Gooseberried

Gets a little excited at the fact that he was actually listening to me.

Me: I've decided to open up my twitter to the public again, so I'm going through all my old tweets to make sure I haven't said anything badly about anyone who should only be talked about behind their backs.

Husband:  Why?

Me:  I don't know.  Just don't care anymore, I guess.  Do you think I shouldn't?

Husband:  No, I was just wondering.

Me:  Well, listen to some of these really weird and not-worth-tweeting tweets from October.

[Reads off tweets and looks over at Husband only to discover he's busy facebooking.]

Me:  Aaaaaannnnd you're not listening...

Husband:  Yes, I am!  First you said, "I'm not going to use some random girl's chapstick."  Then you said, "Bowie's snout is in my armpit & it tickles like crazy. But the fact that she's even cuddling w/ me makes me hold the urge to flail my body." And then you said that I wasn't listening to you.  Ha!  Pssshhhaw!  Boop de bow, doop doop de dow, bam de bow!"

So, like, I'm married

We did it!  We got married last Friday and all went really well.  It was actually a really fun day.  We had our first meeting with Father Jude in the morning, who is going to be our marriage preparation counselor.  Even though we're already married, I still want to go through the prep classes especially because we want to have our Catholic wedding next year with all our family and friends.  Matteo isn't Catholic, but I try to be a good one and have always aspired to have a Catholic wedding to complete the sacrament of marriage.  I know; I'm cheesy.  But do note that I am better than most Catholics and do go to church more than just on Christmas and Easter mass.  I'm not sure if that's going to make guys like me more or less...

Then we met our parents for lunch.  It was the first time his parents met mine and his brother, Steven joined us also.  It went really well and I was pleased with how well our parents got along.  You never know, right?  Then it was time for the ceremony which, all in all, was only about twenty minutes, but there were two couples ahead of us so we had to do some waiting.  The waiting gave us a chance to take some pre-marriage photos though, much to Matteo's dismay.  He hates having dozens of photos taken of him wherein he has to stand with a smile plastered on his face which became very apparent when, after the ceremony was over, his brother, who had been given the job of photographer, was taking photos of us leaving.  Matteo looked over at him and said, "Stop taking pictures of me!!" all angry like.  If there hadn't been parents present, there definitely would have been an f-word in that sentence.  Steven didn't respond verbally to him, but had a baffled look on his face like, "Um...isn't that what I was supposed to do?  Take?  Photos?  No?"

After the ceremony, my parents went back to Heber while we met all of our friends for dinner.  There were about twenty people there including us and Matteo's parents.  It was really nice- not too big, not too small and the ambiance of the restaurant was perfect.  Unfortunately, I started getting sick the day before which started with a very sore throat and me losing my voice.  So, while I said my vows, I sounded a little bit like Satan.  Good thing the ceremony was in a courthouse and not at a church.  I don't think my Satanic voice would have been appropriate.  By the end of the dinner, after talking to everyone there, my voice was shot.  I just regained it fully today.  It's nice to be able to sing again.  Not that I do it professionally or anything.  It just makes me content to sing along to a song I hear every once in a while.

So, I gots some images for y'alls.  Steven did a good job and handled my precious camera a lot better than most of my friends do (ahem...Hannah).

Yeah, we're not looking at the camera because about seven people are taking photos of us at once and we really couldn't decipher where to look at any given point. 

Here's us and our lovely witnesses.  Mine was Sarah and Matteo's was his friend, Dominick (Dom).  It was really cute because Dom was more nervous than we were. 

Our judge was a really cool dude.  He opened with an Apache love poem and he was humorous and overall, did a really good job.  He made it feel a lot more personal than we all had expected which is really great that he was able to manage that.  

Saying our vows...

Putting the rings on!

Here's a little romantic one I'll post for Matteo's sake.  He's more romantic than I am. 

If you have any interest in seeing the rest of the photos, they're all posted to my flickr account.  I'd recommend giving them a look over, if you care, because there are a lot of good ones over there.  I didn't post any of the photos of us with our parents because I'm not really sure if they'd be comfortable with having photos of themselves published in plain sight on the internet.

All done!

My story

Although he had been my neighbor for about five months, I had never really hung out with Matt before.  Of course we saw each other.  We'd run into each other every so often which makes sense since he was my neighbor after all.  He was always polite and always offered assistance for most things, if I ever needed.  Do you need help carrying that?  Do you need a ride?  I found out later that he always sort of had a little crush on me and that pretty much explains all the offers.  Unfortunately, I've always been wildly independent and so I've always answered, "Thanks, but I think I've got it."  I'm bad at accepting help from others.

I started to warm up a little more to him when Dora, my old computer, died and he offered to take all the stuff off of my old hard drive and put it on my new computer.  Even though I didn't let him help me, we began talking a little more freely after that, exchanged numbers and started to become friends.  Soon I discovered that Matt was the kind of guy I could talk to for hours yet, it felt like minutes.  We had so much in common that it seemed he was the male version of me.  Not long after we started hanging out, I developed a crush on him.  The only problem was...he had a girlfriend.  Although this obviously bothered me, I decided to try to make the most of it anyway and accept him as this great new friend in my life.

One night, after having hung out with him for hours, I finally decided I was getting sleepy and should retire to my apartment.  When I got back, I went on Facebook and pretty much stalked his profile.  Because girls are super creepy like that.  He had never mentioned anything about his girlfriend and I was wondering how long they had been together.  I didn't want to ask because I didn't want it to seem like I liked him.  So I kept going back, back, back into his wall reading the things that people had posted.  When I discovered that he and his girlfriend were flirting on each other's walls as early as 2007, I started to cry.  I realized that obviously they had been together for almost three years and that meant there was no chance for me. I was devastated because it was that night that I realized I really, really liked him and that I was falling in love with him.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but I just knew it.

I ended up crying myself to sleep that night.

The next day, I woke up and tried to pull myself together. I took a long shower and decided while the hot water was hitting my skin that I would just have to deal with the fact that someone else had found him before me.  As hurtful as it would be, I would suck it up and accept that I would probably never get over him but would have to keep on living day to day as just friends anyway.  After all, that was better than not having him in my life at all.  It was like I was mentally preparing myself for a lifetime of feeling empty inside knowing that there's this perfect guy for me but I'll never be with him. 

How lucky I was that he must have been feeling similar things because a week later he broke up with his girlfriend and made the moves on me.  I was so happy and even though other people's feelings were at stake, I knew it was right.

From the beginning, I felt that there was something more there than had ever been with any other guy. And it scared me. I told my friend, Sarah, that I was going to force myself to take things slowly (as much as I didn't want to) because I can get caught up in emotions pretty easily. Turns out, you can't force yourself to do anything. Two months later, and we're getting married. How's that for taking things slowly?

Matteo likes to say that he "tricked" me into falling in love with him.  He definitely did.  That bastard.  But I'm so grateful to have fallen into his trap. 

Pulling my hair out of my head

As you can imagine, things have been a little busy around here.  I've been slacking hard core on my Project 365 so I hope you all won't mind me cheating a little here and there.  Matteo and I have been telling our families and friends about the upcoming marriage and that has been a lot to deal with.  Not to mention, we aren't sure when a one or two bedroom apartment will become available in our current apartment complex, so for the time being we've decided to move all of our stuff into one of our tiny little studios.  The moving aspect of it has been exhausting for both of us.  Since Matt has quite a bit more stuff than I do in all areas, we decided it would be easiest to move my stuff into his apartment versus him moving all his stuff into mine.  The only problem with this plan is that he already had his stuff arranged in a particular way.  So, adding my stuff to that has been chaos.  Matteo has done a good job though, at trying to make things as clean and organized as possible for me since I can be a little OCD about those things.  Note to self: something to work on as a new and *compromising* wife.

Last week, we were on the hunt for rings that we could use for Friday during the ceremony even though they will be temporary.  So, we took a little trip to Sedona to find some that would suit us.  I found one that I really like.  It's very Southwest and fits my personality pretty well.  Matteo's mom also sent us her mother's old wedding ring and band to use if we wanted.  Turns out, the ring is adorable.  It's a size too small for me so I'm going to eventually get it re-sized and switch off between that and my Sedona ring for the next year or so.  Matteo wants to get me a "real" engagement ring eventually, probably after he graduates from NAU.  I have no idea what I would want in a ring.  I just know that I don't want anything flashy or what every other women in the United States has.  So the soon-to-be hubby and I are going to work on that this year. 

As for other things going on, I went to an annual wedding expo up here last Saturday with Matteo and my friend, Sarah.  I have a while to plan our future public ceremony but I still wanted to go just to get some ideas especially since I know nothing about the wedding industry.  All I know is, I want to get married outside.  The expo was pretty overwhelming going from vendor to vendor all of whom were trying to push their business down our throats.  Literally.  One vendor, a caterer, actually forced us to eat one of their little chocolate covered balls of cake.  I know that sounds pretty amazing but if you've been chewing gum for hours and it's only 10 AM, rich chocolate with more rich chocolate in the center is just not appealing.  It was the only time I wished I was Sarah and could say, "I don't eat dairy or gluten."  I don't think it would be too plausible if all three of us had Crohn's disease so Matteo and I took the damn balls. 

Either way, I came home with a big bag of brochures, coupons, magazines and ideas, ideas, ideas.  I plan to go through this big bag sometime in...March.  With the way things are going, I think that'll be the soonest date I can actually sit down and organize some of these wedding things. 

On top of that, we've been looking into health insurance plans that will work for us, how to go about changing my name (it's going to take forever), organizing a lunch for us and our parents prior to the ceremony, organizing a dinner for us and our friends for after the ceremony, exercising the dogs, going to school and setting up a new budget. 

I'm crazy around here so at most, I think I'll be posting photos this week.  Hope you all are feeling visual. 

I'm getting married

Obviously, that title is pretty big news.  And I'm being pretty big serious. 

I know I've only been dating him for two months and I know that seems ridiculous.  But sometimes you just know when you want to spend the rest of your life with someone.  Especially if you can spend most hours of the day for two months with them and still feel at home.  And that's how I feel about Matt.

I know I've just barely even announced that he's my boyfriend.  But I've been a little behind on things.  Waiting out the waters, if you will.

Next Friday, the 5th of February, Matt and I will be married at the Flagstaff Justice of Peace courthouse.  His mom will be there.  My parents will be there.  Our witnesses will be there.  And us. 

Next year in the Fall of 2011, we plan on having our public ceremony and reception since we can't afford it right now.  I haven't started planning beyond a few ideas for places to have the ceremony and who will be in my bridal party, but I still have a while to go. 

I am so excited to spend the next lifetime with you, Matteo.  Even though you can be a little creepy...