2000-12-28 - 15:46:27
Wedding parties: 3 times a bridesmaid, and all that.

Updated -- added portion in red

*stretch* I am so tired. I should have known better than to stay up until 3AM reading ... but then, I always tell myself I should know better, and then I always do it again, and then I'm late to work. Lucky for me my immediate boss is on vacation this week! As long as I make the hours up, she won't care, but it still looks bad to come in late.

Speaking of hours that I have to make up, tomorrow I have to leave work at 3PM, two hours early, to drive to a wedding rehearsal in Vancouver, WA. I have to be there at 5PM, and the drive's only an hour and a half or so, but I have never done anything in Vancouver except drive through it, so I thought I'd give myself a little extra time to find the church.

This'll be an interesting wedding. This will be my fourth husbandless trip down the aisle ... I was a train-girl way back in 1985, a maid of honor in August 1997 for Jocasta and Nappy, and maid of honor again in October 1999 for my friend KaDee and her husband. Now I'll be maid of honor once more, in December 2000. Quite the record, yes?

The funny part is that the maid of honor is supposed to be deeply involved in planning the wedding with the bride ... and I haven't been, not once. Probably because the first two brides had mothers with big ideas and good organizational skills, and I was reduced to running around with a camera, and preparing a toast. This time, it's the bride herself with the big ideas and good organizational skills. So far as I know, all she expects me to do is show up and precede her down the aisle.

That will be much easier, of course, if I have a dress to do it in. Half of the bridesmaids' dresses have not yet arrived! The wedding's on Saturday, and the dresses were ordered two entire months ago. We're supposed to have Dyeable shoes to match the dress, also. Oh well. At least the gloves are here; I can go by a Payless Shoes sometime today and have the shoes made to match them. That way, even if the dress doesn't arrive and we have to snag a cheap substitute last minute from the mall, the shoes will match SOMETHING.

*sigh* At this point, I wish I could slap whomever invented the quote, "Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride." Jocasta assures me that being a maid of honor is MUCH more prestigious than being a plain old bridesmaid, and thus the "curse" is cancelled out; some of my other friends, however, have gotten a kick out of teasing me with it.

Not to mention one who declared, regarding me, that "She will NEVER find a man, and if she does......she'll be divorced in 3 years tops." I don't understand these kind of ASSumptions. She has seen me performing at less than my best in the romantic field ... but she doesn't know the whole story. Plus, that doesn't predict my entire life, and the fact that she's had three times as many relationships as I really has nothing to do with our relative romantic futures. *ahem* But I wasn't going to be negative about people I know on here anymore. *reminding self*

One further comment before leaving that topic: If you are a regular reader, and find the site that quote came from, it's full of inaccuracies. Here are 2: (1) After the first "important" message I sent him, there were no calls OR visits from him. (2) I did not attempt to blame the mess on him. In fact, I kept saying the whole mess is a big misunderstanding, and that circumstances and changes in personality have conspired to make things ... less than possible. Unfortunately.

Damn, I wish I wasn't so worried about what people think of me. I haven't heard from "him" at all lately. That's worse than getting chewed out, IMHO. Fighting is much better for the spirit than brooding, and recovery is quicker.

That's part of the problem, perhaps. I've had enough brooding and resentment and depression; I'd rather have a good, HONEST fight. I talked to him, I got "I'm so hurt ..., I can't do that because it makes me feel ...", not, "Well, I disagree with you because ..., and I'm wary of ..., but I'll go part way and do...".

Of course I didn't give the best replies either, and for that I *AM* sorry ... But I was strictly honest and never venomous. Damnit, does it make me evil to want gentlemanly behavior from a man? I know lots of girls that agree. It's called old-fashioned, not bitchy or high-schoolish, as some "liberated women" tend to accuse.

Really, I *know* why I don't have a current boyfriend; Recent miscues aside, I'm too damn shy, and just a bit on the picky side. "Picky how?" you ask? Well, here's a laundry list I wrote up a couple of years ago, of what I look for. (All but the first one are not absolute, however; these are pluses, but the absence doesn't necessarily mean a minus).

... Now that I look back over that list, it looks a little steep. *sigh* Really, I don't demand perfection. I know that everybody has faults, especially me ... and I could handle problems, as long as we always made up. I also know that waiting will pay off in the end, when I'm sitting on the deck of a cruise ship on my 25th anniversary, sipping champagne with my husband.

Well. Might as well banish the topic from my mind for another couple of months ... I'll be too busy moving and setting up my new apartment. (Yes, we got the apartment in Tigard! Yaaaaaay!!). Time enough to worry about men when I have the time to spend worrying.