Chapter Seven* The Wedding Planning Begins…
I ended the last post describing what was going on in my life as I attempted to focus on my last month of school while simultaneously planning our wedding. As you can imagine, it didn’t work out so well. After we booked the temple and the church for the reception, I put everything else on hold while I waded through my first batch of university exams. Once those were out of the way I poured my heart into my application to transfer universities. Even though my marks were okay, I was terrified that I wouldn’t get in and the Hubster and I would have to make some major changes in our plans.
The Hubster was going through a difficult time as well. He spent two years in Oregon, USA serving a mission for my church and got home only shortly before we met. He applied to university immediately upon returning home, but it meant that he would be applying as a mature student as he had been out of school for nearly 4 years. He applied into business programs at a variety of universities across southern Ontario, and all required OAC Calculus as a prerequisite to the program–except Hippie U. Unfortunately the Hubs was missing this course and started taking it in a night school course shortly after we started dating. I don’t know how many of you out there have actually taken calculus, but it’s pretty insane. Unless you are a “math person” and it clicks right away for you, it’s something you really need to devote your time to.
My loving Hubs didn’t want to limit our options (as at this point I wasn’t terribly keen on moving to Senior’s City…) and nearly burnt himself out trying to get through the course. However, because we got engaged so quickly and I was still in school, he began working like a madman to put money away for our wedding. For a while he tried to balance working full time hours + extra hours + seeing me + going to class + maintaining the course work… but honestly, it was crazy… and in the end we decided it was more important to have some money set aside as he had already been accepted into Hippie U. So, he dropped the course and we made plans to move to Senior’s City… and that was that. Even though it wasn’t my first choice, I just wanted to be with him, wherever that was… be it Senior’s City, South Porcupine or Mars, I would have gone. I just wanted to be his wife, where we were really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. :)
So, I spent most of April finishing exams and completing my transfer application and spent the next two months waiting. I finished my last exam somewhere around the 20th but even then I couldn’t devote myself to planning our wedding just yet as one big thing stood in the way–I had to move home and needed a job. Badly.
I don’t know if I’ve ever written about just how poor I was in my first year of school… it’s really another story in itself. But just to give you a little snapshot, by the end of March I was eating expired rice with red onion and salad dressing because it’s all I had / could afford. haha! I didn’t tell the Hubs about it because I didn’t want him to worry and I knew I’d be moving home shortly… I even did a focus group in the City once just to make $60 so I could buy some groceries! Anyway, I ended up leaving first year owing the Ghetto U $500 that I needed to pay off as soon as possible.
So, Mom and Big Dad came and packed me up and brought me back to Btown to live at home for the next 4 months. That’s right, at this point we had only FOUR months to plan our wedding. Before the vanimal was even unpacked I was out the door looking for a job. Luckily both my amazing boss at Payless and my fabulous boss at the office offered to take me back for the summer. So I began working 8 – 4 at the office and 5 – 9 at Payless almost every day, and then I would come home, phone the Hubster and sit down with my Mom and wedding plan. It was madness!
However, once I was living at home again my Mom really helped me get things underway, but I was devastated to be so far from the Hubster. We felt like we were oceans apart… in reality, it was just an hour and a half. haha! We had to make some big decisions really quickly: what sort of reception did we want? Did we even want a reception? Did we want a dinner? A buffet? What were we doing about invitations? Flowers? Cake? Photographer?
Amidst all these questions I began a quest of my own…
…the dress hunt. :)
