Double trouble

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This entry is a continuation of last week’s blog, which you can find here!

Last week, I filled you in on the fact that one of my younger sisters, Caitlin, got engaged to Tom last October. They planned a very long engagement so that they could be married over the Memorial Day holiday weekend in May of 2013.

During Tom and Caitlin’s engagement, Coach Love proposed to me, and we decided that it would make the most sense for us to get married in March of 2013, so that we could go on our honeymoon during his spring break. Following alumni tradition, we immediately announced our engagement in the “Notre Dame Magazine,” one issue after my sister’s announcement was published.

Well before the official decision and announcement, however, we had to heavily weigh the pros and cons. I knew that the timing was getting awfully close to Caitlin’s wedding, and like I said last week, a battle was sure to be had the closer our date crept to hers.

When we thought about a shorter engagement, there were a lot of reasons that we stayed away from the end of this year and early 2013.

I have always wanted a spring wedding. It was one of the few things that I did not want to compromise on and didn’t feel like I should have to compromise on. I knew what colors I wanted, I knew what kind of dress I wanted, and I knew that I wanted our wedding outdoors, so the end of this year just wasn’t going to happen. Obviously, little sister’s May wedding put a kink in that plan.

Some things we had to consider when setting our wedding date:

1. August-September 2012, OUT: First, these dates were way too early. I really want to marry Coach Love, but the thought of planning a wedding in four or five months just wasn’t going to happen, especially because I had the bar exam two weeks ago and no planning would have occurred before then. Several well-intentioned family members wondered why we couldn’t have done it in this time range, and I wanted to deliver a well-intentioned blow to the head. Honestly, I thought it was kind of ridiculous and selfish for them to ask, but people don’t always understand what they’re not a part of, so I had to take these “suggestions” with a grain of salt. Additionally, one of my cousins is having a massive wedding in September, so I knew I was going to see more than enough of my mother’s side of the family for several months.

2. October-December 2012, OUT: Coach Love teaches high school, so he couldn’t take off enough time for a honeymoon until spring break. Normally, Christmas would be a fabulous time for a tropical honeymoon, but since Love coaches basketball, his longest practices and most important tournaments are all over the Christmas break. This has led to more than enough arguments and disagreements over the past four years to keep our wedding from adding to the pile.

3. January-February 2013, OUT: Having the wedding after the holidays was a possibility, except Love coaches through January and there’s still this little horror called the bar exam dangling over my head. If I failed July’s exam, the next one is not until the end of February. Even with a March wedding now, I’m terrified of what happens if I have to retake this beast. So January and February were out of the question.

4. April-July 2013, OUT: Don’t get me wrong, my sister would probably be thrilled if I chose the weekend after hers (any weekend after hers) to get married, but given that I do want at least five family members at my wedding, too, I put a two-month cushion around Caitlin’s May 26th wedding date. When we moved to South Carolina in the early ‘90s, we moved several hundred miles away from any family we had. I knew that my wedding date needed to allow enough time for family to possibly travel to both weddings, so two months was a minimum. This blocked out the last week of March through the end of July.

5. August-the end of 2013, OUT: Not only do August and September sound like horrible times for a Southern outdoor wedding, but we were again getting into a time of year that I was just not going to get married. In all of the times I’ve envisioned my wedding, there was never a hint of burnt orange, red or brown to be had. I wasn’t going to do it to myself, and all of the same problems popped up again with Coach Love’s school and practice schedule. Cross country workouts start at the beginning of August, so there was again no chance for him to get a break. I wanted to take a mini-vacation for my birthday last weekend and to celebrate finishing the bar exam, and he told me that he couldn’t because of practice. (Why am I marrying a coach again???)

After about August 2013, the wait was just getting way too long to get married and I realized that I was putting myself into the same year-and-a-half long engagement situation that I was criticizing my sister for. Also, professionally, I didn’t want to be practicing under my maiden name for too long before having to change it.

Reassessing the calendar we’d created, written over, and crossed through more times than I could count, we realized there was a chance that we could squeeze our wedding into March. Was it ideal for an outdoor wedding? Absolutely not, but Caitlin’s wedding needed enough cushion and we thought two months would be okay. Also, Coach Love’s spring break fell neatly at the end of the month, and it seemed like the perfect time for some decompressing. Without knowing if and when I would have a full-time job after law school, March seemed like enough time to both find a job and sweetly beg off about eight days. If anything, the wedding might be a bit too cool outdoors, but in a wedding dress with professional hair and makeup, I’d take too cool over too hot anytime.

As stressful as simply picking a date actually was, breaking the news to my sister and parents was much more difficult. Read more about that next week, as well as how this week’s weigh-in turns out at Flex + Fit.

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