And cue the tears...

Today is my wedding rehearsal... WOWWW

I can feel myself near spontaneous tear fest almost every minute - or maybe that's just because i just got finished picking out the readings for our wedding... which is tomorrow. Yeah. Procrastinate much?

Aside from ridiculous family drama, we have been very blessed and fortunate to have so many helpful hands throughout our wedding.  I just hope this rehearsal goes smoothly and that tomorrow goes easy. The wedding elves (i.e. my two best friends from college) and myself were up late last night decorating the reception site, and added lots of fun memories to our collection :)  You just haven't lived until you've strung Christmas lights, made a tutu, and lit candles while singing "Carryout" and drinking wine.  That's all I'm saying.

My very-soon-to-be husband is on his way and I will be leaving soon to pick up my favorite photographer and friend Lindsay and everything else should happen smoothly according to my OCD checklist. 

Can I be honest though?  Sgt. and I have not been exactly gaga this week for each other.... we've been snippy, short, and irritated at each other.  Here I was expecting the week before our wedding to be all smiles and I love you's and instead... bickering.  Does this mean we aren't supposed to be getting married, or does it mean that he's unsure?  I've decided no.  The reason I've decided no is because, and get this because this is the important part, we love one another. It is as complicated and simple as that.  I know we love each other.  The fact that this has been an incredibly stressful week for us both, me with wedding putting-together and him with three tests before fall break hits, meant that we weren't always communicating effectively and what we were really saying to the other is "I miss you, I need you."  I am confident in us.  In our love for one another... we have grown into a steady love over these last 3 1/2 years.  A love that makes me excited to see him, even if he tried to switch the hotel reservation after telling me to book it.  A love that makes me giddy with the thought of hugging him and kissing him as soon as he gets off the plane, even if he reminds me constantly how much we are over budget (I know.. I know), a love that makes me honored to be able to call him my husband tomorrow, because I know that no matter what happens in life, even when we disagree or find it hard to make a compromise, he has nothing but my happiness, and the best of intentions, at heart. 

So, to end, and since I'll probably disappear from my blog for a few days, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite poems I found while looking for wedding readings. Send lots of good, beautiful thoughts my way!!

By C.S. Lewis:
"If the old fairy-tale ending "They lived happily ever after" is taken to mean "They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married," then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from "being in love"—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be "in love" with someone else. "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."


By: Anne Morrow Lindbergh
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.



The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, mot in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.