The Holy Union of Matrimony: Give Me One More Thing to Do and I Will Snap Your Neck Like a Twig, So Help Me God

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS IS JIVE TURKEY FILLING IN FOR ME. YOU WILL SEE WHY THIS IS NECESSARY BELOW. SOMETHING JIVE TURKEY FAILED TO MENTION, BECAUSE I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT 45 MINUTES AGO, IS THAT I PROBABLY HAVE AN EYE-INFECTION. THE FUN JUST NEVER ENDS AROUND HERE, FOLKS! ENJOY! (ALSO, JIVE TURKEY, I HAD TO CENSOR YOU IN SOME PARTS. BUT THAT'S NOT BECAUSE I DIDN'T APPRECIATE YOUR CHOICE LANGUAGE. IT'S JUST THAT MY MOM READS THIS. KTHXBAI!)

So, it seems that our dear Mermanda has quite a bit on her plate these days, and has asked me to post here on her lovely blog so she can finish losing her damn mind in a corner somewhere. You see, she’s in the final throes of wedding planning – the “Please, just take my money and do what I say,” phase – when the blushing bride wonders why she decided to have a wedding at all when there are perfectly good 24-hour chapels in Vegas in which to get married while ass-blasted drunk on whiskey sours, the way God intended.

See, wedding planning is a tricky thing. In the very beginning, you nail down the biggies: venue, dress, wedding party, catering, honeymoon – and then you have a bit of a lull in which you have the luxury of spending a leisurely three weeks online looking for the perfect cake-topper. Then you register (FUN), then you have your shower (FUNNER), then…you wait around some more. And then suddenly it’s three weeks before the wedding, and !@#&%%$#$#!! there is so much crap to do. Deadlines for RSVPs (SHAME if you have ever neglected to RSVP to a catered affair – SHAME, I SAY!), final dress fittings (say hello to your new friend, Spanx), and O HAI, everyone would like giant piles of money now, please. And poor Mermanda is in this final stage of planning, except that – as she told me via email this morning – she missed the payment deadlines for three very important vendors. Vendors who will be providing services like, oh, I don’t know, A PHYSICAL SPACE IN WHICH TO HAVE THE RECEPTION.

You guys. Seriously. Even if you have never planned a wedding, you can appreciate the OMFG of that. Pardon me for being crass, but just READING about that made me shit my pants a little.

I am assuming that Mermanda got the situation figured out, since she was still capable of speaking about the incident in full sentences and without setting things on fire, but she is having A Week, as you can plainly see.

Adding to the fun times is the G-20 here in Pittsburgh. If you are not familiar with the G-20, please go a-Googlin’, because I am so very tired of talking/hearing/reading/writing about it. Basically, it’s going to turn our fair city upside down in the manner of a keg stand for two whole days, and the weeks leading up to it? Have been batshit crazy. My company is actually shutting down our office for the next two days – which they have never, ever, EVAR done before – because shit is expected to get THAT insane with the events and the road closures and the protesters and such. And hey – know who works in the building right next to mine? And whose work life has been totally consumed with the G-20? And who said in her email, “I am probably going to die before the whole spectacle is over because someone is sure to launch a brick at my face, which will make me very pretty for my wedding if I do happen to live”? Yes, that’s right. Lovely Mermanda, my friends, who I suspect would still be a beautiful bride even if she received a brick to the face (hey! I smell a wedding toast!), but that’s really not something I want to find out for sure.

Actually, that reminds me of my own pre-wedding potential-face-maiming experience (what – like you don’t have one?). It was the Wednesday before my wedding, and my friends were all meeting for happy hour at a local bar. I was in the midst of last-minute wedding [BLEEP!], but decided to swing by to get my mind off of centerpieces and tea roses for a few hours. Unfortunately for us, half the cast of Hee-Haw was in attendance that night, and we found ourselves seated next to two charming young ladies who were knee-walking drunk and determined to pick a fight. Now, friends, I am a peaceable sort. I do not enjoy confrontations and I can ignore even the most obnoxious drunk chicks. But if you get your drunk ass UP IN MY FACE and start INSULTING MY FRIENDS and it just happens to be THE WEEK OF MY WEDDING and I am looking for AN EXCUSE TO HIT SOMEONE, we just may have a situation on our hands. I had been in that bar all of five minutes (my drink hadn’t even arrived!) before I was ready to throw down with Backwoods Barbie and her big-haired sidekick. Words were exchanged, hands were shoved in faces, and before I knew it, Trailer Sue was winding up to punch me. IN THE FACE. This is when my friend Heather – one of my bridesmaids and lo, she would be named MVP of my wedding for this valiant act – stepped between me and the offending fist, yelling. “You can’t hit her! She’s getting married!”

Don’t we all just need friends like Heather? I love her.

Anyway, it worked. Heather successfully blocked the punch, the bouncers took notice and threw out the redneck duo, and I got my Jack & Coke. All was well, and I didn’t even have to sport a black eye on the altar three days later. (It should be noted, though, that when my loving fiancé found out about this, he was livid – LIVID! – that I would put myself in a potentially eye-blackening situation. I was disappointed in his inability to see the bad-assery of my behavior, but I guess he had a point.)

Sorry for derailing this post down Memory Lane, but the point is, I made it through all the Wedding Crazy and had a magnificent day – and so will Mermanda. Strength, my dear! The insanity is nearing its end, and pretty soon you will be wearing that gorgeous white dress and watching all the planning come to its fruition. Oh, and did I mention how people will wait on you hand and foot, and will always be shoving glasses of champagne in your hand? Because they will. AND IT WILL BE AWESOME.

So let us take this time to pull Mermanda back from the brink of OMFG and pep talk her into not going insane. Because a straight-jacket is not a good look for a bride, and The Knot can quote me on that one.