My first wedding anxiety dream!

So we're a bit less than six months away from the wedding, which means it's time for my wedding anxiety dreams to begin. Some of you know that I'm a vivid dreamer for the most part. Whatever is going on in my daily life will inevitably wind up in my dreams. For example, I played a fairly active role in analyzing a new state tax bill for my law firm in preparation for a seminar we presented on this new tax law, and had a series of extremely exciting dreams about apportionment of gross receipts and combined reporting groups. Wow, tell me THAT's not exciting.
Anyway, last night I had my first wedding anxiety dream. This one was straight out of my first gown fitting that occurred last weekend, which I'll write about in another post if I have time. During that fitting, I ordered my veil, picked my headpiece, and got to see my shoes with my gown for the first time (and was relieved to find that they matched). So last night, I had this dream that suddenly the wedding was upon me, and I was totally unprepared. I had on some hideous lace dress that didn't even come all the way to the floor (I'm not a fan of lace), these lacy white shoes (my gown is ivory), my hair was a mess, and I was without my veil and headpiece because, strangely, this dream was in real-time, and I had just ordered them a week earlier and they weren't in yet. I was running around, hysterical because I didn't have a veil, and even more so because I love the veil I actually bought and was upset that I was going to have to wear a veil from the discount bridal store located on the first floor of the Marriott Marquis where we were getting married. I have Kenny to thank for the Marriott Marquis element of that dream, because he related a story to me about getting drinks there this past week.
I spent most of the dream trying to locate my shoes, and just generally trying to figure out how it was suddenly December 17th. I woke up this morning very relieved that I still have a few months to go. Kenny thinks my anxiety dreams reveal some deep-seeded discomfort with the wedding, but those of you who are OCD or just generally type-A know that's not the reason. It's just our mind's way of says, "Hey, You! You only have 176 days left! Get to it!"

Our invitations will provide some much-needed class to your fridge and trashcan

There are an unbelievable amount of decisions that must be made in the area of wedding invitations. Should the paper be ivory, ecru, off-white, or eggshell? Should the dimensions be 5x7, 5.01x7.01, 4.99x6.99? And don't even get me started on fonts! Good lord.
Kenny and I recently met with our invitation-expert extrordinaire, Randi. Before I launch into the big-picture ridiculousness of choosing invitations, let me just say that Randi is amazing and made the process relatively painless. I'm just amazed at the process itself. When we walked in to Randi's office, she started us out by looking at paper color. This wasn't just a question of whether we wanted white or off-white. Different manufacturers have different undertones in their papers, which are all immediately obvious if you run the paper through a gas chromatograph.
After selecting the company that provided paper with warmer, orange-based undertones, we moved on to paper thickness and size. This wasn't so tough, since we just decided to copy what everyone else was using. I couldn't tell you what size that is if my life depended on it. I know the thickness is somewhere between notebook paper and cardboard.
Then, there was packaging. Did we want an outer envelope and inner envelope? Or perhaps a box. Yes, that's right folks, we had the option of a BOX! You would unwrap the ribbon, pull off the lid, unfold the layers of tissue paper and eventually find our invitation and assorted response cards, etc. Since we felt our entire wedding budget should not go towards postage, we opted for the simple inner envelope and outer envelope, with (GASP!) no lining. I think we're going to figure out some sort of monogram to emboss on the inner envelope. I'm not even sure if embossing is the right term. I learned about 20 new stationary-related vocabulary words that day, but have already forgotten all of them.
Then came the font. Good lord, the font. We had to decide the thickness of the letters, the color of the font (black of course. Honey, this is New York.), which letters should have the larger script and which should have smaller. You'd think that last decision would be guided by which letters are capitalized. You would be wrong. It is apparently much more complicated than that.
In addition, Jewish weddings spell double trouble when it comes to selecting fonts. Just as I thought we were done, Randi breaks out the Hebrew font page. We had the option of using any fonts on that page, including the Israeli Defense Forces font for those weddings that want to get the message across to the guests that they're serious. Better not buy a gift from outside of the registry if you get one of those. We also had the option of having the Hebrew script hand done by an elderly Hassid sitting in seclusion on top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem, using ink he made by hand and a quill pen made from the tailfeather of some exotic bird. We decided to use the pre-printed font. There were other decisons to be made involving the Hebrew text related to circles and arcs. I won't even pretend to understand what that's about. You'll see what I'm talking about when you read the invitation.
Then came engraving vs. lithograph vs. printing vs. inking in blood. Blood wasn't really the statement we wanted to make, so it was between lithograph and engraving. I was all for the lithograph, but lost that battle. We opted for engraving, which will be just as nice for twice the price.
So all of the above related to choosing the invitations. Then we had to pick envelopes, return envlopes, RSVP cards, direction cards, program format. It just went on forever, but thankfully it's all done. Kenny and Randi worked out the actual wording of the invitations this morning, so now all that's left is to get the Hebrew transaltion done for the 10 people who will actually look at that part of it.
Now we have to stick to our very regimented schedule of ordering, proofing, receiving the invitations, sending them off to the calligrapher (yes, another battle I lost. What's wrong with the old dot-matrix printer, I say?) Good times. Oh, and we're using British English on the invitation because we're all suddenly very proper and British now. That's honour, with a "U"!
So after all of this trouble, I know that these invitations will sit on your fridge for a few weeks. For some of you, they might make it into a scrapbook. For others, a shoebox (too bad for you that we didn't opt for that box packaging option). For the majority of you, at least most of the components other than the actual invitation (and for some, the actual invitation) will eventually end up in your trash can. Please enjoy the added class these little pieces of paper will provide to your fridge, and ultimately, your trash.