Everything Changes

Do all brides have bouts of insomnia? And do they all use them to start thinking, in ever-greater detail than before, about the wedding plans - the very thing that sent them to this hellish sleeplessness in the first place?

I've always had trouble with insomnia, and the combined craziness of my brother's looming nuptials (this Saturday!) and planning my own wedding isn't helping at all.

A few nights ago, it was full-on Talking Heads. Or, at least, one talking head. I couldn't shut my thoughts up to focus on sleeping. To-do lists, gifts to be purchased, home-repair needing to be done, a little thing called My Job, all clamoring for attention at 11:30 pm.

And still, at 2:30 a.m. By 3:20 am, I thought, "This is ridiculous. I've gotta get up," and pried myself away from my hotwater bottle of a fiance.

What to do? I know, we'll stare at the guest list and will it mentally to shrink. Shrink, list, shrink.

Or we'll think about colors. I had thought we'd go for nature-inspired, warm colors. I flipped through my inspiration book, "American Bungalow" magazine. Every house, every ad for hand-crafted, Stickley-inspired furniture glows with a warm, sunset light. Everything is gold, olive, taupe.

Hmm.. writing that down, it doesn't sound beautiful - but it is. This wallpaper frieze is a little picture I've been dragging around with me for a couple years:

So, since this is what I love, this would be my wedding colors, right?

But wait - I'm not marrying myself. And while my hunk of burning love doesn't care "that much" about the colors, shouldn't this be a reflection of us - I mean, isn't that why we're going through all this?

So I start writing. What is "us"? What do we love to do together? We love to travel, to go camping, to go to the beach, or the springs. In three years, we've been to the Grand Canyon to whitewater raft down the Colorado, we've been to Brazil to see friends marry, we've been to Mexico to, uh . . . lay around in the sun and drink margaritas. What's the continuing thread?

Water. I love the beach and can't imagine living too far from the coast. Kyle is scuba-certified and has dove many of the springs around here; he lives for the springs in the summertime.

I look up from my writing and find my inspiration. A large, framed photograph of a Florida spring hangs over our bookcase. I don't have it digitally, but here's something similar:

If you've never seen a Florida spring before, you are missing out. It's the most beautifully clear water. And it's so cold - great when you're baking in the hundred-plus Florida summertime. And that blue - that beautiful turquoise blue.

That's it! It makes so much more sense than my Arts & Crafts-driven plan. Kyle and I are both Florida natives, and in this town, that appears to be unusual. I want to celebrate what he and I love - Florida. And not the beachy, Miami, Disney World Florida. The inner heart of Florida, with its moss-hung oaks, numerous springs and rivers, fields of everything from St. Augustine turfgrass to lowly cabbage. And the spring water would be my inspiration.

Impressive, for 4 am.

Here's what I've got so far:



(Click to see full size)

Getting inspired

I've said before that I'm not the most creative/imaginative person. Thus, many of the decisions to be made in wedding planning are not coming easy to me.

I had said I didn't want to have official "colors," and then I decided to get some "save-the-date" type thing for our out-of-state guests.

It was then that I realized - I gotta pick something.

The "thing" has to be some color, has to have some sort of imagry (sic?) on it. I mean, this is much like having an party. You're going to decorate, so you have to have some sort of overlying format to pull it all together, be it a theme or a palette. I don't want to just pull some colors out of my tuchas, excuse my language. The one thing I know we want this wedding to be is something personal, something meaningful for us.

So I've started something that seems popular in the wedding forums I'm in, an "inspiration board." A real-life board would have fabric swatches, pages torn out of magazines, etc. An electronic inspiration board, from the examples I've seen, has photos of where you're getting married, somewhere you want to get married or a place like it, thematic stuff (stars, fish, polka dots), and pictures of dresses and bridal whatnot.

Well, all I have so far is some photos of where I'm getting married and art I love, but it's a start, right?