The Countdown

I once set my myspace headline to read: "against wedding countdowns since 1979." It's still true, sort of. I will never have a wedding countdown online--nobody would care...and some would dare to mock it. My confession is that as I type, out of the corner of my eye, I can see my little blue "Let Every Minute Count" Wedding Countdown Clock. My mother bought it for me, partially as I joke and partially because she liked it. Now that it's sinking into the lower numbers (in the sixties now), it brings with it a healthy sense of urgency and (I'll admit it) excitement.

Middle daughters strive to be different. I think this spawns from the social and emotional pressure of being compared to "the perfect" first-born, and perhaps from our relatives' needs for variety in gift buying and sports and hobbies involvement. Since every girl I ever knew started planning her wedding at age eight, I decided that matrimony was not for me. The plot thickened when a handsome first-born Vietnamese boy (who's been dreaming of his wedding since age eight) proposed to me.

Now I have a Wedding Countdown Clock, bridesmaids dresses on order, appointments with wedding industry capitalists on a daily basis, and an embarrassingly large stack of wedding magazines. Life is a tale told by an idiot...

I figure that one positive way to endure--I mean enjoy--these sixty some days is to chronicle them on this blog. We'll pretend it's not a countdown, but I might be ready to admit that often I turn into that which I loathe. Se la vi.