4 months and counting

4 Months till K and I get married, I should be excited right? I’ve had my anxiety moments since planning started almost a year ago, mostly over money, that’s common right? But the one thing I have realized lately is how I have been lying about being excited about the big day.

I didn't even realize I was lying at first. Without REALLY analyzing what I was being asked, I thought I WAS excited about our upcoming October wedding. But I am confessing what doesn't seem all that socially acceptable to say: I'm not excited about our wedding day, at least not yet.

Am I excited about being married to my best friend, comedian, Poppa, Hero? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY! Am I excited to see friends and family I don't get to see all that often in one room? Yes, I am. Am I excited about the gigantic cake with an inch-thick layer of frosting? I plan on eating four pieces. But am I excited about the actual ceremony itself? No. I'm too busy stressing about it. And yes, for me, excitement and stress are mutually exclusive emotions. I can't seem to be able to feel both at once.

The stress began about a month after we got engaged (before which I was quite excited, for the record). It was after we booked the venue and was torn between laughter and bursting into tears realizing that my $5K budget just wasn’t going to cut it and my stress skyrocketed wondering where the money was going to come from. Enter stress.

Anyone who works with me or knows me on a personal level will tell you I'm quite the control freak. I have a hard time delegating responsibility and an even harder time forcing myself to quit stressing about the things I can't control, like what the weather will be like, whether we'll be able to get an early check-in at the hotel we're all getting dressed at or the dog starts barking while Kirk and I are trying to exchange our vows?

And there are plenty of things well within my control, or at least closer to being in my control, that I could still stress about even if I did manage to get the other stuff off of my mind: What if I didn't buy enough candles? What if my decorations don't look as great in the venue as they do in my mind? What if I'm so busy focusing on smiling as I walk down the aisle because everyone is looking at me that I trip over my dress or turn my ankle because of my shoes?

Seriously, the questions rolling through my mind are both nonstop and ridiculous, adding to my stress level: What if my dad cries and then makes me cry? What if the dog runs off? What if the music won't play when it's time for people to dance? What if we run out of alcohol? Should we offer soda, too? What if I get a huge zit? What if the baker drops the cake? Everything short of "What if aliens land during the reception?" has crossed my mind at some point during this engagement.

Before someone emails me to remind me of it, I do realize that my seeming inability to feel excitement about what should be an exciting day is my own problem. Not everyone feels the need to control every detail like I do (and those people are lucky ducks, by the way).

I just hope that as the day inches closer and I check more things off of my to-do list that I begin to feel the excitement that I haven't felt since about the fourth week of our engagement. Obviously, I know that this should be an exciting time—one of the most exciting of my life—and I don't want to solely blame society's expectations of weddings for my own inability to focus on the ceremony itself and drown out the stress leading up to it.

But now that the truth is out there, Can you empathize with my lack of excitement or at least offer me the comfort of knowing that it will come back eventually?