The Sweetest Occasion

310 days from today, I will be married to my best friend and the greatest soul I have ever known. It is completely overwhelming in the sweetest of perfectly uncomplicated ways. There is nothing that makes me happier nor more excited than knowing I get to share the roller coaster of life with someone who understands me and loves me for all of my intricacies, all of my faults, all of my excitability, all of my dreams.

It is interesting to be at this stage in my life, looking back on a period not so long ago when everything I knew seemed to be compromised, threatened in some dramatic fashion. Relationships, friendships, educational accomplishments, career goals, life plans. To be where I am, rooted more firmly in self awareness, self assuredness and love for life than ever before, to an almost Zen-like degree, is to stand in sharp contrast to where I spent a large part of 2006 and the early months of 2007. To stand here is to stand under an umbrella of self reflection and recognize, everything I knew was never known at all. For the first and perhaps only time in my life, I am blissfully aware and blissfully content to have been proven completely and utterly wrong.

Remember  watching that scene during Cinderella as a kid where one of the evil stepsisters is attempting to squeeze the delicate glass slipper onto her oversized foot? Try as she might, the slipper simply would not fit and the harder she pushed, pulled, prodded and stuffed the less progress she made in forcing the shoe into place. At last, the infamous slipper flies across the room, arching through the air, and shattering in a dramatic spray of glass, jeopardizing Prince Charming’s hopes of ever locating his princess. I, too, was such a stubborn fool, attempting to make fit a shoe that simply was not meant for me. Alas, in my case when the slipper broke it seemed that all hope was lost, but in fact a world of possibilities had opened before me. Hindsight being 20/20 as it is, I start each day anew, smile and silently thank myself for breaking free of my old existence and allowing myself to consider the possibility that a far greater happiness than I had known was out there waiting for me.

And waiting for me he was…

I am known for being of the variety prone to randomness. I have no doubt that over the course of the next ten months, this blog will prove such accusations to be nothing short of accurate. One thing I can guarantee is that between now and July 17 and July 18, 2009 (yes, yes, two days…more on that later!) I am bound to suffer from fits of fighting the diva in me who [not so] secretly longs for $800 Christian Louboutin shoes to wear on her wedding day(s) to the next moment celebrating my determination to buck the, in my opinion, ill-founded traditions of slinging a garter about a room all while sticking to a budget that won’t compromise our retirement goals. I’m certain it shall make for an interesting ride.

To kick it all off, I’ll spend the next several days paying homage to some of my favorite wedding blogs. From the inspiring eye candy of magazine-worthy weddings to the sage advice and observations of the growing underground sisterhood of budget savvy brides, I am a certified blog stalker extraordinaire. My Google Reader list is robust and alive with the sound of wedding bells, serving both as my daily escape from the mundane and my relentless captor. I would have it no other way. Well, make way, wedding bloggers I adore. Surely there must be room for one more?

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