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.

And you must sew my holey socks,

And soothe my troubled mind,

And develop the knack for scratching my back,

And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.

And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,

And when it is hailing and snowing

You must shovel the walk…and be still when I talk,

And–hey–where are you going?

~ Shel Silverstein, “My Rules”