Well, I'm gonna.
Confession: Wedding planning is not very fun. I mean, sometimes it's crazy fun, but it often seems like a lot of deadlines and stress and wanting to please other people. This is probably because I should have been more on-the-ball four months ago when I was wasting my precious class-skipping hours by playing pranks on people instead of choosing napkin colors. Don't do that.
Here are some things I wish I had been told in the pre-engagement/early engagement days:
1. Even if you're not dating anyone, plan your wedding like a half-crazed high-schooler. I always had this attitude of, "Hey, why jump the gun? I'm not the girl whose entire life is centered around Pinterest boards dedicated to my marriage to a man I haven't yet met." However, my favorite engagement planning moments were when I realized that A) I had a picture of a flashy gold wedding cake saved to my desktop that I'd committed myself to at age 18 B) I knew exactly how to go about ordering my flowers, and C) The temple had already been booked three weeks prior to the ring on the fing.
The less you have to think about, the better off you'll be. Because eventually you'll get to this point of, "Oh good, I do not care if my dress catches fire or the groomsmen show up wearing manpris. I could neglect all decorating and all would be good. I have my man. Let's be done with this nonsense."
3. Diet and exercise plan? Good luck with that. It's going to fly out the window.
Engagement Diet: Eat anything placed in front of you with the most sincere gratitude you have ever experienced. All other times, you will get so caught up with researching skirts and blingy shoes that you will forget to eat unless you happen to squeeze in a date night with your honey. But please don't forget to hydrate. MIGRAINE.
Engagement Exercise Plan: 4 hours shopping. 2 hours making lists and hyperventilating. School and work hustle and bustle. Repeat.
These patterns have, for me, been unavoidable and more effective than any others on the market. Although I can't wait to ditch them.
3b. Please oh please don't let the dreaded doctor's appointment scare you. Give it some time. Nausea will subside. Everything will be great.
4. Being engaged is going to become really taxing after a couple months. Not necessarily for "physical reasons" (I feel like that's the only reason I had ever been given to avoid a long engagement), but for mental reasons. Your mind's going to start playing funny games with you. It's going to get annoying to have to plan times to see your man.
Life would be so much more convenient if you could just hang out with him all the time instead of trying to strike this weird balance of giving each other time and space to work on your own things, even though you're pretty much communicating and working together like married people already. And you're going to start noticing things about married people that you never have before. Some good, some scary. But in the end it's all good and you'll wish you could just be getting married already so your brain can stop going four trillion miles per hour.
As busy as things are, life has never been better.
Tonight we licked jawbreakers as we sat on massage chairs in the middle of the mall.
And that was a welcome date night.
And it was severely awesome.