I thought we'd take a bit of a break from all the wedding wedding wedding stuff around here, especially since pretty soon it's going to be more like wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding wedding, all the way through August. Sorry about that!

May I give you a piece of advice? I think you'll find it fairly useful. If you are considering becoming engaged, I would suggest that you become engaged to a graphic designer. Sure, a stockbroker might make you rich and a doctor might make you healthy---or at least treat you to a little free liposuction now and then---but a graphic designer? Well, a graphic designer will, when the time comes, make you some really kickass wedding invitations.  

First of all, thank you so much for all the compliments on our wedding invitations; it was slightly nerve-wracking to put them on the Internet like that, and we were so grateful for all the nice things you said about them. You should totally all come to the wedding. I'm sure Barack Obama will save a seat for you. Wouldn't it be hilarious, by the way, if he really did show up?

Sean and I took a dance lesson yesterday, which is a sentence I never thought I'd write. Seriously, a dance lesson: can you imagine? In our normal everyday lives, we are the people who sway like Junior High paramours when forced onto a dance floor together, feet shuffling awkwardly, hands clenched sweatily, grimaces firmly in place until the song finally ends three million years later. 

I can't hear the word "bachelorette" without thinking of The Bachelor, that saccharine-sweet melodrama I once took joy in recapping until the ratio of normal dialogue to dialogue containing phrases like "amazing journey" and "great connection" and "here for the right reasons" became too much to stomach and I stopped. (I kept watching, though. As if you'd doubt it.)

Remember how in 80s movies, everyone always hung out at the mall? And they ate frozen yogurt and went shoe-shopping and got their ears pierced?

It seems somehow to have escaped my notice, what with all the wedding kerfuffle and how it’s taken over 99.9% of the space in my brain recently---the other 0.1% being reserved for Pete Campbell, of course, DON’T EVEN TRY AND UNDERSTAND IT, I SIMPLY CAN’T EXPLAIN---but two weeks from this Sunday, Sean and I are going to be on a plane to Australia.

I, Holly, take you, Sean, to be my lawfully wedded husband. I swear, in front of all our friends and family, that I will never abbreviate that to "hubs" or "hubby," not even ironically. I promise to thank you when you bring me coffee in the mornings and set it on my bedside table so it's there when I get out of the shower, when you clean the litter tray after Charlie has eaten something that didn't, shall we say, agree with him, and when you get up at 6am for the street cleaner and move that stupid car I never drive.

I might as well tell you that all you're going to get around these parts for the next week or so is wedding-related stuff, and I'm sorry for that, but at least you've been warned. Because my wedding is in eight---count 'em, eight---days, Internet, and if you're thinking "boy, time sure has flown," rest assured that I am thinking it too. Oh wait, did I say thinking? I meant HOWLING.