T-minus 8 and counting.

While I wouldn't say that I woke up on the morning of my wedding hungover, I would say that I was incredibly nervous and skittsh for the entirety of the day, making me look like something of a -- how shall we say? -- crack addict.

I woke up at 7 and couldn't get back to sleep, which worked out okay, I guess, because Bridesmaid Jenn was already awake and had already wandered into a local Starbucks. She then called me at 7:30 and instructed that we "stop having sex" and tell her what kind of coffee we wanted.

She came back to our room around 8 with coffee and fruit. I ate this coffee and fruit . . . and then I threw up in the toilet. Note to self: coffee is not a good chaser to a night of drinking wine and gin.

We met the family and the rest of the bridal party for hotel brunch at about 9/9:30ish and proceeded to pick at fruit. Note to all: I cannot eat when nervous. At speech tournaments in high school, I could never eat until after my first competition.

I go to my room and rest for awhile until I get a call from the florist at 11 a.m., asking if she can drop off flowers around noon. Bridesmaid luncheon is put on hold until the florist delivers incredibly gorgeous bouquets and boutonnieres to my room.

I had picked this florist off the internet, had never met with her and only exchanged phone calls and emails . . . and this was the result. Magfreakinificent!

My bouquet.

His boutonniere.

Bridesmaids and Bride's Mom joined me for lunch at Cheesecake Factory. We all went shopping in the Handbag Basement while waiting for our table. Despite touching beautiful purses for a half an hour, I still can't eat once we get to Cheesecake Factory. Pasta sits on my plate. Magen gives me Xanax.

I love Xanax.

By the time of our 3 p.m. hair appointment, my world is looking up. I do not appear like as much of a crackhead, and as my hair transforms itself in Angela's capable hands, I am becoming a very pretty crackhead as each minute passes.

We are out of the salon a little before 5 and are suddenly superbly glamorous. Here's what our hair looked like:





Kate took the pictures of Magen and I, but I didn't have any of her hair prior to the wedding. So here's her entire look, courtesy of Gabe, our photographer. (You can see her flowers, too!)



(Cassie and Jenn, being short haired, napped at the hotel during this time. Or hit the bar. I'm not sure which.)

We shielded ourselves from the wind before returning to the hotel to complete the movie-starlet transformation.

Randi helped me decide which underwear I should wear.



Yep, those cotton boy shorts were totally the winners.

The getting ready bit is all really a blur to me after that crucial decision was made. Jenn did our makeup, Randi, the unofficial bridesmaid, helped zip things and adjust things and lend moral support to Kate, the Best Kate. Cassie and Magen shooed my mom away when I was about to kill her. I think I ate two slices of rye bread . . .

Then at just past six we were spirited away to the ballroom by our less-than-stellar wedding planner . . .

Posting falls second to spending time with my new husband.

Really.

When finally you move in with someone that you've been with for years, the notion of alone time seems to fall by the wayside and you spend every evening making up for the number of evenings you didn't get to spend together throughout your relationship.

Marcus and I have been together for over 6 years, moved in together in July and got married last October.

So we're still doing that "spending every moment possible together" thing.

But because of that, certain things have been neglected for far too long. I've finally gotten into the groove of balancing work with absurd amounts of internet surfing, so the posting can resume. I've even begun to resurrect my book blog, an experiment I tried back in 2005 that quickly disintegrated.

In any case, I'll take this time to post a few photos of the events leading up to and concluding in my nuptuals.

Tally ho!

The Bachelorette Party

Jenn buys me a silly hat for my tiny head.



It lights up! And has penises on it! I am referred to by a strange man on BART as "The Weiner Devil."



At one point, I decided my pretty hat should be around my neck instead. To my dismay, my pretty hat later leaked battery acid on my chest, leaving me with a slight rash across my chest that, thankfully, was totally gone by the wedding on Saturday.



We met up in the Mission for dinner and drinks at Luna Park, which was awesome, but not quite as carnie-licious as I had hoped. Amazing mushroom ravioli things. Delicious goat cheese fondue. The best Singapore Sling I've ever had in my life! Some amazing grape cocktail called an Ice Breaker which is basically grape vodka and contineau. It tastes like exotic Kool aid and I am pretty sure I could drink it forever. All in all, a tame night. Lots of alcohol. No raunchiness. Threw up some god-awful pink drink when we moved on to the Elbo Room. Then I threw up in a tree on the way to Bart.

I am so good at vomiting.


The Rehearsal Dinner

We have the most awkward rehearsal ever with a wedding coordinator we didn't hire. We knew that we'd have someone coordinating our event as it came with the package we had from the hotel. However, we had been working with a different coordinator prior to the rehearsal, only to discover that the hotel had switched their schedules that day and thus we were stuck with a horrible beast of a woman who yelled at my bridesmaid, yelled at my guests and could not seem to fathom that my honor attendant was a man and the Best Man would be a woman.



I think the look on my bridesmaids' faces generally sums up how everyone felt about our coordinator.

But after that, we had a lovely lovely dinner with all of our attendants and out parents at a little Italian place around the corner from the hotel. Much wine was poured -- some of it into a glass that still had a different kind of wine in it -- and then afterwards we hit the hotel bar with my attendants . . . and then, true to our Santa Barbara roots, we all decided that we should grab things from the liquor store and drink in our rooms . . .

The face you make when you're getting married in less than 24 hours.

In which I appease Drew and Meg.

I spend a lot of my time these days on the train to and from San Francisco. This is actually pretty great because it gives me two guaranteed half hour blocks of time each day to read. As such, I finish 200 pagers in about 2 days. It's awesome. Other than the fact that I have to get up early in order to get parking at the BART station, I will never ever complain about this commute. I'm on the train at an early enough stop on the line to guarantee a seat every day, and I guarantee a pleasant ride by intentionally sitting next to people who also have books.

This, however, does not guarantee a lack of crazies.

I mean it. If you want to meet some choice characters, start taking Bay Area Rapid Transit.

I'm trying to get into the habit of cataloging all the strange and interesting folk I see on the train, but that may be something I have to discipline myself to do after this whole wedding business is over and done with.

I'm really ready for the wedding thing to be over with. Thank God its less than two weeks away. At this point, I seem to only be concerned with my bridesmaids' abilities to purchase evening appropriate shoes.

Other than riding the train, most of my time not spent working has been devoted to making tiny canisters of personalized M&Ms look pretty with film strip-style bows and little name cards and such . . . or handwriting 160 place cards and stamping them with pictures of the food that person intends to ingest (little golden chickens and little silver blue fish and shiny green carrots) . . . or flipping through guidebooks to decide where I want to squander my money when I'm in Spain.

I'm rather exhausted. The wedding business is a lot of extra work, and I look forward to using up my last bits of energy in Spain, and then veging out with my new husband and watching a lot of TV.

I promise details of our adventures in Spain and many many stories about the crazies I see on the train . . . but for now, I'm sure I should be writing movie names on clapboards (our version of table numbers).

I love a good Dutch Oven.

I am getting married in about 8 weeks.

My evenings consist of creating spreadsheets for the caterer, using multicolored post-its notes to arrange seating, scouring the internet for gifts for the groomsmen, purchasing things (favors, accessories, place cards, thank you notes . . . and so on), and obsessively checking my registries to see if anyone has bought me presents.

Certain presents have already arrived, and one seems to have been burgled by Target, a company that will not resend things after they have been returned to the sender because they were erroneously delivered to an incorrect address.

If you happened to buy me the Hamilton Beach Toastmaster, I am sorry. I will not be mastering toast anytime soon unless you purchase it again (with your refund) and send it to my new address.

Presents are why would should all get married. Seriously.

You don't even have to get married, actually. I'm fairly certain that the internet will let you register for gifts for any occasion. I suggest doing this for all of your birthdays, housewarmings and the third Thursday of every month, which could become a day to celebrate your awesomeness.

Here are some things I've received on my porch recently:

*A set of ceramic mixing bowls. Red on the outside, white on the inside. Neat little pouring spouts.
*A 10-piece Kitchen Aid nonstick cook set, featuring a stock pot, a high-sided sauce pan, 2 saute pans, 2 small saucepans and 4 assorted lids that fit these things. They are red. With rubberized grips.
*A set of 6 gorgeous martini glasses.
*A Mario Batali Dutch Oven. (Jennie Orphan makes jokes about this all the time, but it is the most useful piece of cookware I've ever owned.) It is red.
*A 20-piece set of gorgeous mahogany-colored Asian style plates.
*A set of low bowls to go with said 20-piecer.

All of the mahogany-colored things looked redder online, to my slight dismay. They were too beautiful not to love.

It wouldn't be fair to say that I'm getting married just for the presents, but the presents are what make it a bearable thought in these final stages of planning.

For whom the bells toll.

With Marcus working on the other side of the country, the majority of the wedding planning falls upon me. (He has contributed to finding us photographers, videographers and other such creative types amongst his professional friends.) We have a place and a time and a date and a caterer and an open bar, which are really the huge and important things, and we have open quotes from a florist and a DJ. We have an abundance of photographers and a videographer who told us he'd shoot for free because, "um, I kind of invited myself to your wedding." We've ordered invitations, and, yes, lo, I have ordered my dress.

There are still a lot of details to be handled: food has to be chosen, groomsmen are still up in the air, bridesmaids must be wrangled and put into dresses, we need to start talking to cake people, I need to find people in San Francisco to make me look pretty, etc. But by and large, I feel like this thing, for being planned 350 miles away from where it's actually happening, is pretty under control.

Edan once told me that I should marry someone with superpowers if I was going to plan a wedding outside of my place of residence. I, apparently, have superpowers. And super, super parents.



That, by the way, is my wedding dress. 255 days away from actually getting to wear it!

My wedding, my dowry.

Discussing the cost of my wedding with my parents went far better than I expected, especially considering the fact that the conversation began with the cost of their wedding, back in 1980.

(a slightly fictionalized version of last night's conversation with my parents*)
Me: How much did you wedding cost, Mom?
Mom: Oh, well, hon, you know, we had it at on the base in the military chapel and we only had about 50 people there so, I don't know, um, $500 to $700.
Me: What? What the fuck? Mom! Mom! That cannot be the cost of your wedding. That is unfuckingfathomably low!
Mom: Well, hon, it was over 20 years ago. Money is different now.
Dad (yelling, in the background): Hell, our cars were only $2,000!
Me (stammering): But, how? What? I don't understand! Plane tickets to Ireland are $500! How much was your dress? My god! It had full sleeves! How much!
Mom: Oh, Grandma made it. And she did our flowers, too.
Me: Gah! What? $500?!!

I then inform them that my wedding will be at least $9,000. To which my mom goes, "Gah! What? $9,000!"

Initially, that figure was unspeakably high for me, but it includes a 5 hour sit-down dinner for about 100 people with a choice of 2 entrees, an open bar, cake cutting and coffee services, 5 different kinds of butler passed hors d'ouevres, free champagne and a free suite for me and Marcus for the evening. I also get chair covers and centerpieces.

When I discussed this figure with my father, he said, "Are you sure its not missing a zero somewhere or there isn't a one in front of that nine?" and then "And that price is with an open bar? And they'll let us bring our own wine without a corkage fee? That is pretty damn good."

I love my dad. Paying to help Marcus' parents get rid of their son in such a manner is basically my dowry.

"For my daughter, you get a 3 course meal and all the booze you want!" I can imagine my father actually saying this. But anyone who marries me gets free booze for life anyway. When the intial parental introductions were made, Marcus' father wanted to know if livestock would be exchanged, but the faux dowry of wine won out over the faux dowry of camels. Because my dad has wine. My dad does not have camels.

I feel like this is an excellent choice for us. I (theoretically) only get married once, and it may as well be goddamned opulent. I will never get to have a party so exquisite again in my life . . . unless I become unspeakably wealthy. I may as well have my wedding be the epitome of 1930's Hollywood glamour.

Now its just a matter of getting in touch with the wedding sales manager at the hotel and booking this place.

*The slightly fictional parts are the parts where I swear a lot. Even now, I still don't say fuck around my parents. Unless it's really well deserved. Or if I stub my toe on something.

Four Funerals and a Wedding

On the way to Josh and Bryna's wedding in Aptos, CA I witnessed the most macabre traffic accident I have ever seen.

Traffic comes to a stop just before I get into the civilized (re: no farmland) part of Salinas. I wait for about 20 minutes in traffic, before the highway patrol merges the two-lane highway into 1 lane. As I drive take a gander at the car turned on its side by the center divider so that I can see what the hold-up's been.

Not only is there a car turned on its side, a large open-backed truck, but there is a dead cow on top of it. And two dead horses on the roadside. And another dead cow in the middle of the lane.

No human driver was found in or around the over-turned vehicle.

A bizarre sight for a wedding-bound drive. (Not an omen.)

On another note, Josh and Bryna are now wed. Lovely, simple wedding. Short and sweet. Lots of old friends. I salute Josh and Bryn for forging a new path for all of us. I think we're next.

I stole new wineglasses. Marcus caught Bryna's garter. Josh somehow managed to shoot the cork from his champagne right at us. (Omen.)