Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part III

Spa Hell! That's what Friday was, if you can imagine it. I think if I had actually been to a spa, it would have been different. As it was, Friday was hectic. The day started off dropping off gift bags at the various hotels where our guests were staying. This went pretty smoothly, except that the guy at the Hampton Inn JFK looked at me like I had two heads when I brought in the gift bags. It made me worry that maybe not everyone would be getting one, but oh well. There were vending machines in the lobby. After this task, my dad and I drove to JFK Airport to the Avis rental place so that I could be added to the rental car contract. Navigating JFK is just horrible. It is a horrible, horrible way to start off your day, and I wouldn't recommend it.
Then, we drove into Hewlett for my nail appointment. Because I was going to the mikvah later that afternoon, I couldn't have nail polish put on yet, so I just had a regular manicure and pedicure. After that, I drove back to Garden City, dropped my dad off, picked my mom up, and headed to Woodmere for the Mikvah. My mom had no idea what this ritual was all about, so I tried to explain as best I could without overdoing it. See, she had already had quite a bit of culture shock up to this point with the orthodox jewish wedding and all, so I didn't want to push it. The mikvah visit was completed fairly quickly, and we were on to the next appointment, but not before driving back to Garden City to drop my mom off. I then drove back to Hewlett for the polish application at the nail salon, and finally back to Garden City where I collapsed into a coma at 8:30 pm. I had been in the car the entire day on Friday, and it was not a good thing.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part II

Now we come to my favorite phrase of the whole weekend: "Oh, the sea of Humanity!" I think my dad uttered this phrase at least four times while we were sightseeing in Manhattan. This makes me think we need to avoid Times Square next time and just hit up SoHo and Greenwich Village.

We got to the train station just in time to catch the LIRR into Penn Station. This was kind of fun because my parents got to see a bit of Long Island. Of course, it wasn't as fun as we got closer to Jamaica and saw all of the garbage and nastiness that is also part of Long Island. The magic sort of faded for my parents at that point. When we got to Penn Station, we had to have a family meeting about not getting separated. I can just imagine my mom loose in Manhattan without the rest of us. I think her head would explode. So after telling my mom that she was not to lose us, that her handbag was safe, nobody was going to mug us, and that any public restrooms should be avoided, we set off into the urban jungle of Manhattan.

As we emerged from Penn Station out onto 7th Avenue, the first sea of humanity comment emerged from my dad's lips. He takes a look up 7th ave. at the throngs of business people and holiday shoppers and says, "Oh, the sea of humanity!" My mom and I ignored this comment- honestly, how do you respond to that?- and continued up 7th avenue towards Times Square. As we approached Times Square, there it was- comment number two. Oh, the sea of humanity! Ok, dad, we get it. Lots of people here in Manhattan. Yes, it's a sea of humanity.

I was amazed that we spent almost 8 hours walking around New York, but we didn't actually go into any of the normal sightseeing places like the Empire State Building. We saw the window displays on Fifth Avenue, I took them into Michael C. Fina so they could see this mysterious store in which we were registered, and my mom tried on an $11K necklace in a jewelery store on Fifth. We strolled around in Central Park for a while, ate a burger at an Irish pub nearby, and met up with two of my bridesmaids for drinks. We did manage to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, and of course, stopped into a Starbucks for a cup of coffee. True to form, this Starbucks was only two blocks away from another, cleaner, Starbucks. I believe the next sea of humanity comment came as we walked up 6th or 7th ave. towards Central Park. Oh, the sea of humanity!

In the middle of all of this, we did manage to catch a Broadway show. We decided on Wicked, which proved to be a great choice. It was completely different from the book, but enjoyable nonetheless. After this, exhausted by the sea of humanity that we endured throughout the day, we called it a night and headed back to the LIRR for the journey back to that waspy town known as Garden City. The next day, Friday, proved to be hell on earth for me. Really, I simply had too many spa appointments scheduled, and I had done so very inefficiently. More on that later.

Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part I

So it's finally done. We're married, and I'm having major issues adjusting to the new last name...but that's for another post. Since things got a bit hectic the week before the wedding and I didn't have time to post, I'm going to have to post what I can remember (surprisingly quite a bit) from the past two weeks.

The first big adventure related to the wedding was spending several days before the wedding with my parents in New York. My parents have never been to New York before other than a very brief trip (less than 24 hours) for the engagement party last year. And even then they never made it into NYC. Let me preface this story by telling you my dad's original plan for these 4 pre-wedding days. The trip would begin with their arrival in New York on Wednesday. They would then rent a car, drive 4 hours to upstate New York, to a town with a population of 76. There, after figuring out what to do about the fact that this town didn't actually have any motels, inns, or even stables in which to sleep, he would drag my mom around a 300 year-old cemetery to do some geneology research on our family. Oh what fun! Then, on Friday, they would make the 4 hour return trip back to New York. This left almost no time to get the last minute necessities taken care of, nor did it allow extra time for emergencies. Come on people, I thought we were all OCD here! Where's the built-in panic time?? So my dad laid out this little itinerary to my mom and to Adrienne, at which point it was immediately vetoed.
The new plan consisted of my parents' arrival on Wednesday afternoon, dinner with the Grossman's that night, a day in Manhattan with me, and then wedding frenzy Friday and Saturday. And let me just give you another clue as to how that little driving trip would have gone in terms of my dad's familiarity with the area- I called him as they were renting their car at JFK airport, and my dad says, "I've got to get this GPS system hooked up so I can navigate here in Manhattan." You heard it here first: Long Island is now part of Manhattan.

The few days before the wedding were really somewhat insane. I finally made it out of the office and up to New York on Wednesday night. The next morning, I sat with my parents as we assembled the welcome bags for our out of town guests. These were possibly the most complicated welcome bags I've ever seen. They had candies, wheat thins, pretzels, two different types of cheese, plastic cutlery for the cheese, a welcome note, and explanation of what guests would be seeing at the wedding, and a map of the Long Island Rail Road. This doesn't sound like too much stuff to put together, except when you add the final ingredient: OCD Mom! I love her to death, but my mom has mastered the art of making simple things twice as difficult as they should be. Rather than buy snack packs of wheat thins, we had to put all of the wheat thins in separate plastic baggies, tie each one with a twist tie, and attach the plastic knife to the bag using the twist tie. Suddenly, I was transported back to Stamp Hell, only this time it was more like Snack Hell. Salt and twistie ties were everywhere!

So here's what the welcome bag assembly consisted of: First, we opened each of the outer bags and stuffed them with tissue paper. And yes, there was a particular way in which we had to stuff the bags: take two pieces of tissue paper, one on top of the other, make a fist in the center of the paper and pull the rest around your arm. Then pull the bag over your arm until your fist touches the bottom of the bag. THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE DONE!!! (I keep imagining a deep, demonic voice saying that phrase). Once filled with tissue paper, we dropped a container of laughing cow cheese into the bags. This helped weigh down the tissue paper and make room for the other snacks, of course. Then in went the Bailey's Irish Cream candies. Loose? Oh, heaven forbid no! They were also tied in little baggies with 5 or 6 candies to each baggie. Thankfully my mom did the candy bagging back in Dallas. Then we added the other cheese (smoked cheddar, I believe). Then the pretzels- two bags each. Thankfully we weren't required to put the pretzels in separate baggies, but I have to ask myself why? Why should pretzels get special treatment? Who cares, I should just be happy that was one less thing to bag. Then came the worst part: bagging the wheat thins. My dad and I had an assembly line created on the table in the hotel room. I opened the little bag, he dumped wheat thins, I tied with twist tie and attached the knife. Then into the welcome bag they went. Then we had to drop in the other paper stuff, like the welcome note, the wedding reference materials and the train schedules. The final step was tying with curly ribbon that my mom spent five days curling and assembling into cute little bows. Other than a short lived laughing cow cheese emergency, everything went fairly smoothly. We were finished by noon, at which time we went to catch the LIRR into the City. Sanity still with me? Check!

The Pavlovian response to the UPS truck...and damn the packing peanuts!!

For any of you out there who are married or about to be married, you're probably familiar with the automatic physical repsonse that is generated by the low, gutteral sound made by a UPS truck cruising up to your house. Kenny and I are visited by the UPS truck about once every two days now, and we've actually gotten to the point where we can hear the truck coming from down the street. Every night, around 7pm, I see the dog perk his ears up, raise his hackles (he doesn't care what Brown can do for him, he hates Brown) and generally go ape-shit at the front door.
Let me digress here, and tell you a bit about Nathan (the dog) and his relationship with all things brown. Nathan, being raised by one of the paler people on the planet (me), is not used to people whose skin is anything darker than slightly tanned. So at his first sight of someone not caucasian, he absolutly flipped out. He's always had this reaction, and as embarrasing as it is for me, I can't seem to break him of it. So imagine when the UPS truck pulls up, and Nathan sees a huge brown truck, out of which comes a guy wearing ALL BROWN carrying a brown package. Into Nathan's territory, no less. Mayhem ensues, as you can imagine.
So we return to the story, with the UPS truck detected in the vicinity. Seconds later, we hear it: the low rumble of an engine, the squeak of stressed shocks. I come running out of the kitchen and announce to Kenny that the UPS truck is on its way. We run to the door, grab the package, and take it to the kitchen table. We've gotten to the point now where we recognize where the gift was purchased based on the address on the shipping box (the stores usually don't put the name of the actual store on the label). If it's Picastaway, New Jersey, it's Tiffany. If it's anywhere else, its Williams-Sonoma. I can't believe we actually know these things. We were teased last week, because a box arrived from Picastaway, New Jersey. Kenny sees the address and exclaims, "It's from Picastaway! It's Tiffany!" We opened it up only to find that it was a gift I had ordered for a member of the wedding party. Oh, the disappointment.
I think that the UPS guy has become so familiar with our house that he's actually having his UPS buddies meet him there to hang out. The other night, I came out from the back of the house to find Nathan going absolutely nuts at the front window. I looked outside to see two UPS trucks backed up against one another, with the drivers switching, literally tossing, packages between the trucks. It was like some sort of bizarre UPS mating dance. I had to go out and ask them to move because they were blocking the driveway. But hey, why shouldn't he block the driveway? He probably feels like the 20-foot area in front of my house is as much his turf as it is mine. We'll certainly have to leave a gift for this guy at the end of all of this. Afterall, he probably fears for his life with each delivery because of my ferocious welsh corgie mutt dog who, let me reiterate, really hates brown.
We've had a blast receiving gifts from the registry. I probably shouldn't make this comparison, but it's like everyday is Christmas for the past month! Or maybe more appropriately, it's like 28 days of Chanukah.
The only down side to all of this is that Kenny is a tree hugger, and I am a converted tree hugger, so neither of us can bring ourselves to throw the packing peanuts away in the garbage. As of today, we have three garbage bags full of packing peanuts sitting in our dining room. Eventually we'll figure out where to take them. Someone made the suggestion of taking them into the Williams Sonoma at the mall, shoving them across the counter, and saying, "Here. Take your freaking peanuts back!" That would be really funny, I think. I'll let you know how that one goes over. If that doesn't work, there's always the burning option. When I described the packing peanut dilemma to Carol, who works with me at Cantey Hanger, she offered to burn the packing peanuts. Carol lives out in what is best described as "the country" and apparently is a pyromaniac. Maybe not a true pyromaniac, but from what I hear, there's lots of burning that goes on out at her property. In fact, that topic has come up at least three times in the past week. Carol did mention one caveat to her peanut burning offer, which was that she couldn't do it on a windy day lest packing peanuts get blown all over the pasture, at which point the cows would eat them. I don't know, that seems like an acceptable packing peanut disposal solution to me. I don't know how Carol's cows would feel about it. Of course, I could also ask Jacque, our receptionist, to let her goats go at the peanuts as well. Writing that last sentence has caused me to ask myself why so many people at my law firm own farm animals? Anyway...burning the packing peanuts or feeding them to farm animals seems to defeat the purpose of an environmentally friendly disposal. Maybe I'll just let that offer sit, and thank Carol for her thoughtfulness and pyromaniac tendencies.
Given the current packing peanut situation, the day I dread is the day Michael C. Fina delivers all of our registry items that are currently on hold, all at once, complete with packing peanuts. Fina has this wonderful registry option that allows you to keep everything on hold at their store so that you can receive it all at once, rather than in pieces. Considering that most of our registry is located at Fina, that's going to be one very big delivery. We'll be breaking down boxes and dealing with packing peanuts for weeks! That might not have been such a good idea, in retrospect. Maybe one day I'll send all of Fina's packing peanuts back to them.

Tuxedos, bowties, and...Haberdashers!!

So item number 3 on our Thanksgiving to-do list involved a trip to the shopping mecca that is the north shore of Long Island. No, it wasn't a trip for Adrienne and me. It was time for the boys to get some new threads. Or, in Kenny's circumstance, to get some new threads altered.

After completing the marriage license trip, we all piled into the car for the trip to the north shore. While on our way, Adrienne regaled us with the story of how, many years ago when Lauren and Samara were little, Samara threw a tantrum when she found out Lauren was wearing little high heels to her father's 40th birthday party whereas Samara had to wear ballet flats (for those who don't know, Samara is a childhood friend of Kenny and Lauren's and is now married to Kenny's cousin Michael. Samara's brother, Adam, is one of Kenny's groomsmen). Then, Adrienne told the story again. Then, she notified us when we had entered the 5 mile radius of when Samara threw this tantrum. Finally, Adrienne pointed out the shopping center where Samara thew the tantrum. Samara, I probably know more about this tantrum than you even remember at this point. You'll have to tell me your side of it one day. Preferably over coffee at the Starbucks that is located in the center where said tantrum was thrown. It will feel much more real to me then.

So back to the story. We found ourselves at a place called Victor Talbot's, assisted by a gentleman named Marc. I liked Marc. First off, I love guys who spell Marc with a 'c'. Kenny's middle name is Marc with a 'c', so I'm partial. Secondly, Marc's business card identifies him, not as a sales associate, but as a HABERDASHER!! Wow! That's just so classy. So this place was absolutely nuts- by the way, it's where they filmed part of Meet the Parents!

When we walked in, Marc found us almost immediately and ushered us upstairs where we would outfit Kenny's dad in his new tuxedo accessories. The store itself is manlier than a bratwurst at a polo club. The carpet and walls were done in rich tones, with wood and brass accents and polo accessories all over the place. Adrienne and I made ourselves comfortable on the couch in the dressing area, and settled in with our cups of espresso. Yeah, that's right. We all had a great time choosing among beautiful ties, fantastic shirts and a really badass pair of suspenders. Y'all make sure you check out Steve's suspenders at the wedding. They rock. After about an hour of sifting through some high class threads, we managed to outfit Steve pretty well. I think he's ready to assume his role as father of the groom.

Licensed to Wed

Item number two on our Thanksgiving agenda was to obtain our marriage license. This was really the original purpose of our trip, since we didn’t want to run the risk of Kenny not making it in time on the Friday before the wedding for us to go get the license then. We drove out to the Hempstead clerk’s office and had an adventure in municipal goings-on. Actually, the whole experience was pretty painless. Kenny, however, managed to play airhead for the day. As we arrived at the building, he suddenly realizes he can’t find his birth certificate. He goes to the car to get it. He then calls me from the car to tell me he left it at home. Adrienne tells him to check his pocket, and sure enough, there it was. Adrienne, the municipal clerk, and I all exchange glances. Apparently once I marry Kenny, the responsibility of keeping his head attached to his shoulders passes from Adrienne to me. Great.
We went upstairs, filled out some paperwork, and waited to have the license issued. As we were waiting, one of the employees at the clerk’s office looks at the three of us and asks who is getting married. She said she was confused because we all look related. Then, she told Adrienne she thought she might be the sister, or one of the bridesmaids. Don’t be surprised if you see this woman at the wedding, sitting at the head table with Adrienne. She absolutely made Adrienne’s day, week, and year. Once Adrienne was finished basking in this glory, we made our way into the cubicle of another employee named Yvonne. Yvonne was really great. She was efficient, nice, fun, and basically everything your normal municipal employee isn’t. Bottom line is, as of 10:40 am on Saturday, November 25, 2006, Kenny and I are officially licensed to wed. Yay! No jail time for Rabbi Hain!

The Affrufrffurfurf…

Kenny and I just returned from a short trip to New York that boasted a very long agenda. First on the event list was Kenny’s Aufruf. For those of you who are not in the know, the Aufruf is a ceremony in which a groom is called to the Torah during the morning Torah service to say a blessing over the Torah. Torah Torah Torah. Whew. It’s something of a celebration of entry into married life. It is also the end of a man’s free will, where the ownership of his spirit and manhood are transferred from his mother to his wife-to-be, who then must continue to fight his mother for control of these gems for years to come.
The ceremony was really nice, and I have to say, it was very moving to see Kenny up at the bimah, wearing his tallis (a Jewish prayer shawl- usually only worn by married men in the Orthodox community).
So the Aufruf day began as a rainy Thursday morning, with all the ladies dressed in black (again, New York fashion sense got the best of me- I was also in black). We might have been mistaken for funeral party, save for the basket of candy we were toting that we would later peg Kenny in the head with. Adrienne was concerned about only one thing that morning- when the right time was to pelt Kenny with candy. You may be asking yourself, “Why in the world does she keep talking about hitting Kenny in the head with candy?” The explanation goes something like this—when a boy or man celebrates a milestone in his life, he gets pelted by candy. Bar Mitzvahs and weddings seem to be the most popular events at which to do this. If your mother loves you, she’ll choose soft candies, like Sunkist Gems or Gummi Bears. If you were bad, or you pissed your mom off that morning (like, for example, spilling water on the floor, then wiping it up with your sock while your mother is telling you to wipe it with a paper towel) you’ll get Jolly Ranchers jawbreakers. Kenny’s mom obviously loves him very much, and the water incident didn’t occur until the next day, so Kenny got Sunkist Gems.
As the time came for Kenny to be pegged with the candy, a few thoughts were running through my head. First of all, I was wondering when we were really supposed to be unleashing the candy artillery stash on Kenny. Adrienne asked Steve, and Steve says something like “Just go with the flow.” As Adrienne correctly noted, we were the flow. There were only about 12 women, all armed with candy, and none sure of when to throw it. Thankfully the Rabbi’s wife was sitting with us, so she gave us the go-ahead when the time was right. My second hesitation came a bit too late. As I was hurling the candy, I wondered how I could hit Kenny while avoiding the 5 other men standing at the bimah with Kenny. My aim, and probably that of most of the other women, is not very accurate. I’m pretty sure I nailed the cantor in the head. Lauren, being the loving sister that she is, managed to lob a gem right into Kenny’s head. The service ended shortly after that, Mazel Tovs went around, and we broke for a fantastic breakfast spread that Adrienne put together. The Wedding Mafia was in attendance, and as usual, there was an incredible amount of food. And this was about five hours before Thanksgiving dinner. I’m pretty sure my wedding gown no longer fits.

This Entry is Rated 'R'...for Ridiculous

The battlecry for our wedding should be "If you're not crazy yet, then you're not busy enough!" I was just reflecting the other day on the various quirks of the moms involved in planning this wedding, and realized that weddings tend to magnify the bizarre qualities of everyone involved. Given that everyone involved in this wedding is becoming tediously obsessive compulsive, I'm at least hoping that these qualities already existed and weren't developed exclusively for the wedding. So far, these little OCD things have happened:
1) Kenny's mom requested that we mail all of the invitations that are going to their friends and family to New York so that she can send them from there. Why? Kenny and I are still trying to figure it out. It's likely that scientists will discover the edge of the universe, or perhaps explain how President Bush was re-elected before we figure out why these invitations were sent to New York.
2) My mom has requested that I reorganize our guest list so that guests from various different areas of my life are grouped together on the guest list. I asked her why, and she couldn't really tell me. She did, however, admit that it was an obsessive-compulsive request. Way to admit to the insanity, Mom! So far she's the only one willing to admit that she's acting slightly nuts, while the rest of us are still denying it.
3) Kenny and the stamps. Enough said. He refuses to admit that this was totally OCD.
4) I hunted down a post office that would hand stamp my envelopes. I was prepared to bribe a federal employee to do so. I also was overly excited when I found out that the post office in Dripping Springs, Texas still hand cancels stamps. That was before I found out that my neighborhood post office does as well, but I had no qualms about driving out to Dripping Springs. Yes, Dripping Springs is as country as it sounds. And it is far away.

Who is missing from this list? The dads. Where are the dads and why are they not crazy yet? Actually, I think their crazy will happen when they get the bill for the wedding. By then the rest of us should be feeling the effects of our Xanax, Prozac and other prescriptions and will at least be coherent enough to round up our dads for the looney bin.

Ask yourself, "Do I feel crazy?" If you don't, you're not pulling your weight. Get to it!

Do not bribe postal workers

After Jacque and Carol's hand-canceling strike out at the main post office in downtown Austin, I figured I'd try my luck with something a little more "small town," such as our little neighborhood Hyde Park post office. Before I went, I called Kenny's mom to see if she had any good advice for how to handle the post office. After researching this with her 5 Towns Wedding Mafia crew, she suggested bribing them. It was actually our caterer's suggestion. So I left my office today, invitations in hand, and a $20 in my pocket. I even had it neatly folded up so I could discretely slip it into the federal employee's hand. Yeah, that didn't sound quite right, did it? No. It didn't. As Kenny said, that's probably a federal offense. I got to the post office, and as I was standing in line, I weighed my options. I could just walk away, mail the boxes of envelopes up to New York, and let the Wedding Mafia pros handle this. Or, I could go through with it. Or, I could try a third option, which involved altering my place in line so I could get the male postal worker, batting my eyelashes, and turning up the southern accent just a bit. Worked like a charm. You should all be receiving hand-canceled invitations soon. What's better, I didn't get arrested and charged with a federal crime. I can't believe I was going to commit a federal crime in order to get my stamps hand-canceled. The wedding has obviously sucked out every ounce of sanity I might have had left after choosing wedding music with my mom.

Teamwork

I just have to give a quick shout-out to the fabulous ladies of Cantey Hanger, Carol and Jacque. Friday, after a trying week at work thanks to yet another time-consuming lecture on the margin tax, complete with technical difficulties (my projector cut out in the middle of my talk) and no ride back to the office (my car battery chose that moment to die), preceded by a not-so-nice encounter with one of the partners in my office, I was about to give up on being able to get anything done outside of work, including getting wedding invitations sealed, stamped and in the mail. Jacque and Carol came to my rescue by sealing the envelopes (all 109 of them) and taking them to the post office for me. Unfortunately for them, the post office is manned by a bunch of...federal employees!! (sorry, Allen). They were told to look elsewhere for hand-cancellation. Either way, they certainly saved me lots of time and a trip to the post office. Thanks, Ladies! I owe you lunch :)

Stuffing Wedding Invitations: Dante's Inferno with 2 extra levels of Hell

Sometimes I think Kenny does stuff just so I'll write about him on this blog. Wednesday night, we decided to tackle stuffing wedding envlopes. This is an AMAZINGLY TEDIOUS PROCESS!!! Considering the insanity of our wedding invitations, I knew this wouldn't be an easy task. We had 7, that's right- 7, components to our invitations: (1) invitation, (2) tissue to go over invitation, (3) reply card, (4) tissue to go over reply card, (5) reply card envelope, (6) direction card, (7) inner envelope for invitation, (8) outer envelope. Ok, that's 8. I tend to lose track after 2 items, which is the normal number of different pieces of paper involved in a typical letter. To add to this 8-fold nightmare, we had to number each RSVP envelope with a number that corresponded to each guest on the guest list in case they forgot to actually write their name on the reply card. (I thought, "Who forgets to write their name on the reply card? Who's such an idiot?" That would be me. Responding to a friend's wedding invite, I wrote this great little "well wish" for them, and am pretty sure I forgot to actually tell them I was coming, much less sign my name. These numbering rules are apparently created for people like me.) So this little numbering scheme adds the 9th component of our wedding invitations. This corresponds nicely with Dante's Nine Levels of Hell.

Kenny and I shared the responsibilites of Levels 1, 2 and 7, which involved folding the invite, laying the tissue paper over it, and stuffing it in the inner envelope. Piece of cake. Then I decided I would tackle assigning numbers to the RSVP cards (Level 9) , assembling Levels 3, 5 and 7 (the reply card and the tissue that goes over it, and the reply envelope), and neatly enclosing the direction card (Level 6 under the flap of the reply card envelope and stuffing these in the inner envelope as well (back to Level 7) then matching the inner envelope with its corresponding outer envelope (Level 8). It was during the process of stuffing the RSVP envelope in the inner envelope that I discovered a 10th level of Hell: trying to match the numbered reply envelope et al. with the right inner and outer envelopes. Remember, these little envelopes are numbered for each guest. Since I descended through the various levels of Hell in an assembly-line fashion, the reply cards and their respective envelopes were in a separate stack, and not exactly in the same order, as the inner and outer invitations. Let me just say that this sucked big time.

Once I finally got through this and matched up all of the invitations with their reply cards, I was introduced to Stamp Hell. Part of Stamp Hell involved my own creation- forgetting to put stamps on the RSVP cards. I would go through a few envelopes, then realize I forgot to stamp one before I stuffed it in the big envelope, and would then have to go back and check the five envelopes before that. This involved lots of unstuffing. Again, not fun.

Kenny created the second part of Stamp Hell. He is the most anal-retentive person when it comes to stamps, apparently. As I finished my trip through Hells 1-10, I looked over to see that Kenny, who did not participate in levels 4-10 or the first part of Stamp Hell, had a huge stack of envelopes before him that did not have stamps. This could only mean one thing: I stuffed, matched, and assembled the invitations faster than he could put stamps on the outer envelopes. I was truly baffled as to how this could be, so I watched him for a moment as he applied stamps to an envelope. He would take a stamp from the right-edge of a page of stamps so that it would have a straight right-side edge to match the straight right-side edge of the envelope. The next stamps were then lined up according to their little scalloped edges. The far-left stamp was taken from the far-left edge of the stamp page so that it would have a straight edge on the left side. Unbelievable. Meanwhile, I was haphazardly choosing stamps from anywhere on the stamp page for the RSVP envelope stamps. Kenny would occasionally yell at me for using one of the stamps from "his row." Again, unbelievable. So this is what took him 50 seconds per envelope. We still have 10 or so envelopes without stamps, but that will be done this weekend hopefully. And then we have the issue of hand cancellation of stamps, which will be a whole other adventure, and possibly an added level of Stamp Hell, or maybe a new level of Hell all on its own. That will be addressed in a later post that will undoubtedly involve one or more disgruntled postal workers and a $20 bill.

Hey, jewelery lady! You're way out of line!

Today I finally checked something off of my wedding to-do list that has been on there for at least a month now and has recently been nagging at me. Boy, it felt good to check that item off. It felt good if you don't count the fact that in the 3 minutes that it took me to accomplish this little task, our jeweler managed to insult me twice.

The task at hand was for me to call the jeweler where we purchased our wedding bands and let them know what I wanted inscribed on the inside of Kenny's ring. I was deciding between several inscriptions, one of which was too long, so it got scrapped. The other two were "Cindy to Kenny, 12-17-06" and if that was too long "CCL to KMG 12-17-06". So I got the jeweler on the phone and laid out the first option. She says, after a few seconds of silence, "Really? That's what you want? Don't you think that sounds, I don't know...awkward?" After a couple of seconds of silence on my end, she adds, "No offense." No offense?!?!?! You tell me that the inscription that I want to put inside the wedding band of my husband-to-be sounds "awkward" and you don't expect me to be offended? Wow. My blood pressure instantly rose, and I took a couple of deep breaths. I'm calm now, thinking calm thoughts, trying not to be angry at this chick and the insult she just lobbed my way. She says, "Why don't you just put "Love, Cindy." My blood pressure spikes again. Why not? Maybe because I'd like the inscription to be from me, the bride, and not from you, the jeweler. That's why. Some people just don't have that little mechanism that the rest of us have that lets us know when we've gone too far, said too much. I tell her, again, that this inscription sounds fine to me. Thinking that maybe I was crazy, I ran it by a few other people, including co-workers, my maid of honor, and even Kenny. Everyone else thought it sounded fine. Either that, or they just fear my wrath.

After I recovered from that little insult, she sent another one my way. She is mailing the ring to me so that I won't have to pay NY state sales tax, so we were discussing this. She asks me if I'm coming back to NY before the wedding, and I told her I would be up for Thanksgiving. She pauses, and then suggests that I bring the ring back at Thanksgiving for her to keep until the wedding. I told her that wouldn't be necessary, and that I'd keep the ring and bring it up when I come up for the wedding. Then she says she's worried that I'll forget the ring. Who does this lady think she is? And why does she think I'll forget the ring? I kind of wanted to say something about the fact that I've already got two moms on my case about everything under the sun related to the wedding, and I don't need it coming from other sources as well. I told her that if there was anything I remembered to bring to the wedding, it would be the ring. She kept pushing it, and I finally had to get tough with her, let her know who's boss. I don't think I was rude, but I think I got the message across to her that I wasn't going to listen to her lack of confidence in me. It's none of her business anyway. She's just wrong on so many levels.

I've only met this woman three or four times. She doesn't know me well enough to nag me or to know whether or not I'm a dingbat and would do something like forget a wedding ring at my own wedding. I'm not sure whether I can chalk this up to her being a New Yorker, or just rude. In her defense, it's likely that most brides she deals with are younger than me by about 6 or 8 years, are totally sheltered by their parents, and have never had to do anything for themselves for most of their lives. I'd like to think that fact that I'm older, have been out on my own for some time now, and am a working professional would lend me some credibility in terms of my ability to remember to bring a wedding ring to my wedding. Whatever.