Tuesday, October 21, 2008

mapping out things + making the most of friday.

Friday night instead of going out, or doing anything of leisure, we stayed in and got to work on several things that needed to be tackled in regard to our wedding which is now just right around the corner and we are both feeling the pressure of running out of time to conquer everything in time without forgetting something or screwing up due to so much on our plates.


So, Jimmy spent much of our friday nite doing spreadsheets of guests [since he has the program on his laptop and i am not familiar with how to do a spreadsheet or work that program- excel and he does it for a living at work..]

Anyway, I put together a list of those we had sent invites to for the wedding, compiling his and mine together and then gave him the envelope that we had been carefully placing all our replies from as of late. Btw so far most of the people seem to be opting out of coming which we expected since most of our invites are out of state to IL and most people would not go out of their way to travel here for us, especially on a thanksgiving wkend- in fact several people on both sides of our families have complained about the timing of the wedding being on a busy and expensive holiday.

In all honesty, I didn't want my wedding around a holiday much less thanksgiving [being around so many FOOTBALL games + such since i abhor that sport and do not want it interfering with my wedding/honeymoon or yearly anniversary with him] It was Jimmy that was insistent on choosing this date however as he just had to have it his way. and he claimed he needed to structure the date around his work and when he would have time off. This never made sense to me since he works a 9-5 job monday thru friday and always has weekends off. He was just being well - Jimmy- rigid and it was his way or no way. He suggested two other dates in december, but both of them were on my mother and brother's bdays and I felt that really tacky and inappropriate. Plus I did not want a DEC wedding, I wanted a wedding in the month I was born which is November. That is my favorite month- but he would only agree to thanksgiving weekend so I was stuck with doing what he wanted in the end.

I believe he could have been more flexible but Jimmy is stubborn at times and he kind of made it like either we had it when he wanted to or it might not happen. In fact, it was me who kind of put an ultimatum last fall, either he was going to make a serious commitment and show me that the relationship was headiing in a forward direction [engagement and marriage] or I didn't know if I could continue this way or stay in the relationship.

I was on the verge of turning 36 last year when I said this and I told him, Look, I am not young [neither is he, he is almost a year older than me actually] and we don't have time- or rather I do not have time to play around or play games and I wouldn't have it.

There is a certain point where you decide to settle down and if you don't intend to do so, then you do not get into a serious relationship with someone, live with them or do things that suggest a future commitment of permanence. I didn't plan on waiting forever as I refused to marry after I was forty. Not just that but what if I actually want a child [which I do, one], I knew he would not even consider having a baby with me IF we were still unmarried and I know I do not want to get pregnant after 40, because I refuse to put my life in danger, risk chance of child being retarded, and EVEN MORE, refuse to raise a child and then never get to see the child grow up because I had my baby at such a late stage in my life.

Anyway life is way different since I gave that ultimatum and we had some serious relationship talks and intense fighting, mostly me screaming, demanding, and crying-- its been over a year since all that occurred and so its all blown over and seems like a distant memory now- an unpleasant one.

He has changed a lot in the way that he views me and this relationship. He has embraced the role of making this commitment and in small steps all along the past year has gradually shown this by growing thru many tough times with me and by learning how to integrate a life with another, realizing what is important in life and that he is willing to sacrifice some things in order to join our lives together.

I feel he was very resistant in the beginning due to fear and truthfully I believe it was largely over the fact that he didn't want to truly grow up or have the responsiblity of a wife and marriage. I think he has gotten past this and realized there is a time to grow up and there is a time to settle down and that you can't spend your entire life partying and running away from anything that could be permanent. otherwise you grow old and alone.

There is still a lot he has to learn about partnership, compromise, sharing and priorities when you marry someone and make them your wife but I guess it's a work in progress and he never really had a serious relationship or one that was compromised of living together or being engaged prior to me and because he is a late bloomer, it just seems he is slow at things that concern relationships and he doesn't always understand or see things my way. We've gone thru some major ups and downs since living together and I'm happy to say that currently everything is going well.

So back to what we did on Friday..Jimmy also made a sort of graph spreadsheet of all the people potentially invited to the wedding, colored in the ones who have sent their response saying they will be there, and then made a sort of circle graph of how the tables for the guests, food table, cake table, guestbk table, dj table and the like will be layed out in the room. He then started compiling a roughdraft of how people will be seated and who will be at which table, together etc. He did that for hrs upon hrs. It is still in the roughdraft stage, though.

This week we will have to work on filling out and sending thank you cards to everyone for bridal shower gifts but just never found time to do it during this past wkend. We found some really cute ones at Target, last week. I took pix of it for my memories and cause I am documenting everything connected to this wedding!

Thank You Cards we bought at Target for bridal shower guests- we thought the illustration and color was pretty and I am obsessed with butterflies in art illustration or anything associated with them so I was very happy to choose these :)

IMG_4224-1 by you.

More about the rest of weekend tomorrow as Ive run out of time and must sleep for now- our entire weekend was filled from start to finish and i haven't caught up with all the latest or been able to finish catching up on notes yet. will work on this more tomorrow when i am more alert and full of energy. :)

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