our song, option 3

We are slowly checking things off the wedding to-do list. Tuxes, check. My shoes, check. Father/daughter dance song, check. DJ, check. But Brian and I still haven't chosen our first dance song. Although we have a new front-runner:

look out Jacksontown

We're getting married in a fever and we're going to Jackson. Moving there! To live. And work. And go to school. And get a dog.

My resolve to blog more this year was sidetracked when I realized I wasn't sure how much of the big changes happening in our lives I should share. Brian made a decision on school and we chose to move a bit ago but he wanted to wait for the right time to tell his work that he was leaving. Brian has a good job downtown as a health care consultant and we didn't want to burn any bridges. But today he gave his letter of resignation and his bosses were great about it, which is a huge relief and really makes the move feel even more legit.

The big plan is to be out of here by May. Which means we are moving 1,422 miles and getting married all in the same month. Which means we might be a little bit insane. But I am SO excited.

So I can finally say that all I've been able to think about for the past two months is:
a) job apps/opportunities/cover letters/etc
b) sweet lil Jackson homes
c) what to put in our sweet lil Jackson home
d) a puppy to add to our sweet lil Jackson home
e) how Penny will interact with our future pup
f) moving logistics
g) wedding planning
h) wedding crafts
i) general crafts
j) how to make money while unemployed
k) the costs of moving, sweet lil Jackson homes, a wedding and a pup

Seriously though, if you stop me at any random moment, there's a 98% chance I'm thinking about one of these things.

I still really love Boston and I'm glad we've had our big city life the past two years. I don't intend to live in Jackson for the rest of my life. When Brian is done with school or residency we'll probably move again - maybe California this time. We really want to live abroad at some point - maybe Dublin. When we have more money we can definitely see ourselves back in a city - returning to Boston or going to NYC or D.C. But right now, Jackson has never felt more right.

real talk: wedding planning

When I wrote this, I had stars in my eyes and wedding blogs on my mind and was so, so innocent. Now, seven months later, I am a little bit... emotional. Somehow both overemotional and emotionally drained at the same time, actually.

Weddings cost money.

source: Once Wed

A lot of money. Even when you don't want them to or plan for them to, they just surprise you. And of course the things I care about the most – photography, location, food & drinks – are the most expensive elements. And of course I have a giant family and Brian has a big family and we both have a lot of wonderful friends that we really want to be there to celebrate with us (and of course people tell you the guest list is the first thing to drive up the price but of course I scoffed and said I could figure it out and now I'm realizing what they tell you is one thousand percent true). And of course I want to be one of those laid-back, easy breezy brides but I'm not sure I've ever really been laid-back about anything in my life.

I'm a perfectionist and I'm neurotic and I'm type A and I'm my own worst critic.

All of these traits would make me fabulous at planning someone else's wedding, I believe. But when it's my own my emotions get too involved and I kind of freak out.

It's a hard thing to talk about. It's hard to say that planning this is making me do things and be someone I don't want to be. It's making me care way too much about things that are silly. In fact, a grand theme of wedding planning (at least when it is your own) is to care about things you don’t want to (and really SHOULDN’T) care about. And you know it’s totally silly to care about it, but you DO and you can’t HELP IT and you feel dumb but that doesn’t change anything.

For example, there is a surprising downside of wedding blog addiction (you know, besides millions and millions of hours of my time trickled away into the ether [and besides the inevitable envy at their Louboutin wedding shoes and multiple dresses and breathtaking decor (basically, all the things that half-million-dollar budgets can get you [seriously, do they think they are kidding us, calling a wedding "DIY-chic" when I can see that the shoes are Manolos and the dress is Vera?])])...

Where was I?... Oh yeah, a surprising downside is that it starts to seem like everything has been done before. When I first started perusing the wedding web, I found some engagement pictures that I fell in love with and immediately planned to blatantly rip off for our own save-the-dates. Then I saw similar ones on several other sites and started thinking I need to come up with something new and different and original (we ended up copying the idea after all). Same thing with the hanger for your wedding dress saying "Mrs. So-and-so" (will probably get scratched anyway for budgetary reasons) and peacock feather decor (will likely still be some, but scaled back from my original plan). 

It’s even worse when your friends beat you to it. Three of my favorite ideas for our wedding (Scrabble tiles and bridal TOMS and putting your mom's dress on display) have already been done by close friends of ours and even though we had the ideas completely independently and in the end it really doesn’t matter at all, I feel like if I do them I will be copying someone else’s big day. Which is dumb, but honest. 

On the other hand, flowers are something I never figured I'd care much about in the grand scheme of my wedding – not that I don't love receiving them in real life, hinthintBrian – because they are expensive and there are so so many things to buy. I just wanted something simple inexpensive, but beautiful. Then I see about seventy billion breathtaking bouquets on various blogs and suddenly I'm thinking, "well maybe I do want a fancy schmancy flowery thang to hold on to..." Which only leads me back to the budget and the millions of other things and I'm defeated all over again. 

I was never one to find eloping particularly appealing or romantic, but lately I've started thinking those people – the ones who reclaim their weddings from the hype and expense and all the people trying to tell them what they "should" do or what is "appropriate" and instead of worrying about offending people, they just go off to celebrate getting married and starting a marriage, which is the whole point of a wedding after all – might have the right idea.

Don't worry, I'm not eloping. I'm just saying I appreciate anyone who just says "screw it" and does it exactly how they want. After all, a wedding is about the bride and groom (or the bride and bride or the groom and groom, I'm all about equality) making a promise to each other, not about anyone or anything else. That's what I need to remember.

So there it is. Real talk. I promise to crop Penny's head on something ridiculous next time to lighten the mood, but it feels good to share. 

A Dream Wedding

I received this text message from one of Brian's fraternity brothers (and groomsmen) last week:

I had a dream about the wedding. It was western themed. Brians groomsmen were me, some KA and Brian's nephew. Molly and Nancy Yates were the only bridesmaids. We all wore chaps and cowboy boots. The flower girl just kicked a tumbleweed down the aisle and you rode in on a stallion. Wtf...

And I just have one question. Does anyone know where I can get a white stallion in Mississippi?!

The Dress

Happy Memorial Day!
I have a wedding dress!

Okay, so this news is a little old. I actually decided on the dress almost a week ago. I've kind of been neglecting the ole blog lately the whole last month. Not that I haven't thought about blogging a ton. It's just that whenever I got around to actually writing my thoughts out... I didn't feel like it. I'M ON VACATION MAN... NOT ON THE RUG, MAN!!

I'm not going to put a picture of the dress (ahem, The Dress) up because Brian reads my blog and I don't want him to see it before The Big Day, but I will tell you that it has tulle:

and ribbon:

and flowers:

... DAMMIT!! Y'all totally know what it looks like now, don't you?!?!!

Well anyway, I've been engaged for several months now (over five, wow!) and have been perusing wedding blogs like it's my JOB (seriously, if someone wants to hire me for this, I am an E-X-P-E-R-T) but when it came to picking out my actual I'm-getting-married-in-a-wedding-dress wedding dress, I sort of freaked out.

Which was silly. I am so lucky. I got to go to NYC and stay with my mom and one of my best friends and have a whole whirlwind adventure of wedding dress-vaganza. It was like a cloud of organza and estrogen for three days straight.

But I still freaked out. I freaked out over spending that amount of money on any one piece of attire, especially one that I will only wear once. I freaked out over the fact that I'm getting married, y'all. I freaked out over the fact that Brian will choose to say, "I do" based on this dress.

Except that's totally absurd talk and only in my head. Brian has told me more than once that he will love whatever I come down the aisle in (yes, I've tried to pick his brain about wedding dress styles, to not much avail). But when it came to committing - to saying, "Yes" to The Dress (NO WE DIDN'T GO TO SNOBTOWN KLEINFELDS, STOP ASKING)... where was I? Oh yes, when it came to committing to this really expensive dress, I just really really wanted to talk to Brian. Which is also silly because I've always been one of those people who thinks that the groom shouldn't see The Dress until it is walking down The Aisle with The Bride inside it (It?). But I really needed to talk to him in this moment.

So it was unfortunate that he decided to take a nap right after I tried on this Very Important Dress. This meant I ran around like a crazy person, barking at my mom and Tait, making us waste a thousand hours in the Crate & Barrel around the corner while I stared at my phone and pretended the large knot in my stomach didn't exist.

Yes, it's not very glamorous.

But that's real life.

Brian eventually woke up, called me back and told me to chill out. So I did, and then my mom, Tait and I drank some wine and watched Harry Potter.

And the next day I committed to the dress!
In the end, it was exciting and glamorous and just right.

When I was newly engaged, I googled images of wedding dresses using very specific search criteria (which again, I'm not writing here to keep the dress a surprise) and I came up with one dress that I thought was beautiful. I had no idea who designed it or whether it was even in-season, but I printed the picture out and sent it to my mom and bridesmaids. A couple of months later, I saw the dress again in a magazine and discovered who made it. A few months after that, I was in New York, trying on dresses and on a whim I decided to call the salon and see if they had an opening.

Not only could they squeeze an appointment in for me, but they were having a trunk sale!! (For all you straight males out there, that means all the pretty things are discounted for one weekend only.)

And so I ended up with THAT exact dress which is kind of storybook perfect and the ladies in the salon gave us a champagne toast while I twirled around in my future wedding dress and it was great. Big thanks to dress expert Emily, who supported me while I paraded around the salon in my dress, touching pretty things. Even bigger thanks to my dearest momsy and Taiter for putting up with my slight(?) crazymaking and telling me how wonderful I looked in the dress.

I can't wait to marry mah man in it!

our song, option 2

So Russell has some competition. As beautiful and touching his lyrics are, this song by Natasha Bedingfield also has a special place in our hearts and our past. It crept onto the music scene the summer Brian and I started dating. The song seemed to go unnoticed by pretty much everyone, except someone in our friendy group found it and then we pretty much listened to it nonstop for three months.

So imagine it now: we've just been announced as Mr. and Mrs., we sweep onto the dance floor, surrounded by all our loved ones and we dance to this:

the Brileen nuptials?

Planning and thinking about our wedding is a wonderful, fun experience... except for one woefully disappointing thing.

Brian and I don't have a good mashup name. 

I can't remember if it started with Bennifer or Brangelina, but either way mashup names have become the new cool way to refer to couples, especially when they are about to tie the knot. 

My best friend getting married this summer has an awesome mashup name made from her and her fiance's last names (Tait + Kellogg = Taitllog), and an even better one if you use her high school nickname (Weiner + Kellogg = Weinllog). 

Jealous. 

Our names, Brian and Kathleen, don't mix in a particularly fun or hilarious way. Neither do Mitchell and Morrison. 

Mitchellson? That just sounds like a different last name. 

Brileen? That sounds like a name some horrible parents would give their kid because they are trying to "brand" her in a unique way. 

Kathian? That's... dumb.

What do I do?!? This is serious, y'all. How will anyone know what to refer to our nuptials as?!?

"underage" and engaged

Being 22 and engaged in Boston kind of feels like being 16 and engaged in the south. A lot of people here seem to think I'm crazy and young and crazy young to be getting married. Sure, I know a few married folks and one engaged folk in my BU program, but they are all either a few years older or from Texas.

On the other hand, there is this:

Out of the seven things on our fridge, four (FOUR!) are save-the-dates for weddings this upcoming summer alone and one is a thank-you note from a wedding we attended on New Year's Day. Plus, last summer Brian and I attended no less than three weddings in four weeks. Every single one of these nine couples are people we know from Millsaps, all who hail from below the Mason-Dixon line. The brides and grooms are all between the ages of 20-26 and the weddings are scattered across Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana.

Welcome to the south, y'all.

Marriage, and the age people get married, is a huge cultural difference between the south (and other parts of the country, like the midwest) and the north. And obviously there's no hard and fast rules here, but there are definitely geographic trends. In big cities here up north, it's completely normal for people to date ten years or more before deciding to tie the knot. A thirty-five year old woman is by no means an old maid like she might feel in the south. Everyone up here is so busy working on their careers (and paying sky-high rent) that getting married often gets put on the back burner for a while. 

Whereas southern people loooove to get hitched. Or at least feel that it is more important to do earlier in life. There is more of a family focus in the south, more of a traditional (although some probably say old-fashioned or backward) family structure and lifestyle. Senior year at a college in the south is like proposal-palooza. One year, a sorority at my school had over half the girls in its graduating class either engaged or married. 

Of course, both of these trends lend themselves to stereotypes – the frigid Yankee workaholic vs. the Southern sorority girl who came to get her MRS degree. 

As someone who has lived in both worlds (plus partially grew up in Utah*, a world of its own when it comes to family structure and marriage), I find myself appreciating aspects of both. I would never have thought I would be engaged at 22 years old, but now I can't imagine it any other way. It should be all about the right person and the right time – not rushing to marry simply because you've been together the allotted amount of time (southern people!)** and not staying unmarried because you feel too young and/or just want to make a bunch of money (northern people!). Sometimes I do feel young to be doing this, but usually it feels just right. 

When we are married, Brian and I will have been together over five years (and known each other almost six). We will have survived a year of long distance and a couple years of living together. We have a cat! We share all our financial responsibilities. Marriage will just be a little bow on the life we are already living. 

A shiny little bow with diamonds, of course. 

* I'm not Mormon. EVERYONE asks that when they find out I'm from Utah. Literally. Everyone. 
** I'm definitely not saying any of the aforementioned weddings are doing that, but I've seen it happen. And probably had it wondered about me up here in the north. 

alien brides and jungle cats

You know, searching for THE DRESS is hard enough without crazy photoshopped alien models wearing the dresses you are trying to picture yourself in.

This woman is assuredly very thin and statuesque in real life, but her "legs" are over twice as long as her upper half (Which is now her upper third? See my helpful illustration). PEOPLE ARE NOT MADE LIKE THIS.

To prove my point, I have added another model to compare. I used their heads/arms to make them as close to the same size as possible. Please observe:

Alien lady has at least another foot under her! The scariest part is that the "normal" sized model is probably still ridiculously tall and a size zero-two. People aren't even made like her. I JUST WANT TO LOOK AT A DRESS AND KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE ON A HUMAN HERE PEOPLE.

Just to drive the point into the ground offer another example (one of tons):

However, if there is one practice I am in FULL support of, it's taking your bridals with a wild baby jungle cat.

Hands up if you think Brian will still be willing to marry me if I recreate these pictures with Penny?

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

our song

Y'all we might have found it! After considering long and hard, we might have picked our wedding song.

Picture it: me in a big white dress, Brian in a tux, twirling on the dance floor for the first time as husband and wife to this:

Brides and Bridezillas

I don't know if there is anything that turns sane women into frothing, frenzied, frantic lunatics faster than a wedding. Society has turned a woman's wedding day into THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY EVER IN LIFE EVER IT MUST BE PERFECT OR ELSE. Women go to really insane extremes to make their day flawless. (Can you say Bridalplasty?) From stuff like Say Yes to the Dress (which I totally watch every time it's on, to my own chagrin), where the consultants regularly scoff at customers wishing to spend less than $2,000 on a dress they will wear once, to Mississippi Magazine's very popular wedding issue (which I worked on one summer and got to interact with some of these brides and worse - brides' moms), featuring Southern brides who insist on a full marching band, a 12 tier cake and 26 attendants, all decked out in fuchsia satin.

Whether it's their own wedding, Kate Middleton's, their best friend's or some random stranger's, women are obsessed.

And I think that is kind of dangerous. To make one day and the success thereof the indicating factor in not only the triumph of your marriage but the worth of your life is terrible. To put such pressure on the day will inevitably lead to failure - nothing is perfect, nothing can withstand that kind of scrutiny. Someone is going to spill or step or sneeze on your dress. Some family member is going to get too drunk and be embarrassing. Your nose or your ears or your knobbly knuckles are going to stick out and won't look like Kate Middleton's will (damn her). The flowers are going to droop, or the cake is going to smear or you are going to get a puffy red nose by sobbing through your vows (this WILL happen to me).

Once I start immersing myself in the planning process for this leviathan, my goal is to remind myself every day of these facts. And to remind myself that it's okay. I think I'm far too susceptible to wanting or expecting perfection for my own good. I want my wedding to be the best day of my life. But I want it to be so because I spend it with my very best friend (who also happens to be a hot piece of ass that is now stuck with me forever, yesssss). I want it to be so because all my family and friends are there, having the time of their lives. Not because I look really skinny that day or the decorator got the Chinese lanterns just right - although, you know, that stuff would be cool.

I want our day to be a reflection of us - every nerdy, silly, messy, geeky, inebriated, beautiful piece of us.

Brian and Kathleen's Big Redneck Wedding

Brian and I are watching bits of "My Big Redneck Wedding" during commercials of the AFC championship game - specifically the "Tamzen and Kevin" episode, if that means anything to anyone. Mainly you just have to know that the bride is a 27-year old, 300-pound country girl and the groom is a 40-year old, 105 pound "dripping ass wet" man and they both love mud and trailers and mullets.

Brian just said, "This show kind of makes me miss Mississippi."

WHAT. Okay, just so y'all know, we are from a place where people do NOT regularly act like this. Or at least, not everybody acts like this. Brian clarified his statement by saying, "I mean people that are unique like this."

But still, WHAT.

Mississippi holds such interesting connotations for me. I have run the full gamut of emotions in my relationship with that state, and yet I know living there absolutely made me the person I am now. It is a place of both complete ignorance and total openmindedness. It is a place of bigotry and acceptance. I suppose, in a way, it is just like any other state, because you will find both terrible judgmental people and awesome, tolerant people. You will find selfish people and philanthropic people. You will find the Tamzen and Kevin's of the world (I'm sure they are very nice people), but you will also find crazy Millsaps professors cussing at their students and hosting classes in bars - and crazy Millsaps students who are the best people I've ever met in my life.

Brian and I will (most likely) be married in Jackson, Mississippi. I will take on a new name and a new role there. It seems fitting - I guess Mississippi isn't done making me the person I am yet.

P.s. Somehow I don't think our wedding will be featured on CMT, however.