Pre-Planning - Or: Everything I know, I learned from the Baby Sitter's Club

It’s always said that all little girls practice being brides by putting pillowcases and other lacy things over their heads and saying “I do”.

One of my favorite parts of a Baby Sitter’s Club (honestly, I think I’m just overcome with growing-up-nostalgia, because I have been relating EVERYTHING to the BSC** lately. It really did set a solid foundation for so much in my life, and if you read the books and say you didn’t want to start a literal baby sitting club when you were a kid, you’re a liar. Period) book is when they’re running the BSC camp for the week leading up to Elizabeth Thomas (Kristy’s mom) and Watson Brewer’s wedding.

source | Kristy's Big Day, July 1987 (WHOA!) **

Because of the upcoming wedding, of course all of the kids are obsessed with the idea, so naturally a wedding takes place and everyone has a part (of course bossy Karen is the bride, [good Lord I was such a Karen/Kristy, but I hated them while reading]),  I will never forget the scene – in fact, to this day, I still have it in my head, right down to cousin Ashley’s busted ankle. Anyway, even though I could talk about the BSC forever (sidenote: I really do have to plug one of the best websites ever, http://claudiasroom.blogspot.com/, I’ve read every single entry and still laugh out loud when re-reading), my point is that it’s popular for girls to plan and dream about these things way ahead of time.

I didn’t. For the life of me, I cannot remember a single ‘fake’ wedding that I took part in or planned. I didn’t have time for that, I was too busy playing school (and by playing school, I mean painstakingly creating documents that would serve as my ‘attendance rosters’ and then taking attendance, creating ‘tests’ in the same manner, then getting really frustrated and sad when there was no one to administer the tests to because all I really wanted to do was grade them. . .), pretending I was The Little Mermaid (a favorite story from when I was young involves me asking, “But how does Ariel catch her breath if she’s under water all the time?”), watching and ‘playing’ Power Rangers, which later turned into watching and ‘playing’ Dawson’s Creek (in hindsight, if I was young enough to still play-act a show, I probably shouldn’t have been watching teenage dramas on The WB. Whatever, I made people call me Joey for years), and  trying to play with/avoid being terrorized by my now fiancé. No time for pillowcases for this girl.

source | I had better things to do. . . 

Over the past sevenish years, though, I have put together bits and pieces of my wedding. Not in a silly, maybe-one-day wedding binder stuffed with things that are ridiculously out of budget and obnoxious. Nope, in a very practical way that only someone with complete confidence in said wedding/fiancé could produce. Most of the time, this comes from someone who is already, you know, engaged. PLEASE. I felt the more I handled ahead of time, the better. . . so the majority of our wedding has been planned for, oh, three-four years? In fact, thanks to David Bridal’s handy dandy tool, I even created an image of what our wedding party might hopefully look like. . .last winter.

personal photo  | David's Bridal Dress Your Wedding tool

To his credit, Jon NEVER batted an eye about ANY of this. I’d show him said picture, he’d actually offer (short and to the point, mind you) insight. I’d say – seemingly out of nowhere -  “hey, what do you think about ____?” and he’d tell me without hesitating. Over the past year or so, he would even come up with things on his own. “Hey, so we’ll have a buffet at our wedding, right? None of that plated dinner crap?”

It’s been a long-standing joke that I’m a superfreak when it comes to this stuff – or any stuff, really. I’m a planner and a do-er, period. I’m also a sit-down-to-do-it-and-get-it-don-er. For example, in college, I would sit down at my computer and spend a chunk of time (varying from 1 hour to overnight) writing a paper, but at the end, it’d be done and it’d be damn good. So many of my friends would start and stop, and it worked for them, but if I did that, I’d never start again. Needless to say, it was driving me nuts to have all of these ideas and semi-plans just hanging around, unable to be executed because, well, I wasn’t even engaged. So, when I actually GOT engaged, I couldn’t wait to do everything (as opposed to just saving everything in a file for when it was ‘real’).

-        - -   I’ll warn you all now: I’m terrible at ending things. In fact, for a few of my more lenient (and appreciative) teachers in high school, I would end my boring papers (i.e., a report on a historical figure) with a similar line and then quickly summarize what I had written (ballsy, I know, but I still got A’s – whether that speaks of my awesome writing ability or my less-than-stellar High School education as a whole, I don’t know. I choose to believe the former). Regardless, I could keep this very post going forever, and I know most people don’t like super long blog posts. So, consider this The End, for now.

** anyone else able to sing the lyrics to the theme song of the short-lived TV series? “Nothing’s better than Friends – BABY SITTER’S CLUB! – ‘cause you know that your friends are always thereeeee.”

** I knew they were re-vamping some of the BSC books, but WTF ARE THESE NEW COVERS? First, they make the leap from my old school favs, but I accepted it because I got to place a face (albeit unattractive) with the names. . .but this? SO lame.