My New Favorite

I love this prayer for a wedding that I found in a book that was 3.99 at Borders.

Apache Wedding Prayer

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be shelter for the other.

Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness,
for each of you will be companion to the other.

Now you are two bodies,
But there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place
to enter into the days of your togetherness.

And may your days be good
And long upon the earth.

T- Minus 7 Days…

One week from now I will be married. I feel a little nervous about the ceremony. How exactly will it be? How will it feel to walk down the aisle with so many of my friends and family members there? Will I look my best, or will I look back on the photos and wish I had worked harder to look better? Will I be able to remember all of these moments, or will the next seven days be a blur that someone else will help me fill in the gaps for?

I guess my inclination is to believe that a little bit of all of the above will be true. Somethings I won’t know until I’m doing them. Did I pick the right flowers? the right reception site? the right dress? I think the answer to all of these is yes, but even if it’s not, I know that this is the right thing. I picked the right man. Finally, after all the years of bs, I picked the right man. And he picked me. And one week from today I’m going to smile and cry and walk down the aisle toward him and toward our life together. Sure, I feel nervous about what our life will hold. I know it will be hard, and I also know there will probably be times one or both of us wants to leave, but I also know that there is power in God’s grace and power in the sacrament we will give to each other next week, and the power of that sacrament will see us through. I feel excited to be spending my life with him. I know he is good, kind, stable, and such a real man. He’s my best friend; how could I ask for more than to spend my life with him?

I probably won’t post tooo much this week, as I am at home in PA with limited internet access, and lots to do, but any and all prayers and well-wishes during this week are so appreciated!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas!

Bring on 2009!  😉

Day 19

We are now in the teen-digits until the wedding! I am very excited. I have managed to complete several things on my list since the last post, which is good. 

I now have some midnight blue leg warmers to wear under the dress (something blue!), mid-length white gloves to wear with my coat, and I bought Eric a wedding gift of a really beautiful rosary made of olive wood from Israel. It’s pretty (in a masculine sort of way, ha). 

I am still in search of a pearl comb; there is a store a few blocks from Eric’s place where I am going to look. If nothing comes of it there, I have to take my dress to david’s bridal on 12/23 to get it altered, and I’m sure I can find a comb then. There are some really beautiful ones online, but they are more like 65-75$ which is really out of my price range, as the comb will be a secondary accessory, after the veil. 

Last night I had a wonderful dinner at a very swanky restaurant on Michigan Ave “The Gage” (which was actually featured on an episode of What Not to Wear on TLC). It was a sort of Bachelorette Dinner to celebrate with some Chicago friends who either won’t be able to come to the wedding or won’t yet be in town on 1/1, when the sisters’-in-law-to-be have planned a Party for me. 

It’s really fun to get dressed up and see how beautiful all my friends are. It was also really fun to have a girls night out, and to have dinner at the kind of place that you rarely treat yourself to. I had Rhode Island Bass prepared with this phenomenal kumquat sauce, with sauteed wild mushrooms and then…these red grapes that were prepared by dipping them in butter. OH MY GOD…those grapes tasted sort of like being in love. 🙂 Then for dessert I had a cranberry-port gelato. SO GOOD.

It was a wonderful meal, shared with really good friends. Such a blessing to me, these women are. It’s made me realize again, that its so important to keep close with friends of the same sex after you are married. Going out with a group of girls provides so much that you just can’t get from spending time with a man, no matter how wonderful he is. Thank God for girlfriends! 

Fiance and I are going to NEPA next Monday (12/22) and will be there for the duration. We’ll spend Christmas with my grandparents, which will be nice, and have time to do all the wedding related projects that still need to be done. Thanks to everyone who has offered help, advice, or suggestions through this blog. I’m very grateful.

25 and counting…

25 days until the big day…

I can officially start freaking out because now I am done with school work and only have to think about work-work, Christmas, and wedding prep. No big deal. 🙂

 

I need to do the following things:

get a wedding gift for fiance’ ( I’m thinking a nice rosary)

get a thank you gift for my parents (we have one for his)
any suggestions on this one?

call straggler guests to check status of RSVP’s

contact florist to see how the arrangements for the day will go

same for photographer and DJ (fiance is handling ceremony musicians)

buy stamps for programs

print and stamp programs

make seating chart (after talking with straggler guests)

make placecards for each table

buy table numbers/try to come up with something easy and clever for table markers

practice wedding day makeup

make an itenerary for family and wedding party for weekend with important phone numbers, contact info etc.

find a pearl comb for the reception that doesn’t cost more than 45$.

find mid-length white knit gloves for outdoor picture

find some legwarmers to wear with ballet flats under dress

take my grandma shopping so she can find something to wear for the wedding

there will be more…that’s all I can think of right now. I sort of feel like Jessie Spano in that episode of Saved by the Bell when she gets all hopped up on caffeine pills and starts singing “I’m so excited!” and then has a nervous breakdown. I haven’t taken caffeine pills (yet) or had a nervous breakdown (yet) but I have been tempted to break into song a few times. 🙂

Just call me Martha…

only I’m not an ex-con. yet. 

The mama-in-law-to-be has agreed that I will bring dessert for next week’s Thanksgiving festivities. I have been racking my brain for a treat sure to impress the Babbs clan. I have arrived at:

Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake (from Family Circle 11/29/2008) ***I am so domestic***

2 1/4 cups cake flour

2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 cup solid-packed pumpkin puree

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup milk 

1 cup dried cranberries, chopped

1. Heat oven to 350. Butter and flour 12-cup bundt pan. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, pumpkin spice, baking powder, soda, and salt. Set aside.

3. beat butter until smooth. Add sugar; beat until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add pumpkin and vanilla. Beat until combined. 

4. On low speed, beat flour mixture in three additions, alternating with milk. Beat 2 minutes on medium high. Fold in cranberries. Spoon into pan.

5. Bake at 350 for 55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan 20 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan; turn out. 

Though the recipe has a lemon glaze (which has a TON of sugar), I think a cream cheese icing would do nicely. 

Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz. cream cheese (plain) softened

1/4 cup butter, softened

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1. In large bowl beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar to reach spreading consistency. 

yum…

Three Words…

that describe our wedding style:

Simple. Beautiful. Holy.

 

Moments of Zen…

Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy, 1953

 

 

Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, 1956

Audrey Hepburn.

National Poetry Month

November is National Poetry Month, so I am going to post a portion of Wendell Berry’s wonderful poem The Country of Marriage.

“Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its limits are–
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms…

“I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I 
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy–and this poem,
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.”

 

 

Mantillas and Pearl Combs and Shawls, oh my!

 I’m a silly, silly woman and I have a strapless dress in January. Now I’m trying to find a cover-up that won’t clash with my super-pretty, super-feminine mantilla veil. Any suggestions? 

Marriage-prep in my diocese is less than ideal. Well, I’m sure the diocese program is just fine, but the parish led pre-cana I attended was, not so much. Basically my fiance and I paid 180 dollars to spend a whole Saturday learning that we’ll probably fight about money and we need to know how to talk to each other. Shockingly enough, those two things I managed to pluck out for myself after dating him for over a year and being engaged for nine months. Anyway…

Tonight a good friend, who is doing my hair for the wedding, is coming over to practice. 🙂 The basic style will be something like this:

 

To clarify, that is not me. It’s an image of how I’d like my hair to look. The below image is, shocker, not of me either, but is of my very veil. 

 

from David

 

So, the question now is, what kind of wrap, shawl, bolero, shrug, etc. can I wear that won’t make this veil look absurd? It’s mostly for during the ceremony, as I am not going to wear the veil at the reception. I was thinking of getting a comb with some pearls or something like that to put in my hair for the reception. 

 

So, any ideas?

By Way of Introduction…

I am writing this blog as a place to gush, rant, celebrate and complain about all of the joys and challenges that go into planning (and pulling off!) a wedding. Also topics of marriage prep in general, the sacrament of marriage, natural family planning, and family life in general will be posted on. 

‘m 24. I live in Chicago. I go to grad school. I work for the Catholic Church. I’m getting married on January 3, 2009 to a man I love with all my heart. 

I’m having a small-ish wedding, with around 80 guests. We’re getting married at the Cathedral in Scranton, PA, which is my home-town (for real!). No, it’s not an Office themed wedding. 

My best friend since middle school is my maid of honor, and my cousin is a jr. bridesmaid, and my fiance’s dad is the best man. That’s it. Small wedding party. My dress doesn’t have a train.

Any and all wisdom is greatly appreciated.