Worth It

Joan (that's my mom) and I have had a very productive couple of days. First of all, we got up early Monday morning and made the drive into town from the lake house to pick up my dress from the house in town. The two of us attempting to get the dress into the car without letting it touch anything and without wrinkling anything almost became our first tiff of the day... With one of us holding one coat hanger, one of us holding another coat hanger, one of us trying to go up this way, the other trying to go over this way, etc... we definitely both worked up a little sweat. Could've been the fact no airconditioner was on at the house and it was already about 95 degrees that day...Which leads me to my next highpoint of the day...

The weather. We got to Columbia on what was supposed to be (or so we thought) a relatively mild September day. The portrait shoot didn't begin until 4 and we had gotten there early enough to run by the Governor's Office to drop off a couple of things, grab Mary Neil and Lorrie to go to lunch with us AND go by the tax office so I could get a little reimbursement for selling my car, all to be done before heading over to Cline's for my hair appointment. After getting to the hair appointment 30 minutes early because we just wanted to be sitting down in some air conditioning, and therefore getting done with said hair appointment about 30 minutes early, we walked outside into a torrential downpour. Did I mention that my portrait was going to be taken outside? Which leads me to my third point...

The gnats. (Or as some of us liked to SO confidently call them during a mad game of Scattegories in college... "pnats"...ahem...anyway...) The portrait was taken [in a van] down by the river. (You Chris Farley fans will recognize that throwback and the fact that there was in fact no van involved) By the time I got outside in my dress and to my appointed spot on the tarp beside the river, my veil and dress were full-on gnat traps, and the sweat that had formed on my face combined with my make-up to form a nice little pasty gnat trap of their own. So the sweaty pasty face plus me constantly swatting at almost-invisible little bugs coincidentally ONLY around MY face, not to mention my constant fear that the granddaddy longleg who had tried to get fresh with me and make a fast move up the back of my dress was going to return for round 2 made for, at the very most, perhaps one useable picture for the portrait... Worth it. Or something.

Following that experience up with a roadtrip to Charleston that night and Edisto the next morning to meet with the wedding planner, the florist and the folks at the reception site, I'm one tired puppy. So I'm going to bed. But I'll rest easy knowing we're almost done with this planning NON-SENSE and we ARE in fact 32 days closer to finally being together. Phew...I can't wait.