two weeks before

I’m getting married in two weeks. This time in two weeks I will be in a gorgeous white dress, completely exhausted, saying goodbye to people and starting to gather up all the pieces of the reception. And I’ll be a Mrs. someone.

I am so excited to be marrying Chris – We’ve been together for nearly five years, living together for a year and a half of that, and I couldn’t be more in love! We have so much fun together, have such similar tastes, and really don’t take ourselves too seriously. (Ok, so sometimes I freak out or have a minor bridezilla moment, but who doesn’t?) It’s perfect in that we balance each other. I think a lot of times people who end up together are incredibly similar – and sometimes this works. But generally speaking I think it’s good to share some interests, have similar tastes and not be the same person. For me this works out extremely well – I’m too stubborn to be with someone just like me – we’d kill each other.

There are, however, some weird feelings going on during this time too, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think that all brides and grooms must go through this. It’s different from cold feet – you would only get “cold feet” if you weren’t positive in all your being that it was the right decision – it’s more of a… wow is this really happening? type of feeling. Or a … what if something goes wrong during the wedding? type of feeling. It’s knowing that you’re terribly excited to be joined with this man and take his name, but having a sense of loss at losing your name.

It’s almost like a small piece of you will be gone forever… or that you’re losing your identity. I know this will sound incredibly dumb, but one of the things I think is wonderful and amazing about living today is how the internet allows us to stay in contact with people we might not have otherwise, or at least be able to find information to contact that person. Take Facebook, for example. How can you search for a long-lost friend if suddenly their last name has changed? (Easy solution is using both names, which I probably will do in cases like Facebook and LinkedIn.) But do you get my point?

I know that I have options. I could opt to not take Chris’ name. I could do a hyphen. I could use two last names. These are less than ideal options in my opinion. First of all, I’d like to be recognized as husband and wife – and, traditionally, this is easily done by sharing a last name. Plus, let’s face it, I want to make it easy on everyone else – people make it so damned difficult to be polite when they do crazy things with their names (and then get offended if you don’t get it right). And last… in the even that we have children (god forbid) it’s completely ridiculous to expect them to endure a crazy last name OR having parents with two different last names. (Ok, ok, I know a lot of kids have parents with different last names due to divorce, etc, but I don’t really think that’s a very good excuse either.)

Like how I turned a lovely entry about getting married into a rant? I’m very good at that, it seems…

But anyway, I’m very excited! It’s starting to all come together. There are, of course, still small details to be planned, but it will get done. We finalized most of the ceremony wording tonight and are going to go honeymoon shopping tomorrow. Finished the seating chart (but still need to do place cards), got the wraps completed. And for the most part I’m a pretty sane bride. I’m really not all that stressed. Well, usually. Sometimes… just sometimes I can flip out a little bit. It’ll hit me how much we have to do in so little time, but at the same time I know we’ll get it all done somehow. And it will be GORGEOUS!!! I hope Chris thinks I look gorgeous…

Anyway, just felt like writing.

(indecision)