super wedding woman!

I'm catching a red eye tonight to fly back to Minnesota for the weekend (ok really for 48 hours--I land at 6 Friday morning and leave Sunday morning) for my last trip before our big week! My mom and I have quite the to-do list for the next two days, which I have been told my poor dad is being dragged on "so he doesn't feel left out." :) I'm hoping to get a few things crossed off the to-do list in the next two days. We're getting my dress fitted one last time, hoping to find pens for our guest book that won't smear on the shiny pages, finalize the seating chart for the reception dinner, get our marriage license, make signs for parking/drop off for the wedding, buy the place cards that will tell people where they are sitting, meet with the event coordinator at the arboretum so I can tell her how many tables of each number of people I need and where I want our table to be located, look for paper for our programs for the ceremony, meet with my hair stylist to figure out how to put it up with a veil, choose and order the wine etc etc :) It'll be a busy weekend, but hopefully I'll feel pretty productive on Sunday.

I finalized our ceremony yesterday & emailed it out to our pastor, readers, and musicians--we finally have all our music, scripture readings, etc chosen, and I finalized who is escorting whom down the aisle and in which order, so I have the whole processional figured out and typed up too. (I have learned after being involved in several wedding rehearsals that is an important thing to finalize before the rehearsal--otherwise there could potentially be drama when it comes to having to make those choices of who is going to stand where at the last minute--so that's all been decided already). I also typed up a rough draft of our program, just a few more details to add before that can be printed and assembled. And I have managed to stay on top of thank you notes for all the gifts that have been received so far...So we're getting there--SO close! 30 days from tonight!! The guys keep asking Chuck how wedding planning is going and he just laughs saying, he thinks it is good, but he hasn't had to do much, except offer feedback (which he says he is fine with). And yes, he does have his to-do list, they are just tasks that will be done that week, like getting decorations for our beach party, checking us into our hotel room for Saturday night earlier in the day, ordering his groomsmen's gifts, picking up tuxes, making sure our pastor has rides from the airport etc. So don't worry, he'll be busy!

In other random updates, I'm preaching my last sermon of my seminary career tonight in preaching practicum, basically on how we as Christians are often way more like the Pharisees than we are like Jesus. It was an incredibly convicting passage for me and I am hoping for others who will hear it and what I am saying about it.

I am down to 2 assignments of my MDiv! One group presentation on the concept of "white privilege" and one 12 page paper on that same topic. The presentation is Wednesday and I'm going to have the paper done by Monday March 2nd, so I will be DONE then! In fact I've even lined up people to go out to happy hour that night with me to celebrate so I have some real motivation and accountability to be finished by then. I have to have my apartment totally packed and ready to move before the wedding, so I wanted to be done with school work by the first week of March so I have 2 weeks to pack, take stuff to Good Will, finalize wedding stuff etc, before I head off to Minnesota. That's the goal, we'll see how it goes :)

Those are the latest updates from here! Chuck is going on a surfing/camping trip this weekend with the guys for his bachelor party--he decided that sounded like way more fun than any other type of party they could throw him (and I whole heartedly agreed--a guys-only camping trip sounded like a much better option to me than alternatives...) So while I'm off in wedding-world he'll be surfing (hopefully with good waves, I feel so bad for them, they have had such crappy waves/weather this quarter, he deserves a weekend with amazing waves--he has worked SO hard this quarter and needs a break before heading into the final crunch--so I am keeping my fingers crossed for them!). Off to practice this sermon...I'll post another update after this weekend!