Trials, Schedules, and Check - Oh My!

*Programming Alert: For the next week, I will be posting exclusively - and hopefully more prolifically - about my mother's upcoming nuptials*

My Mother's Wedding Countdown: EIGHT DAYS!

At the last minute yesterday afternoon, I was invited to join my mother and sister for my mom's trial hair appointment.

For those who do not know, a trial hair appointment is when you meet with the hairstylist you will or may have on your wedding day, and they do your hair just as they plan to for the big day.  This way, you can make any comments or adjustments before a day where you're already overwhelmed and trying not to worry about a hundred (or a million) details.

Anyhow, knowing how my mother sometimes has difficulty making a decision without validation, I agreed to go.  It also doesn't hurt that, since my classes have ended, I have a freer schedule than I am used to.  So I went, leaving my house 15 minutes later than I would have liked to and arriving 10 minutes after the appointment was meant to begin.  I was the first of the three of us to arrive.  Delightful.  Regardless, everyone did arrive, my mother's hair was tried, and it looked beautiful.


During the course of this event, I learned that there were other wedding-planning errands to be run during the rest of the afternoon.  Many items needed to be checked off a list and my mother needed to change her mind and second-guess things a few times.  We booked mom's makeup artist and scheduled her makeup trial, made trips to a bridal salon to look for jewelry (we didn't find what we wanted) and to a party rental place to change about 50% of the order and decide on changing many other things.  Ultimately, my sister and I ended up wrangling my mother's vacillation - much to the relief of her fiance, who was along for all but the hair trial.  We ended up also having many conversations about people who haven't yet RSVP'd, my sister's and my hair, whether or not the men will have boutineers, and about a hundred other small but important details.


This seems to be an infinitesimal taste of what is slated for the next 8 days.  Lots of my mother feeling harried, lots of her fiance being clueless as to what she's talking about (mostly not his fault, either), and me and my sister jumping in to stop her from spinning out of orbit in her hurry to get things done.

At this moment, there are still about three hundred things that need to be settled and decided.  Partly, this was purposeful; being a teacher, my mom finished her school year on Monday and thus has had 100% "free time" since then and all the way until the wedding.  Still, organization has never been her strength (might I have mentioned that before??) and, in my selfish way, I certainly do not want to be drowning in details the day before or day of the wedding.

Right now, my task is to make sure that my mom meets with me and my sister to lay everything out and get all the To-Do's organized.  And that is task enough to contemplate for now.