Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

On Saturday, The Gryphon and I had to skip the scheduled Otakon planning meeting to take care of some wedding planning tasks.

Probably the most important was meeting in late morning with our jeweler to look at his wax models for our wedding bands. He had done a superb job, so that the repeating Celtic pattern had a lot more interest than I'd expected.

Even on my small ring, he managed to work in a good amount of detail.

The only other information he needed was what we wanted to have engraved in them. We decided on a very simple engraving, just the word "BELIEVE" and the date of our wedding.

This refers back to when The Gryphon and I were first dating. I confessed to him that, because of my previous bad luck, I wasn't sure I believed in love anymore. He said, in an earnest voice, "You've just got to believe." From the look in his eyes and the intonation in his voice, I knew I could believe in him and, what's more, believe in love.

And so the Lenny Kravitz song, "Believe" became our song.

Our jeweler, Henri David, whose store is called Halloween, said he'll have them ready in about two weeks. I can't wait to see them.

Our dog, Una, spent the day at the dog sitter's, since we'd already had her scheduled for that, and we thought it would be easier not to have to worry about walking her while we were out taking care of things.

The next task was stopping at Lowe's to find curtain rods to hang the curtains I bought recently which we hope to use as decorative banners at the ceremony and possibly the reception. We bought four silver lightweight curtain rods. One will go in the top and one in the bottom of each curtain. I'll sew an extra pocket at the bottom to place the second rod. This will weigh the banners down and make them hang evenly.

Then we had to find some envelopes to use as outer envelopes for our invitations. The invitations that we bought were really personalized note cards that we had custom printed with our information. While we might have been able to jam everything into envelope that came with the invites, it would have been really bulky. In a larger envelope, we can place the invites, the RSVP cards, hotel information and directions and keep everything flat.

We browsed the stationery at Crane & Co. at the King of Prussia Mall. At first, we thought we wouldn't find what we wanted, because all the boxed sets of envelopes were either too small or came with stationery we didn't need.

Finally, we found the wedding section and picked up two boxes of white envelopes with a silver lining. Perfect!

The last thing on our list was to find a Father's Day gift, and after a little thinking, we found him something. Just in case he reads this, I won't say what it was.

Since we had some time before we had to pick up Una, we took in a matinee of Shrek the Third. The theater was full of families with small children, who would occasionally giggle aloud, exclaim when something shocked them or applaud the heroes when they succeeded. Adults, likewise, would laugh aloud, though often at jokes that were above the heads of the little ones. It was a great way to see the family-friendly film, because you really got a sense for how all the different ages of audience members reacted.

While it's not the best in the series, I think the movie is much better than a lot of animated, family friendly fare out today.

Afterwards, we ate at Chili's, a place where I haven't eaten in quite a while. Since I am being extremely good for the next few weeks before my first fitting for my wedding dress, I was happy to see they'd added a section called "The Guiltless Grill", which offered four lower-fat entrees. They provided the nutritional information for each meal, so after ordered the Guiltless Grill Salmon, I made note of the nutritional info. When I got home, I used the info to figure out how many Weight Watchers points I should write down for the meal.

I've joined Weight Watchers online to give me an added boost. I felt it would help make me accountable and help keep me on track. Plus, I hope to pick up good tips from other members, as well as some good recipes. I've been doing Weight Watchers by myself, following the plan without the support network, for a couple years but admittedly have not been following it as strictly of late.

Already I'm noticing that I've been misjudging serving sizes. I know this because I've begun measuring things again, which will be helpful later when I try to estimate amounts by sight alone. I'm learning that it's not what I've been eating, but how much.

We headed back home then and unpacked the car before picking up Una. She'd had a very good day, according to the pet sitter, and even got along well with a little terrier called Xor, who was also being boarded that day. Xor can be bossy, and he and Una have gotten into a fight before when he wouldn't stop getting in her face. For a while, the pet sitter avoided booking them at the same time.

However, Xor has mellowed recently, so they gave it another shot, with positive results. I always knew that it wasn't Una who started it. She's a lover, not a fighter.

More on Alyce's wedding planning:

Musings on Alyce's Wedding

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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