It has been quite some time!  It’s true, I’m not longer the “last single girl”, and I’m sorry I don’t have any crazy dating stories for you today.  I have some things on my mind and I was hoping that writing about it would make me feel better.

First, a little housekeeping.  11 months ago Sean asked me to marry him!  It’s been an exciting time celebrating and looking ahead and planning…SO. MUCH. PLANNING.  When we first got engaged and I started telling people, there were 2 specific responses that stuck out.  One was “now you get to plan a wedding!”  The other was “now you have to plan a wedding.”  The first was said by a friend who I’ve known for 15 years, the later by a coworker who, clearly, doesn’t know me too well.  As anyone who knows me will attest, I am quite organized (understatement of the century!).  The night we got engaged I called my relative, an Armenian priest, to check his availability.  The next day one of my friends yelled at me because I was already working on my guest list.  Within weeks we had the date, the church, the priest(s), the reception venue, and the photographers!  It has become a joke to everyone just how organized I’ve been in planning this.

Fast forward to COVID-19.  Early last week, before things became really scary, Sean came into the living room where I was watching The Bachelor season finale.  He proceeded to tell me about a podcast he had just been listening to and about the expected number of deaths and how this was going to continue for months and months.  This shot something that I had successfully been ignoring rattling around in the back of my brain right to the forefront.  I looked at him, with tears in my eyes, and said “are we going to have to cancel our wedding?”  Of course, being the good fiancé he is, he said of course not.  All I wanted was to shut that out and watch my mindless reality TV.  But you know what they say about opening Pandora’s Box.

It is now something I think about every day.  This is a time when I’m supposed to be stressing about seating charts, not global pandemics.  Or dress fittings, not if we have to cut our (ginormous) list down to 10 people per the CDC (impossible).  I am in a few wedding crafting facebook groups and I am seeing posts of “Change the Date” notices going out.  I feel horrible for couples who were scheduled to get married in March, April, and May.  All of that work, all of that preparation.  And those in the hospitality industry who are basically out of work while we all have to social distance, my heart goes out to you.

Since we’ve been engaged, we’ve talked a lot about being surrounded by the people we love, wishing us well on our wedding day.  It’s definitely at the top of our list of things we’re excited about for the wedding day.  I just can’t let the thought into my head that, because of this horrible thing out of our control, that might not happen the way we want it to.  I refuse to believe that I waited all this time for Sean to find me and now, with our wedding looming, fate is just going to say “nope.  You can’t have the day you’ve always dreamt about.”  Fate.  You know, that magic concept we always talk about.  Sean and I are both believers in fate.  We believe we were fated to meet when we did.  So I will keep having faith that everything is going to work out.

Last night I had a virtual wine night with my skating team.  Social distancing at its best!  It was a great time, and a distraction from everything in the real world.  I highly recommend gathering a group of friends and setting up a zoom.  We need to be able to process this all, and talking it through with each other is helpful in that.  Well…it WAS helpful until some people decided to bring some extreme predictions into the conversation.  With talk of the world being shut down until August, or next March, I had to mute them because I can’t let those thoughts get into my head if I want to stay sane.

Even though it’s difficult to ask friends to buy park tickets in the middle of all of this, I’m still planning for my bachelorette party in Disney World at the end of May.  I have to have hope that we will be able to do it.  And Sean and I have no plan to make changes to our wedding.  It is 4 months from yesterday, and we fully intend on becoming husband and wife on the 3 year anniversary of our first date.  I just keep hoping that everyone takes this social distancing seriously so we can get back to some sense of normalcy soon.

I know there is nothing I can do right now, just keep planning and sit tight, and listen to Sean when he tells me everything is going to work out and all he wants is to marry me.  In that vein, last night we started online dance lessons and Saturday we went to pick out our rings.  I keep trying to think of crafts to keep me busy.  Anything I can get done ahead of time, that I haven’t already done, I’m doing.  July 18 is going to be here before we know it, and hopefully the world won’t look so scary when it does.  One thing some friends keep saying is that our wedding, after all of this, is going to be one epic party!