Another Fifteen Hundred Words On My Wedding

This time next week, I will be married. This is a thought that occurred to me in pretty steady 30-minute intervals over this last weekend, first on Saturday in the form of "this time next week, I'll be getting ready....this time next week, we'll be saying our vows....this time next week, we'll be cutting the cake," and then, when I woke up on Sunday morning, "Sweet cracker sandwich, this time next week, I'll be legally and irreversibly bound to another person in the eyes of God and under the law of the state of California forever and ever and ever and ever, amen." Which, worry not, I swiftly followed up with "Hurrah!" 

What's interesting is that I haven't thought much about the actual fact that I'll be married. Perhaps I should have freed up some of that brain-space that's filled with thoughts about place cards to contemplate that, but the truth is, I really haven't. Every now and then, I'll think "this is the last time I'll do this or this or that as an unmarried person," or "hmm, weird, soon I'm going to be someone's wife," but apart from that, I haven't really given much thought to my shifting identity, perhaps because it's not actually really going to be shifting that much: It's not like I'm a 22-year-old moving out of the sorority house and suddenly becoming Mrs So-and-So to all the clerks at the grocery store. I'm just going to be me, with an extra ring on my left hand. AND A HUSBAND, OMG SO WEIRD.

(Yeah, maybe that will take a little getting used to, actually.)

After all my fretting and frenzying over the last ten months, I'm pretty much as calm as I ever have been at the moment. In fact, if you could see me now, you'd see that I'm just a giant, laid-back shrug, complete with raised shoulders, upturned palms, and an expression on my face of "Eh, bring it on." It's like I've turned into an enormous human Valium. There are, at the moment, only two things worrying me, the first that the weather won't comply---which, come on, is ridiculous, this is San Diego we're talking about; it's the one thing I don't have to worry about---and the second that everyone won't enjoy themselves enough.

Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy to worry that people won't enjoy themselves enough? I mean, I know it's crazy, but still: I really, really, really want people to have a good time, to eat themselves silly and dance themselves silly and drink themselves silly (but not so silly that the cops show up and someone throws me, still in my wedding dress, into the pool. Or, come to think of it, would that be the mark of a good party?) Perhaps because I've spent the last ten months brainstorming ways to ensure people enjoy themselves, I'm hyper-invested in whether they do or not.

I was thinking about this, while wrapping caramels a few days ago---did I mention that I've made 286 caramels so far? Because I've made 286 caramels so far, AND I'VE STILL GOT A HUNDRED AND TWENTY TO GO---and a thought struck me, so simple that it stopped me in my tracks. All these people---all from such different parts and points of my life---are all getting on planes, going through security checkpoints, buying trashy magazines at the airport bookshop, making do with the middle seat, packing their toiletries into 3oz containers, finding babysitters, renting cars, booking hotels, putting their lives on hold to come to California, all for us. All for us! I was suddenly quite overcome.

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This past weekend, my perspective on the wedding changed. All along, I’d been hurtling towards it with a growing sense of dread---not about the actual marriage, obviously, but about the fact that time was running out, running out, running out and I still had so much to do. Every week, I’d think “Only twelve to go! Only eight to go! Only three to go, oh my god, how am I going to do it all?” It was as though an enormous sandtimer had been tipped over the moment we set the date and everything I did for the wedding, I saw the sandtimer there in the corner of my eye. I couldn’t just go to San Diego to hang out, I had to go to San Diego to practice bouquets and meet with caterers and test cakes and do hair trials, and I had to do it now, now, now, everything on a schedule, everything set on this master timeline, which itself was dependent on how long we had left until the wedding.

The only other time in my life I remember feeling like this has been when I’ve been preparing for exams. English people take a lot of exams, you see: GCSEs, A-Levels, University Finals, to say nothing of the annual end-of-term exams I personally had to take at my boarding school every summer starting at age eleven. There’s a certain feeling you get when you’re preparing for important exams, as though the rest of the world narrows and all you can concentrate on is readying yourself for this one enormous, looming event. Everything else in your life hinges on the timing of this exam, becomes divided into Before Exams and After Exams. The day gets closer and closer and closer and you wonder if you've prepared enough, and then the day arrives and you realize that it's here now, that you've prepared the best you can.

Up until a week or so ago, I kept comparing the way I was feeling about the wedding to getting ready to take an exam; this past weekend, something shifted and now, instead, I've started thinking of it as getting ready to meet a famous person. I know that sounds silly, but it's the best way I can describe it: I’m finally starting to get really excited about it, to anticipate it with something more than nerves and fear and stress, to strip all that down and realize what a happy, happy day it’s going to be. It’s like I’m excited to meet my wedding, this famous wedding I’ve spent so much time thinking about. Internet, my wedding is totally George Clooney!

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When my dad picked me up from the airport in San Diego last night, I got in the car and my sister Susie turned around from the front seat and said "Marriage Week has begun!" Despite the fact that it sound an awful lot like Shark Week---or perhaps because of the fact that it sounds an awful lot like Shark Week?---I like the concept of Marriage Week; all we're going to be doing this week, after all, is (yet more) wedding-related errands. And then more and then more and then more.

But it's more than that: the wheels are in motion, the ride has begun. Everyone's arriving this week, my best friend Anna tomorrow, my brother Tom the day after that, various and sundry friends and relatives, all jetting in from points across the globe. The bit I'm looking forward to the most is that walk down the aisle, seeing everyone's faces turned towards me, all these people I've known at different points over the last 29 years: my godmother next to my best friend from boarding school next to my grandma next to my old roommate from university next to my friends from Charleston and San Francisco and London next to my aunts and uncles and parents and brothers and sister. I can only think that it'll be like one of those wonderful dreams where suddenly everyone you love is in the same place. And all you have to do is walk towards them.