Was It Worth It?

Our first anniversary is fast approaching, and as it does, I reflect upon the experience and upon a simple question that I have been asked.

Was it worth it?

As you've probably figured out from all of my complaining, this wedding was a pretty stressful experience for me.  I put a ton of work into it, and for the last two months, I didn't sleep, I lost weight, I was constantly thinking and worrying about it, trying to get it all together the way we envisioned it.  Several people have asked me whether it was all worth it, whether I'm glad I sacrificed all those hours to create the wedding I wanted, the wedding we wanted.  Well, now that it's been almost a year, I've had enough time to reflect and produce an answer.

The short answer is that nothing is ever worth putting yourself through that kind of stress.  But that's more of a problem with me than anything to do with the wedding.  I get stressed out easily and often for things that aren't really worth it.  I also get stressed out intensely for things that I care about, and for something that lasts as long as planning a wedding, it's even more brutal because the end is such a long time coming.  AND you have to enjoy it when it gets there which just adds to the pressure.

So you see the problem in the way that I think.  I've been fighting the stress monster for a long time, and no matter what kind of wedding we had, that was going to be an issue.  But if I was going to do it again--and I so dearly hope I'll never need to--I'd try to be more relaxed about it, both the planning process and our plans themselves.  Then again, I've already had the wedding I wanted, so it wouldn't be such a burden to do it again...and so lies the problem with weddings; they only happen once.

But my problems were always going to be my problems.  Whether I should have worked harder to abait them does not necessarily tell us whether the wedding we had was worth all that went into it because those problems would have been there for any wedding I had.  There is a greater question to answer here:  was the work I (and I say I instead of we not because we didn't put in a lot of work but because Daniel doesn't need to dwell on this question) put into the wedding worth the result?

That answer is much more complicated.  Obviously, stress is a pretty strong deterring factor here, but it's not the only factor.  I spent hours and hours planning and preparing this wedding, hours of research, hours of projects, hours that could have been spent on more enjoyable endeavors.  Then there's the money factor too.  We didn't spend a ton of our personal money on the wedding, but $5,000 is still a lot when you're not making much.  And of course we made our friends put in time and money as well.  Was it all really worth it?

I think most of my friends and family will be surprised to hear that I think it was.

Yes, it was stressful and time-consuming, but the result was the best party I've ever been to, and we loved it.  While it wasn't perfect, nothing went terribly wrong, and that was largely due to my strenuous logistical planning.  While there were things we didn't have and things we would have liked if we could afford them, I don't think there's any object or piece of decor that we felt was missing or inadequate.  The wedding looked and felt very much the way we wanted it to.  Everything ran fairly smoothly, and the things that did go wrong probably could never have been avoided.

When it comes down to it, we never could have had the wedding we wanted without all of the planning and time we put into it.  If I did have to do it again, I wouldn't feel like I was making up for anything significant because we couldn't afford it or didn't have time for it the first time around.  When I think back on my wedding day, I think of it as one of the best days of my life.  Not the best, but it's definitely up there.

That's important to me.  Being not only happy but also satisfied about the way it turned out, that makes it all worth it for me.

So the long, emotional, and complicated answer is "Yes, it was worth it."  The planning sucked at the end, the stress was awful, but at the end of the day, it was only bad for two months.  I will look happily upon my wedding day for the rest of my life.

The Final Countdown: Friday Morning

The day before the wedding did not begin well.  On Thursday night, I had tried and failed to get to bed early, and unbidden, I lay awake wondering when Daniel was going to get home.

The first time Daniel had mentioned doing his bachelor party two nights before the wedding, I said, "NO!"  I believe my actual words were, "I will kill you!"

I know that sounds really bitchy, but my reasons ended up being perfectly valid, so I don't feel that bad about it.

Daniel never comes home from these sorts of things when he says he's going to.  This bothers me normally, but not terribly.  Most of the time it doesn't matter that much with the only consequence being that I should not have waited up for him.  However, having the groom stay out super late, drunk, two nights before the wedding I knew would be a problem for us.  We had to get up early on Friday and had A LOT of stuff to do that day, and I could not have him being too tired to hold up his responsibilities.

However, when he started talking about not having a bachelor party at all, I told him to do it on Thursday.  He wanted his friends to be there, and many would not arrive until then.  How could I refuse?  But I made him, as well as several groomsmen, promise to be home by midnight.

I never expected them to actually be back by midnight, but I had hoped they would respect me enough to have him back by 1am at the latest.  I pleaded with the best man to make sure he got home early and had the wives of one of the other groomsmen make her husband promise to have him home by midnight.

So when Daniel sauntered in at 2:30am, I was furious.  Now, keep in mind that I was utterly sleep-deprived already at this point, looking at the prospect of a nearly sleepless night, with so much to do the next day it made me want to cry, and I still had the Worst Headache I Have Ever Had in My Life.

Daniel was so drunk he had no idea what time it was or what was going on, and the best man had left before midnight, so all of my anger landed on the remaining groomsman.  That night, I hated him with a passionate fury.  I even texted his wife at 4am, telling her that I planned to kill her husband on the morrow.

For hours, I tried to sleep in spite of my anger, but I couldn't, so eventually, I got up and started packing the things I hadn't gotten to the night before.  I figured if I was going to lose sleep, I might as well be productive, so I might possibly have some rest tomorrow.  It did eventually calm me down, but before that was when Daniel got angry with me.  I basically threw a fit when he tried to get me to come to bed, and of course after that, he couldn't sleep either.  Both of us basically stayed up all night.  Finally, an hour or two before dawn, I went back to bed, and we both got to sleep.

I know I did not act honorably and that if I could have kept my anger in check, we would have been OK, but then, knowing that I would react this way is exactly why I didn't want him to have the party that night in the first place.  The whole thing could have been avoided if they had just brought him back when they said they would.

Cards of Doom

Of all the things that I really should have spent less time on, our escort and place cards top the list.  These babies gave me nothing but trouble.

I knew for a long time that I wanted to use the clothes line approach to escort cards.  You know, this guy:

Photo by Laura

It's practically a wedding cliche here in blogworld, but no one at the wedding had ever seen one before.  That part worked out pretty well.

Then there were the cards themselves.  It took me a long time to decide how to do them.  You see, early on, I had this idea that we could use the backs of the cards for people to write us a note.  I hate traditional guest books.  They're like middle school yearbooks; no one knows what to say besides, "Congratulations!  May you have many happy years together" (and HAGS).  I knew I wanted our guests to be able to write something thoughtful and to have a prompt in case they couldn't think of something to say.  We wrote questions for them to answer and slapped them on the backs of the place cards so that they could write in their seats, giving them time to think.  We told them they could write whatever they wanted, but the questions ensured we wouldn't just be getting, "Congratulations" over and over again.

I also thought early on that it would be fun to do a Danicole quiz and have a prize for whoever could answer all of our trivia questions correctly.  It would give people something to do while they were at the tables and might even spark conversations between people who didn't know each other.  So why not do that on the backs of the escort cards?  I thought this would be a great way to save time and money.

Then there was the tricky part:  picking out escort/place cards.  I put WAY too much thought into this.  The trouble was, they had to be big enough for people to write on them but small enough to not dominate the place settings.  We had to be able to put them in a scrapbook afterward, and of course, we didn't want to spend a lot of money or time on them.  We ended up going with a design we had rejected for our invites and printing them on postcards from 123print.com.  Cheap, easy, all we had to do was print everyone's names and table numbers on them.  What could go wrong?

Our Danicole Quiz

Our Guest Book Cards

So, when I ordered these cards, there were two things I did not take into account and should have:  size and glossiness.  You see, it had never occurred to me that they would be too small for printers to print on.  I also did not realize that since I was ordering postcards, the fronts would be glossy, and that would be hard to print on too.  But when I started looking for someone to print our guests' names on them, all of the printers I found were quick to point out these problems to me.  No one would touch them.  One person even told me I might want to scrap them and start anew.

This was 2-3 weeks before the wedding.  I was so scared I wouldn't be able to get them done.  Finally, I gave up, went to Staples, bought labels, and was about to just print all of the names out on them when I realized Staples did printing.  I was already there.  I figured I'd ask them if they could print on the cards.

And finally, someone said, "yes."  I owe Estella, the printing person I talked to, quite a bit for working with me to not only print them but to edit my word documents so that they would print in the right place.  Relieved, I went home to make 170 precisely-spaced word documents.

So, the week of the wedding rolled around, and I still hadn't had the cards printed.  I knew I was pushing it, but because of our coordinator issues, we hadn't been able to finalize the seating charts yet.  Finally, the Monday before, I took them to Staples to be printed.

I had hoped to speak with Estella again, but she wasn't there, and the replacement person was not as helpful.  She did not seem to know what she was doing.  I wrote out instructions and made her put them with my cards.  When I said I needed them the next day, she practically laughed at me.  I said Estella said it wouldn't be a problem.  She said they needed more time.  We agreed on Wednesday night as a pick up time which left about 36 hours before I had to leave for Tiburon.  No time for screw ups.  Then, we had a minor crisis when half of the files on my flash drive seemed to disappear, but after 15 highly tense minutes, I figured out what had happened and left my babies with the printer.  To say I was apprehensive would be a major understatement.  Better to say I was convinced they would be done wrong.  Alas, at that point, I had no choice.

Pick up time came on Wednesday.  I called to see if they were ready.  The response was highly worrisome.  Turns out, they had fucked up as expected.  I gave them a few hours to fix it and then went over there myself.  It wasn't as bad as it could have been.  They had managed to copy the design pretty effectively and were making replacements.  At first, I was overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task of figuring out what exactly was wrong, but then I realized that for the most part, the fronts had been printed correctly, but they had switched the backs of the place cards and escort cards so that the former had the quiz and the latter had the questions.  Not a big deal.  Still, it took me hours to sort out which ones had been done like that and which had the wrong fronts or were missing.  In the end, we were able to get the fronts and backs to match, but it took hours.

This was three days before the wedding.  I so did not need this kind of trouble at that point.

In the end, everyone had a place card...

and an escort card...

and though it took way too fucking long to get them done, it looked like they were going to be OK.

I should have known better than to leave the unwanted cards (i.e. the fucked up ones) in the same box as the good ones when I dropped them off at Guayma's.  They were in totally separate piles, and I certainly thought it looked like the correct place cards were the ones that were supposed to be used.  There were so many more of them after all.  They were all together.  The unwanted ones were just a small pile in the corner.  Separated.  Pushed aside.  We had already put up the escort cards.  Surely, no one would mistake the bad ones for good.

Thankfully, I didn't realize that the venue had screwed up with the place cards until after the wedding when we were looking through the notes people had left us.  I think everyone got the right name and back at least, but the venue used some place cards with just people's names on them (correct) and some with the name and the name of the table (which I had just worked so hard to fix, damn them!).

I know it's not a big thing, but after all the work I put into these, especially right before the wedding when I had better things to do, I was pissed.  This is one of the Three Things That Went Wrong the day of the wedding that still makes me angry when I think about it.  I've tried to let it go, but...argh!

Nonetheless, I am glad we did the quiz and questions on the cards.  The quiz was fun, especially since no one got all five questions right, and we got some great responses for our guest book.  Way better than a regular guest book.  I just wish we had found an easier way to do them.

Was there something at your wedding that took wayyyyyy longer than it should have?  Major (or minor) fuck-ups that you can't let go of?  Care to try your hand at our quiz?

Things Start to Go Wrong

One of our biggest challenges in the weeks leading up to the wedding was issues with our venue.  Specifically, with the event coordinator.

I am all for booking your wedding somewhere cheap that doesn't do a lot of weddings to save money, but I learned via our event coordinators that there are consequences.  Places that don't do many weddings tend to not really know what they're doing.  They don't put as much effort into it.

They also apparently cannot keep an event coordinator.  At least, ours couldn't.  We had four different coordinators in the 9 months leading up to our wedding.  The person we originally talked to was gone before we even booked.  The next one we had for most of the planning stage.  When she left, no one even told us, and we just happened to stop by the venue and ask for her one day and found out they had just hired someone new.  That person we never even spoke to, for she was quickly replaced by a fourth coordinator who our coordinator for the day of the wedding.

This was the only real problem we had with Guayma's.  The lack of consistency was ridiculous.  The fact that they didn't inform us of the changes was, frankly, unacceptable.

So we were pretty nervous when we met with the final coordinator for the first time a mere two weeks before our wedding.  But what seemed like a disaster turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Rachel was great, wayyyyy better than the person we had been working with before.  She was organized, efficient, knowledgeable, and most importantly, she understood how important this day was to us, something we had not gotten from anyone else at Guayma's.

We were glad to have her, but we really wish we had gotten to speak with her sooner (too bad she hadn't started working there until about three weeks before the wedding) because a bunch of things changed once we did.  We had to redo the seating chart and couldn't finalize it until a week before the wedding because they weren't sure how many tables would fit how many people.  We didn't know what time we could come to set up until the day before the wedding.  And we couldn't go over things with her as much as we wanted because she was gone for three days right before the wedding.  We literally only had the day before to go over everything, and there were definitely things I forgot about at that point that were done wrong.  I really wish we had been able to get it all done sooner.  Some of the things that went wrong that wouldn't have if we had had more time still bug the crap out of me.

Even though things mostly worked out, they would have gone much, much smoother if we had been able to plan with the coordinator farther in advance.  Though your venue probably won't have as high of turn-over as ours, experience is definitely something you should think about when booking a venue.  Because if we had had one of the other coordinators, things definitely would not have gone as smoothly even if we had had months to plan.

We wouldn't have picked a different venue.  We didn't have the money, and doing the venue cheaply allowed us to do so much more.  But if we had had the money, it would have been nice to perhaps hire a wedding coordinator or something to make sure everything got done right.

Did you have bad experiences with any of your vendors?  Was your venue everything you thought it would be?

Scheduling Nightmares or Why I Do Not Want to Run a Business Myself

For me, the worst part of the two months before the wedding was scheduling.  Scheduling bridesmaids, scheduling groomsmen, scheduling parents, scheduling vendors, scheduling other random people helping us, and above all else, scheduling ourselves.  I feel like I spent half of my days in July emailing people (and I swear I did spend 4+ hours a day doing this on wayyyyyyy more days than I and the people I was emailing would have liked).

This is what would have made having a wedding planner worth it to me.  Having someone else worry about how the flowers were going to get to the ceremony and who would put them up and letting said person know when and how to put them up would have been so worth the money if we had had it.  But we didn't, and I was the only person who knew everything that needed to happen, when it needed to be done, and who was going to do it.

It was maddening.  I couldn't sleep without first going over a million details in my head.  In fact, I didn't have a full night's sleep for almost two months before the wedding, and this was the biggest reason why.  I let it get to me way, way more than I should have.

Also, I should have put more on Daniel's plate so that I didn't feel the need to do everything myself.  Or maybe delegated some of the figuring out of stuff to our parents or something.  It didn't really occur to me.  Of course, I wasn't all too happy with how behind on his stuff Daniel was at the time or with the "it'll work itself out" attitude he had toward this kind of stuff (it totally DID NOT work itself out, btw), and he was soon dealing with his own personal Hell, so I would have had to do it in the end anyway.  But it was bad.  Really, really bad.  And not just for me but for the wedding party as well.  I sometimes emailed them 3+ times a day and felt horrible about it, but it was necessary because things STILL went wrong when the day finally came.

This is the one thing that really sucked but I don't think I could have done much differently anyway, apart from trying to figure out scheduling farther in advance.  Somebody had to know everything, and it was me.  Our coordinator probably could have helped, but, well, we'll get to that soon.  For now, let's just say circumstances beyond our control were involved.

If I learned anything from all of this though, it's that I never want to do it again.  Thus the not wanting to run my own business.  Scheduling is a nightmare.  When there are more than a few people involved, all with different schedules and priorities, it's even more of a nightmare.  And if you can get someone else to do all this for you, do it.  Seriously.  It's worth it.

Did you/will you have to schedule everything for your wedding yourself?  Was it a nightmare for you?

The Really Bad Stuff

Well, now that it's over I can FINALLY tell you about what happened 3 weeks before the wedding.

Daniel's mom has been having trouble for a long time.  She got laid off about a year-and-a-half ago and has barely worked since.  As her financial situation deteriorated, so did her mental state.  This wasn't exactly the start of it.  She's been a hoarder, the kind you see on Oprah and reality shows, for years, and it is my understanding that ever since she and Daniel's dad split up, she's had difficulty coping with, well, life.

But of course without any money, things became much worse.  Frankly, we have no idea how she's survived for so long without income, but suffice it to say that she's borrowed from everyone she knows, and everyone has given up on her except for Daniel.

When she told him that she was not coming to the wedding in early July, things began to change between them.  For the most part, Daniel has tried to placate her whenever they talk, trying to make her feel better about her situation, carefully choosing his words so as not to upset her.  It's exhausting and painful for me to watch; he's always upset after they talk.  But after hearing that his own mother did not want to attend his wedding, Daniel stopped trying to be nice to her and started actively trying to help her situation even though she fought him every step of the way.  He desperately wanted to get her in a mental position where she could come to the wedding, and failing that, wanted to at least get her on the road to recovery.

I was in Catalina, ready to be all relaxed and not thinking about the wedding or the other crap that was going on, when I got a phone call from Daniel.  His aunt had just received a call herself from the police department, saying that they had received an email from Daniel's mom saying that they would find a dead body in her house.  When they investigated (complete with SWAT team and helicopter), they found no one home.

Fortunately, her suicide attempt failed, and she had gone to stay with a friend.  When the police found her, they put her in the hospital.

Daniel immediately flew down to San Diego to help, and he and his aunt were able to keep his mom in the hospital for the weeks leading up to the wedding.  There was a lot more to it than that, but you don't really need to know about that.

Daniel didn't go back to work again until after we got back from our honeymoon.  Between trying to keep his mother alive, safe, and housed until we got back, trying to get things done for the wedding, and studying for the ethics exam he had to take a week before the wedding to get his BAR license, he didn't have time for his job.

It's hard to describe what this was like for me.  It was a million times worse for Daniel of course, and that was my main concern.  Above all, way above the wedding, I wanted to do what I could to be there for him.  But at the same time, I had already moved beyond stress and into the early stages of insanity about the wedding at this point.  It was really good that I was on vacation and didn't have so much as a computer with me when this happened, or I think my head would literally have exploded.  I'm also glad he did not take me up on coming down to help because I would not have gotten through the next 2 weeks without that break.

Daniel handled the situation extremely well.  His dad and I were both worried at first--Daniel often doesn't handle stress well--but we were both very impressive by how calm and focused he remained through it all.  At the end of the day, he was relieved that his mom was finally receiving help, and the relief overshadowed all of the other emotions he should have been feeling.  I'm amazed at how much he was able to do in such a short amount of time and that he did not let his mother's absence ruin the wedding.

For the most part, I think I handled it pretty well too.  There is no doubt that I had to shoulder an even greater part of the wedding planning burden because of it, and I made several comments I shouldn't have while trying to get through that, but on the whole, I think I was pretty supportive.  Though I must admit I'm very glad he didn't take me up on the offers I made to postpone the wedding.

But I will never forgive her for what she did to him.  Or me.  But mostly him.  I am far angrier with her than Daniel is.

I understand how much her situation sucks and why she would want to take her life as a result.  To be perfectly honest, the attempt did not surprise me though the timing did.  And if it had been after the wedding, I think I could have forgiven her eventually.  I would be sad that she did it and much sadder for how awful her death would be for Daniel, and I'm sure I would still be angry at her for doing that to him.  But in the end, I would understand why.

But the selfishness of doing it 3 weeks before her son's wedding I can never forgive.  I don't know if she thought about what her death would do to him, and I don't care.  If she was too stupid not to see how much that would affect him, then I cannot forgive the stupidity, and if she did think about it and did it anyway...I cannot describe the anger that boils inside me just thinking about it.  Daniel was already devastated that she wasn't coming to the wedding, and she knew that (or should have given the number of times he told her).  To think that she would upset her son that much more so close to his wedding is beyond my comprehension.

It's sad.  We could have had a good relationship once.  The thing about her is that she really is fun to be around when she's not freaking out.  I liked her for a long time.  Seeing what their conversations did to Daniel and trying to help the fallout pass when he got off the phone had already caused my opinion of her to plummet.  Still, there was hope for a good mother/daughter-in-law relationship before this.  Now, I can't see that happening, not unless she makes some really big changes in her life and sincerely repents everything that she put him through.  But even then, I'm not sure I could forgive her.  You don't mess with my Daniel and get away with it.

If nothing else, I think my insane stress level the last few weeks before the wedding was warranted.

I know we're not the only ones out there with these kinds of problems, so if you know someone whose mental state has deteriorated without substance abuse or a diagnosed mental illness, talk to us, and we'll try to help you.  We know how hard it is to find help or even a place to start in these situations, and we'd like to do whatever we can for you.

Catalina, or How I Got through the Last Weeks of Wedding Planning

It's pretty safe to say that I lost my mind quite a few weeks before the wedding.  The stress was...unfathomable, all-consuming, degenerating.  Bad.  I should never have let it get that bad, but, well, can't do anything about it now.  Anyway, the only reason I was able to get through the last few weeks without taking anyone's head off (or without Daniel dumping me) was my vacation with my family in Catalina.

Officially Santa Catalina Island, it is a small place off the coast of Long Beach, CA.  Most people know it for Avalon, the only real town on the island and a tourist hub.  You might know it from this song:

Cute video, huh?  Not ours, but it has some images of the Isthmus which is pretty cool.

My family and I have gone to Catalina every summer since I was born.  And not the touristy side.  We stay in the one other town on the island (though "town" is an overstatement):  Two Harbors aka the Isthmus or Isthmus Bay.

Two Harbors in its entirety consists of the following:  1 restaurant, 1 cafe (think burgers to go), 1 general store, 1 dive shop, 2 bathrooms/showers, 1 small hotel, a scattering of houses, camp sites, and boats.  That's it.

No computers.  No internet.  No possible way to work on the wedding.  Bliss.  There was barely even phone service until a few years ago (OK, so there's internet now too, but I didn't bring my computer, so I didn't need to acknowledge it's existence).

If you look at pictures of it from the forties, you'll notice it's barely changed, and that is its charm.  It's like a slice of old-world life.  The modern conveniences you have are the ones you bring with you (for the most part).  It's the only place I've ever been where I feel like I can truly relax.

If you remember back to a year ago, Daniel and I seriously considered getting married on Catalina.  In the end, it was just too expensive to get everyone over there, but we ended up going on vacation the weekend we would have done it there, and I couldn't help but think about what it would have been like.

With views like this, it would have been spectacular.  It would have been an utter pain in the ass.  It would have been worth it, but it would have been so much more "me" than "us."  In the end, it doesn't matter because we couldn't do it, we didn't do it, and our wedding was awesome, so it doesn't matter.  Still, stressful as it would have been getting there, I definitely would have been calm once we arrived.

Anyway, I had a really great week with my family.  It was nice to have one more family vacation before getting married, and I highly recommend it if you can get away a few weeks before the wedding.  What's more, my brother actually talked to us while we were there!  That was quite the treat in itself.

I relaxed, I regenerated, I swam, I tanned.  All highly necessary.  AND I got to stay in the hotel with my mom for one night instead of on the boat which I have always wanted to do.  That was the best night of sleep I had gotten in weeks.

But most importantly, I got this:

Family

The chance to say goodbye.

Did you have a stress-reducing retreat before your wedding?  Get to spend any time with your family before tying the knot?

Last Depressing Post for a While

There is just over a month left until the wedding, and I'm really starting to feel the toll's it's taken on me.  I'm stressed out, I'm not sleeping well, I'm tired all the time, and there are giant bags under my eyes that have been there for months.  It's not all because of the wedding, but most of it is.  I really need a real break, but I don't have time to take one, and there's still so much to do.  I guess this kind of talk is why one of my friends told me she is afraid to have a wedding after reading my blog.

So I'm trying to do something about it so that this wedding isn't the death of me (yes, I'm not completely stupid).  Though I haven't been able to take many days to not think about the wedding, I'm trying to break my day up into work hours, wedding hours, and me hours so that I'll actually get a break.  I'm trying to get outside and get exercise though I got a knee injury a couple months ago that is making it difficult.  I try to do what I can to relax.  And I try to delegate what I can and then not end up checking up on people constantly (not doing so great on this, but I'm trying).

Another thing I've been doing is trying only to do what's necessary for the wedding which means not writing here much.  Any extra thinking about it is unhelpful, so I guess I'm going to be one of those people who disappears before the wedding.  Worry not, I'll catch up on whatever I missed after.

Do you feel like the wedding took a physical and/or mental toll on you?  Did you feel like you were never going to get everything done?  Did you have people hounding you about all the details of what they were supposed to do?

The Stress Has Won

I am officially immersed in pre-wedding stress.

Not that I wasn't stressed out before.  Not that I haven't been stressed out about wedding stuff for months.  Not that I'm not stressed out all the time anyway.  But this is different.  This is constant.  And it's really getting to me.

I had a realization recently.  My experience with blogs has been that when people get stressed out with how much they have to do or they have to give things up for lack of time, they try to make themselves feel better by saying that all that matters is that they're married at the end of the day.  That's not going to help me.  My realization was that this wedding isn't about us or marriage.  I mean, I kind of got that already, but hear me out.  At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what happens at the wedding.  It doesn't even matter if we get married.  We can do that anytime in the legal sense, and at the end of the day, Daniel and I will still be together.  The wedding has nothing to do with that.

Instead of making me feel better about things not getting finished for the wedding, this just brings the materialism of the thing into sharper focus.  It's all about the party.

I suppose in some ways that should take the pressure off.  I mean, at least our relationship doesn't rest on the day.  But really, for me it just makes it worse.  It makes me feel like it's a stupid thing to get stressed over.  It's just a party.  The thing is, it's the biggest, most extravagant party I will ever throw.  In fact, it's probably the ONLY truly significant party I will ever throw.  I want it to be good.  I want it to be exceptional.  I have one chance to do this, and I want to do it right.

But I can't think about it without getting stressed out, and I can't stop thinking about it because there's so much left to do, and our time is running out.  I feel guilty whenever I'm not working on the wedding, even when I'm taking much needed down time.  Hell, I feel guilty even when I'm doing something useful like dishes or paying bills.  I feel stuck.  If I try not to think about the wedding, nothing gets done, but if I try to do stuff, I get so stressed out that I can't function, and still the list is never-ending, and it's crunch time for EVERYTHING.

Daniel thinks I'm insane.  I think he's a slacker.  Amazingly, this really hasn't affected our relationship.  But I could really do with some outside help.  Unfortunately, I have a grand total of 2 friends who are invited in Northern California (though to be fair, that's not counting Daniel's side), and we don't have anyone closer than an hour away.  This makes accepting help difficult.  My OCD-level control freak nature doesn't help either.

I really need to see a therapist.  Too bad I can't afford one.

How did/do you cope with the stress?

P.S.  In the interest of maintaining the small vestiges of my sanity that remain, I probably won't be around much for a while.  I promise I'll rally post-wedding.

Elegant Lace Bridal, You Are Officially on My Bad List

Remember how the owner of Elegant Lace and I made a deal about my dress?  She told me I could either have them alter the dress down to a 6 and get my alterations somewhere else, or I could have the alterations done there, and they would alter the dress to my body, and I would only pay for shortening the skirt and the bustle.

This was less than 2 weeks ago, and I hadn't made a decision yet.

Last night, I got a call from them saying my alterations were done and the dress was ready to pick up.

Excuse me, what?  I haven't ordered alterations yet.  What alterations are you referring to?

This was essentially what I said when I called them this morning.  Their answer?  We don't know whether or not the dress has been altered down.  You'll have to come try it on to find out.

I was a fan of Elegant Lace.  I've promoted them on here.  I bought my dress and 2 of our bridesmaids' dresses from them.  I've recommended them when people asked me where to look for wedding dresses.

Now I wish I had never ordered from them.  If you don't know whether my dress has had alterations I didn't order, don't fucking tell me to come try it on to find out!  You find out yourself!  Show some customer service, dammit!  And while you're at it, how about a discount on my dress for ordering the wrong size in the first place and POSSIBLY doing alterations I did not agree to!

Yeah, I wouldn't go to them again, and you shouldn't either.

Dress horror stories, anyone?  Please make me feel better.

Wedding Dress Woes

So.......my dress came in a few weeks ago.

Considering my bordering-on-obsessive love for wedding dresses (you'll notice that even though I haven't spoken about them in 5 months, I still have more posts on wedding dresses than anything else), you might be wondering why I didn't come to you screaming with joy that I could finally take my dress home.

Yeah, it doesn't fit.

I had been worried for a while that my dress was going to be too big.  When I ordered, I looked at the sizing chart, and I ended up going off of what the saleslady recommended because I assumed the sizing chart would be correct.  Big mistake.  It wasn't until later that I started thinking about all of the other 8s I had tried on.  Now, I know all dresses are different, but I have tried on quite a few more than most avid dress hunters (over 200), and not a single 8 has ever fit me.  Has even come close to fitting me.  In normal sizes, I'm usually a 4, sometimes a 2, and rarely anything bigger.  Ordering an 8 started seeming like a bad idea.

And when I tried the dress on, it was about a size too big.

Now I know what you're going to say:  it's better to have an oversized dress than an undersized one, and I can always get it altered down.  But if you're going to spend $1,200 on a dress, it really ought to fit somewhere.  Even in the waist, which was supposed to be the one place where it would fit perfectly, was still about a size too big.  The bust might need to go down more than that.

To Elegant Lace's credit, it wasn't as much of a pain in the ass as it could have been to talk them into altering it down for me for free.  But now I have a dilemma.  If I do my alterations there, they'll alter the bodice to fit me, and I'll have to pay to shorten the skirt and for the bustle.  However, if I do my alterations elsewhere like I was planning, they'll only alter it down to a 6.

I don't want to do my alterations at the bridal store because I know it will be more expensive than elsewhere.  But at the same time, if the dress it altered to a 6, I might need to have the bust taken in still more, and apart from the extra expense, I don't know how well the dress would hold up to multiple alterations in one area.

So now I need to find out what prices would be like at other places which means I need to find other alteration stores that can handle wedding dresses which would be a pain in the ass even without the time constraint because how the Hell are you supposed to know how good someone is with formal wear without seeing them in action?  It's frustrating because I wasn't counting on having to do this yet, and I have other time-sensitive things that I need to work on, but now I need to make a decision about this too.

I'm already leaning toward the bridal salon though.  Since I won't have to pay for them to alter the bust, the price gap will probably be smaller, and I'm afraid of hiring someone who isn't good enough.  It would not be the first time I'd had a formal dress altered poorly.

I'm also frustrated because the wedding dress used to be my favorite part of planning, but between this and my 2 dress bride experience, I just want the whole thing done with.

I so, so wish my dress had a corset back.  That would solve all my problems.

Where did you do your alterations?  And if you don't mind saying, how much were they?  Anyone know a good seamstress in the Bay Area?  Or really, in Northern California in general?

When Not to Get Married

- When you're moving within a year of the wedding, especially if you're moving more than once.
- When you plan on getting a new job or otherwise drastically changing your day-to-day life within 8 months of the wedding, especially if you actually care about said job.
- When you plan on making a career change around the time of the wedding (after is OK).
- When you plan on going through a traumatic or otherwise life changing event within 8 months of the wedding, like major surgery.
- When you have major life commitments like school or a demanding job.
- When your fiance has to do any of these things.
- When you live far away from your wedding location and cannot visit often, especially if you plan on DIYing lots of things.
- When you don't know where you're going to live when you get married.
- When you plan on DIYing lots of projects but do not have much time or much help.
- When you're not ready to get married.
- When you live far away from ALL of your friends and family.
- When you don't have any money.

Obviously, a lot of us do some of these things.  In fact, some of us do many of these things.  And sometimes you just have to plan your wedding around your life.  Nonetheless, all of these factors make planning a wedding much more difficult and stressful, and as I am dealing with (or have dealt with) pretty much all of them, I am starting to get really worried about how far behind we are.  Bridesmaid dresses in particular are becoming disconcerting.  I need help.  So today, Daniel and I went through the list I made a while back of EVERYTHING we need to do before, during, and after the wedding and split it up.  Hopefully, assigning responsibility for everything to each of us will not only take a lot of the planning off my shoulders but will also make it so that I do not have to make sure everything gets done myself.  With the attention I have to give to my new job and the insane scheduling changes I'm going to have to put up with for a while, I'm going to need help.

So newly engaged peoples, learn from my troubles.  Trying to get married while both of you are trying to establish careers and you have to move or travel a lot is a major pain in the ass.

What did I miss?  What obstacles did your lives present while you were planning your wedding?

Invitations are not worth stressing out over. So why am I doing it anyway?

Guys, I feel like a first-class idiot right now.

Remember when I said I didn't care about invitations?  Apparently, I was lying.

The invitation I showed you before did not look so good in print.

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The colors of the printed version can only be described as bleak.  Daniel noticed it right away and did not want something so sad to represent our wedding.  Can't really argue with that.

The other sample we got from 123print.com was much happier.

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It's a little darker in print too, but it works.  Daniel really liked this one, but it just didn't feel like our wedding to me.  I like the design, but I just don't like it enough.  So we started looking for other invitations.

Unfortunately, I could not find anything nearly as cheap as 123print.com.  The ones we did find and like only barely fit into our budget and would not allow us to use our invitation budget to cover thank you cards also.  Nonetheless, we really liked some of them.

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I absolutely love this one.  Even though it's not directly related to our wedding, the water colors sort of feel like the ocean, and it really stands out which I love.  However, Daniel thinks it's not really our wedding, so we scrapped this one.

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Daniel really liked this one, but it feels too wintery to me.  Maybe if it was a different blue, but as it is, we scrapped this one as well.

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And then there's this one.  Despite the fact that it is in no way related to the theme, colors, or feel of our wedding, we both fell quickly for it.  You can put your own picture too which is pretty cool.  If price were not an issue, we would have ordered it already.

Unfortunately, price is an issue.  Regardless of our budget, we should be going for a cheap invite because it's something neither of us cares much about.  But because I am a first-class idiot, I cannot seem to let go of the invitations I actually like for the cheap one that is only OK.  The swirly blue one above would cost us much less than $100 for the invitations and response cards.  The one we really like is almost $200 even with the huge discount they sent us.  There's no way we can justify spending that much with a perfectly fine option that is so much cheaper.

And yet, and yet, I can't let go and just get the cheap one.  I just can't.  It's not even that I really dislike it.  It's fine.  But because it's my goddamn wedding, fine isn't good enough for me because I'm an idiot.  Even for the stupid invitations that I don't care about, I still want them to be good and unique and memorable.  Because I'm an idiot.

I have some ideas about how to make it work with getting some cooler invitations without spending quite so much, but I really shouldn't be wasting time looking for and ordering more samples, and it would be much better for me to learn to let go.

And yet...I just can't seem to do it.

If you know of any really cheap invitation places/websites, I'd love to hear about them.  We really need invitations and response cards together to be $150 or less.  And if you can knock some sense into my stupid, stubborn brain, that would be good too.

Another Baby Post

It has officially been 4 - 6 weeks since my surgery (my projected recovery time).  I dearly wish I could literally laugh in the faces of the nurses/doctors who told me I would be 100% healed by now.  Ha!  Well, at least I can work out now if not as much as I'd like.

Anywho, when I went to the doctor 2 weeks after the surgery, we started talking in earnest about controlling endometriosis and preventing infertility in the long term.  I almost started crying while explaining to her why I didn't want to take Lupron, a drug that basically puts my entire reproductive system on hold and would essentially make me menopausal.  My mom had a really rough time with menopause, and while it has become clear to me that our reproductive experiences have been very, very different, I can't risk the stress right now.  I'd say until we're settled in jobs in one place, and until after the wedding, that's not an option.

But when I saw the doctor again this week, she brought it up again, and I've started thinking about it more long term.

Daniel and I both definitely want to have kids.  That's one of the big things that we have always whole-heartedly agreed on.  And yet, we also agree that we are sooooo not ready to even thinking about it for a while.  Like, until we're both set in our careers, and we've paid off a decent chunk of Daniel's loans.

Now, I have to think about it a little differently.  I was worried about having to choose between myself and my future unborn children before the surgery, but it turns out I have a lot more of a decision to make now.  Without Lupron, I have a moderate risk of not being able to conceive.  With it, that risk diminishes greatly.

But here's the thing:  stress aside, menopause has a lot of side effects, and since the whole point of taking the drug is to get rid of hormones, I wouldn't be able to take them to balance it out like most menopausal women.  Obviously, I'm most worried about anxiety and depression, but there are a lot of other effects that do not sound like fun, including hot flashes, mood swings, decreased libido (which I have enough problems with already), and bone loss which is the thing I'm most worried about long term.  When it comes down to it, I feel like taking Lupron to save myself for my potential fetus would deprive me of a normal life in my twenties just so I might have a better chance of getting pregnant.

I just don't think it's worth it.  And I don't know how I feel about that.  On the one hand, yay women's empowerment and not living for your kids.  On the other hand, I like kids.  A lot.  And I want to have my own.  And so does Daniel.  And it would be really great to meet the child we would one day make..........But, I think my life is more important.  And Daniel thinks my analysis of the situation is sound and that he would probably make the same decision in my situation.  So I don't think I'm going to do it even though our chances for kids will be significantly decreased, and he supports my decision.

Of course, I can always change my mind later.  The longer I go before either taking Lupron or having kids, the higher the risk that irreversible damage will occur.  But I figure I've probably got a few years at least, and the doctor said that she was concerned, but that there wasn't an imminent threat or anything like that.  And I think there's another decision we can make that might work better for us.

My former baby plan was absolutely no children before 30, and even then, it would best to draw it out for as long as Daniel will let me (I sound like such a guy, right?).  But now, I'm thinking maybe it might be better for us to try earlier, assuming of course that we are prepared for it.  Basically, instead of waiting 7 years before even thinking about it, it might be better for us to wait 5 or thereabouts.  And at this point, it's probably going to take a long time to conceive anyway, so it might be best for us to start a little early.

I don't know.  We're definitely not going to rush into anything we're not ready for.  But it's something to think about.

And as much as it sucks to have to think about this kind of stuff before we're even married, I'm glad that I know--not just think, but know--that we know what we're getting into, and we're on the same page.

OK, you may now bring on the sympathy :).

Overcoming the Stress Monster

For more than two weeks, I've been packing to leave for San Jose.  For the first time in years, I'm actually on top of it.  And STILL I had a bunch of crap to do at the end and got super stressed out.  I mean, like, really stressed out.

In a word, I snapped.

At everyone in my house, that is.

Who had done absolutely nothing wrong and had in fact been offering their help for weeks.

And now I feel really bad.

Anyway, I bring this up because I think this is good practice for the week of the wedding.  No matter how on top of it I am, and let's face it, I haven't been on top of wedding stuff lately, it's going to be stressful at the end.

And I cannot let what happened today happen then.  That would be really bad for me, the groom, and everyone around us.

But the one thing I can say for myself is that I cooled down quickly.  Normally, when something like this happens, it ruins my day.  Not today.  I cried, I screamed...and I calmed down.  I apologized.  I moved on.

It's a good first step.

Next stop:  not letting it happen in the first place.

Universe, I Hate You. Mostly the God of Uteri.

This is not my day.

My day is not really wedding-related, but it is very marriage-related.  In the long term.

I just came back from the obgyn's office.

I don't think I've spoken much if at all about this, so I'll give you a summary.  Between March and August of 2009, I went to the hospital 3 times with severe abdominal pain caused by what they thought at the time were 3 successive ovarian cysts.   Ever since the third one, I've had annoying to severe abdominal pain in the same area as the cysts.  I've spoken to several doctors about it, and each individually came to the same probable diagnosis:  endometriosis.  I'll explain.  The sciencey side of this is that the uterus leaks blood into the surrounding area that creates tissue that should not be there, and this process causes pain.  The practical effects are that I have debilitatingly painful cramps during my period, frequent ovarian cysts, and pain in my right ovarian area on a rather frequent basis.  The pain is off and on, but there's been enough to cause me to want to do something about.  That is, have surgery.

Surgery is the only way to know for sure whether it is in fact endometriosis, but the ultrasound I had yesterday produced some rather unexpected results (btw, sticking a plastic tube with a camera on the end up your vagina is something I hope you never have to experience).  Turns out, the most likely cause of the pain I've been having for the last year-and-a-half is not in fact endometriosis but a mass attached to my fallopian tube that has been slowly growing and messing shit up in there.  I am not particularly happy that the 3 ultrasounds I had previously mistook this mass for an ovarian cyst, but on the other had, my health insurance wasn't good enough to do anything about it most of that time anyway (say what you will about the health care bill, it is going to save my life [not quite literally but close enough] by allowing me to be back on my dad's health insurance).

Anyway, now I have to have surgery to remove it, but the issue lies in what exactly will be removed.  I won't fixate on the details of what will happen if they need to remove part of my bladder or cut into my urethra.  I have much more interesting, marriage-related, and more likely results to brood over.

The mass is very closely attached to my fallopian tube.  They won't know how closely until they cut me open, but there is a decent chance that they will have to remove it, making it impossible for me to have children naturally using the right ovary.

When the doctor told me this, I was concerned but not too fazed.  I can still have kids using the other ovary, right?  I asked her.  The answer was a lot more disconcerting.  Whatever's causing this could be affecting both ovaries but only causing pain in one.  The other could be infertile or need to be removed despite its apparent OKness.

Long story short, there is a decent possibility that I won't be able to have children.

More worrisome right now is that I have to consent to how much they can do, but they won't know what needs to be done until the surgery is in progress, so I have to consent to, say, removing both of my ovaries before I know whether or not it will happen or I'll need to or whatever.  Basically, I have to decide how much I trust my doctor to make the right decision or if I should say, "No, you can't remove that" beforehand.

I pretty much told her she could do whatever she thought was best, but I haven't signed anything yet, and I can still retract that consent.  But the thing is, I don't think I can make an informed decision without knowing what will happen.  How am I supposed to judge how I will feel about actually removing an ovary when it is more likely that I'll be fine?  But then, I can't really not remove stuff either because if the tube does need to come out, I'd still be in pain and probably couldn't have kids anyway with that tube.  But if both of them have a problem?  Or if the other one develops problems later?  I don't know.  I don't want to do anything that 30-year-old Nicole will regret, but I also do not want to be in pain for the next 7+ years while I wait to be ready to have kids.  And if I did, it would just get worse, and the other consequences we discussed would be worse, and I could actually have some major internal organ failure if I don't do it.  So I guess I really should just consent to whatever she thinks is necessary.  But still...

I want kids.  I always have.  I love them.  I mean, I was a toddler teacher last year for a reason.  There's never been any doubt in mind that I will one day have them.  And there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I cannot handle having one now or any time in the next few years at least.  I would so regret not getting my shit together before having kids.

It's just hard being 23 and being told that your fertility is in doubt.

And I mean, it will probably be fine.  It's just having to make decisions without knowing that makes it hard.

Daniel took it really well.  Said he'd love me regardless and just wanted to know about all the possibilities.

I really would be all right with adoption, but I'd still like to have at least one of my own, and who knows how I'll feel by the time I actually want kids?

It's just hard.

And to top things off, I got a call on the way home from the doctor from our potential ceremony site saying that the site we want cannot be rented for weddings nor can any other park in Tiburon!  Yeah, I found them through a list of locations you could get a permit for, but apparently they do not want structures in any of their parks, and apparently a chair is a structure.  The lady from the city of Tiburon was rather snarky.  I was not pleased.

I'm really glad we're going up to NorCal this weekend.  I won't have to apply for jobs (and I have no idea where I should be applying now or when I'll be able to start), we need a new effing ceremony plan, and most of all I'll be able to talk to my friend Dana.  I don't know how this started, but Dana and I sort of ended up being relationship and abdominal pain buddies, so it's a good time to get to talk to her in person.

I hate my life a little bit.  I so do not want to deal with this.

Can I please just have a break from life?

Today we're going to talk a little bit about why I quit my job and what it means for our relationship.

I'm hopeful that if I start this with a clear topic and goal I may avoid the general ramblings that usually accompany my personal posts.

We'll see how it goes.

I am a mess.  Daniel often says that he has to take care of me (physically and mentally but mostly the former) because I won't take care of myself.  Though I maintain that he is a bit excessive about it, the boy has a point.

Ever since I was really young, I never really put my health and well-being first.  In middle school, I used to rank my commitments by importance, saying that school came first, then cheerleading (or gymnastics or dance), and then my health.  That really was the way I saw it, and in high school, it really started to be a problem, especially after I had stopped cheerleading and no longer had a built-in balance between school and physical activity.

When I got to college, I realized that if this was ever going to change, I would have to be the one to do it.  But by then, never putting my own well-being first was so ingrained that even trying to change was exceptionally difficult.  My senior year, things came to a head.  I had a lot going on and was so burned out that I just stopped.  I dropped a class which lead to dropping one of my majors (history--so glad I didn't have to write that 30-50 page research paper) and finished my last semester with only 2 real classes.  It was the first time in my life that I had ever put academic success after my own sanity.

After that, I was addicted.  Addicted to making choices based on what I wanted and not what an admissions officer wanted or my potential employers would want or on anything besides what would make me happy right now.

Then I graduated during the worst economy our country has had since the Great Depression (Remember that history major business?  My concentration was American history.  Yeah, I have a really good sense of exactly how bad things are right now compared to every other period of our history, and they really fucking suck).

Things have been pretty interesting since then.  I graduated in May 2009, and since then I have had (as per my tax forms) 8 jobs in 3 geographical areas and 2 states.  Nothing makes me happy because I am so sick of waiting for my life to get better and doing things so that it can be better down the line.  Working hard in high school may have gotten me into Berkeley (the school I wanted), but once I was there, it was just the same thing all over again, and having a degree from Berkeley hasn't gotten me jack except for my last job which I hated.  I am so sick of doing things that are supposed to make things better for me later on and not having things actually get better.

Which is why my resume is a nightmare of unrelated jobs, none of which I have stayed at more than 6 months and most of which I only had for 3.  I quit my last job to look for one I actually wanted, but I am starting to worry that nothing will make me happy because I don't want to keep waiting for things to get better, and with all this competition, even getting crappy jobs that I don't want is a struggle.

But I could probably make it happen eventually.  I could volunteer, work part-time somewhere I didn't really want to be until I could get a job that I wanted, and live at home for a year or two until I could make it work.

But that's not really an option because it's not just me that I have to look out for.  Daniel has his own problems which are far worse than mine at the moment.  I can't be financially irresponsible in case I have to support him.  I couldn't quit my job for 2 months even though I hated it so much it was causing me physical pain because I had to lend him money so that he could live.  And if he gets a real lawyer job in the remotest corner of California, we have to go no matter what I'm doing.

In short, I still can't put my personal well-being first because I have to put ours first instead.

This has been the hardest thing about getting married for me because I so desperately need to be able to put myself first for a while, and you just can't do that in this kind of committed relationship.  This is why I broke off our engagement the first time, 4 months after I broke down and dropped that class, because I knew I couldn't make that kind of commitment to someone else while I so very much needed to fix myself.

I still need that.  A lot.  But the reason I decided to get married anyway was that I needed him more.  And the only thing I'm proud of in all of this is that this time around, even though allowing Daniel to take the time (and money) he needs to get his shit together has been really difficult, I haven't wavered, I haven't had cold feet or second thoughts, I haven't for a second considered not spending the rest of my life with him.  And after thoughts I have had in the past, this gives me glad that I have at least got something right.

Things are not going well for me right now, and I still really need someone to cut me a break.  I want a job that will make me happy, and I don't want to have to spend years more waiting for it.  But it does help to know that at least I'm happy with him.  Finding a husband this young will never be good for my career, but it is good for my personal well-being.  And at least my hodge-podge of shitty jobs shows that I have been attempting to make things better for myself while still being conservative enough to accommodate him.  And hopefully he'll get a decent job that will allow me to be selfish for a while and do whatever it takes to get a career going for me.  Hopefully, someday soon.

P.S.  The career I really want to get into is photography, so if you know a good, experienced photographer of any sort in Orange County or LA County who might be willing to take on an assistant, paid or unpaid, let me know.

A Little Wedding Fun

A friend of mine sent me this:  http://wendylady2.livejournal.com/70426.html

It is hilarious!  A little fun to break the wedding/holiday stress.

Pushing Deadlines

OK, it's November, time to revisit "Things that really must be done before the end of October"

Book a venue
Open a joint bank account
Obtain money from contributor(s?)
Figure out my own money contribution situation
Finalize initial guest list
Create and send out STDs
Obtain contact info for everyone who will receive a STD
Finalize wedding theme
Figure out my dress situation
Finalize wedding party and officiant
Choose official date, haha


Ughhh.  In my defense, venue and date would have been done by the end of October if the coordinator wasn't on vacation, I should be able to finish most of the rest of this by the end of the weekend.

How screwed am I?

How Do Models Survive?

All right, so after my last post, I feel I should follow up with a caveat.  You see, it worries me that 95% of brides seem to feel the need to diet.  I mean think about it, that means almost no one is comfortable with their weight.  That's scary.

I know you all know you should diet healthily and not too fast and not with scary products, yadda yadda yadda.  But I'm going to tell you a story about how easy it is to go too far because people just don't think about it as much as they should.  Not about going anorexic or bulimic or anything like that, but about how a reasonable person can make small choices that greatly affect the way she sees herself.

During my senior year of high school, I developed a weird stomach condition took away my appetite.  It was sort of like acid reflux disease; the high amount of acid in my stomach kept me from wanting to eat because eating basically gave me a stomach ache.  Heaven for most people, right?  There is no better way to lose weight than not wanting to eat (except of course the stomach flu).

I wasn't uncomfortable with my weight before this happened, but I was conscious of it.  I wasn't really dieting, but I did start watching what I ate at the age of 15.  Most of the time, it was just cutting unnecessary sugar out of my diet which was healthy.

But at the onset of this disease, I did the most unhealthy thing possible.  I didn't eat.  I didn't want to, so I didn't.  Not to the point of starvation of course, but enough to lose a lot more weight than I should have.  10 pounds in 2 weeks to be exact.  And people started to notice.  It wasn't until my dance teacher pulled me aside and basically asked me if I had an eating disorder that I realized how bad it was.

I didn't do it on purpose.  I didn't even realize what was going on.  But I could have stopped it, and I didn't because I liked it.  I liked looking like a model.  I was happy when my weight finally dipped under 100 pounds.  I liked it so much that it took someone telling me I was sick for me to realize something was wrong.

After that encounter, I did something about it.  I went to the doctor, was told this was caused by stress (also something to think about!), got on acid-reducing pills, and learned what foods were easy on the stomach and basically ate just Wheat Thins and Triscuits for weeks.  I couldn't even eat the food at my prom for fear I'd get sick.  Eventually, I started gaining the weight back and feeling better.  I wish I could say that I was completely happy about that, but it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'd have to give up looking like a model to be healthy.

It took years for me to get over the way I looked during that period and years for me to realize what a healthy weight for me was and that I would have to stay at it even if it didn't look perfect.

All that from 2 little weeks of self-indulgent thoughts about my weight.

I don't usually tell people this story because they assume that I had an eating disorder.  It wasn't like that because I wasn't really trying to lose weight.  I was just happy that I did.  And I think that's really telling of a lot of girls out there.  We don't want to be unhealthy, but we still have images in our head that we'd like to live up to.  Sometimes the image wins, and there can be major consequences, both psychological and physical.  To this day, I can't skip meals, or I'll get really dizzy and black out.  And I don't think it's from the disease, I think it's my body's way of forcing me to get enough to eat.


What I'm trying to get at is, a lot of people have a goal of what they want to look like, but if your goal isn't realistic to your body, getting there can have consequences.  And it's always better to feel good about yourself regardless of what you look like (because that's so easy after all).

I'm not against dieting or anything.  I think being at an unhealthily high weight is also bad.  My point is, being healthy and being skinny are not the same thing, so don't try to kill yourself.  It won't end well.