And twenty-five days to go...

I feel like I'm just now hitting the ground running. And boy, is it rocky ground! Well, not so much rocky as having the occasional washout, downed tree and a bunch of roots just waiting to trip the unwary.

But the view sure is nice!

With less than four weeks to go, we are definitely looking at the homestretch, which, as I alluded to earlier, just seems impossible given that we've been rather lacksidasically planning this for almost ten months. Where did those months go? And what was I doing wasting them when I could have been writing our ceremony, or making programs, or buying shoes, or any of those things it didn't occur to me to do?

Still, headway is being made. We've spoken to all the people who are doing readings. We've booked the pier. The ceremony is mostly written, and with that done, programs are not far behind. Saturday is 'hair day' at the Creekside Salon, where I will get some hair cut and coloured and other hair removed (now isn't that Too Much Information!).

Eyebrows, silly!

The weekend after, we're in town picking up last minute stuff. A whole weekend of shopping! Steve'll just love that...

And the weekend after THAT we're going to Victoria for Jody and Julia's wedding. They got engaged in January, but May 12 was the best day they could get at their location. No offence, guys, but when I look at my to-do list, I do hate you. But just a little!

And the very next weekend Steve & I will do Our Thing and get married ourselves. Oy vey!

We're making time for other stuff besides weddinging, as otherwise we'd go mad. On Saturday we took advantage of the not-pouring weather to go up to Smuggler's Cove and go for a walk. It's not really a hike per se, as it's pretty gentle, but it was nice to get out all the same. We saw some charming little lillies: Steve says they're Fawn Lillies.



Smuggler's Cove is worth a visit. It's about 15 minutes drive north of Sechelt, so about 35 minutes from Gibsons. It has a beautiful protected rocky coastline and bluegreen lagoons. The trails are nice and they have interpretive signs. The arbutus trees are HUGE!



Angel and I walked up and down some log-bridges down by the water, which made Steve a little nervous. Not quite as nervous as when I convinced him to walk down one himself.



On the way home, we stopped the car on the side of the road to look at these flowers. Steve hasn't told me what kind they are.



Forgive me the metaphor, but this stage of planning really is like the trail through Smuggler's Cove: sometimes broad and flat, other times tricky and steep, but always beautiful and natural, with moments of exquisite loveliness. And, most wonderful -- we walk it together.

*sniff*

And... 28 days later

So. In four weeks exactly, we'll be married.

I've been having little milestones all week: on the 19th, I was thinking 'one month'; today, of course, it was 'four weeks'; tonight it's that at this time, in four weeks, we'll be Mr. & Mrs. Quattrocchi tearing ourselves away from The Best Party Ever and wandering back to the Sunshine Lodge for a well-deserved rest.

Has it really come up this fast?

Birthdays and bootcamps and bad bloggers, oh my!

So.

It's been busy around here! After Steve's birthday... well, I barely remember the sequence of events, but lots happened.

We went hiking. A lot. Fortunately, the boot camp exercise program I've been doing has really paid off and when we went up Mt. Daniel (a hike that Just About Killed Me last May), I was able to rest step my way up the entire way without a break. Well, we took one break about halfway up to smooch, but that hardly counts as a rest! It was a huge boost to my confidence and helped us decide to re-do the West Coast Trail next summer. We're going to try and go in June 2008 and I'm VERY excited. We also went on a little hike from Lower Road down to the beach through... shhhhh... Camp Byng. We hiked along the beach a little and through a headland (well, under a big tree that was blocking our way).

Steve took the opportunity to take a photo of me scrambling ungracefully through the gap:



He did not give me the camera in order to return the favour, but I did take it off him long enough to take some very silly photos:




Mind you, I also took some very nice photos, some of which will be used for his profile on some stock photography website. Isn't he handsome?





And the dog is cute too :-)

Obviously boot camp went very well; good enough for me to sign up for round two in April and May. In fact, I'm even getting up *gasp* at 8am on a Saturday tomorrow in order to make it to Davis Bay for 9am boot camp. Angel has been coming with me: she loves getting out and running around, though she does wish I ran a little faster...

Wedding planning has been going gangbusters. Today we went to the Government Office in Sechelt and got our Marriage Licence -- now THAT made it feel even more real. I stood in that office with my right hand raised and swore we were getting married.

In March we spoke to an amazing flower person, but decided the budget wouldn't really support it when we realized how many people were really going to come... which is many. Many, many many. Many. Speaking of, RSVP please! We even have a cousin coming from England (hi, Andrew). I'm actually very content to do the flowers myself. The size of the wedding has meant that a lot of the personal things that I wanted to do were falling by the wayside: catering, large hall etc. That's great in that we really wanted to be as inclusive as possible and bring as many people together for this rite of passage, but I was starting to feel a bit like a bystander letting all the vendors do everything for me. I'm glad I hand-made the invitations; I'm glad I can make my own flowers.

How's this for an amazing bouquet made of all Coastal flora? It's from a wedding that was held on the property that Di lives on. Admittedly, this was August, so many things won't be available to me, like the blackberries. I still adore the idea of a ditch-flower bouquet.



The dresses have arrived early, but I haven't had a chance to lay my hands on them yet as Steve didn't have the COD cash on hand yesterday (a result of them arriving early) and we weren't home for the UPS lady today. I'm Very Excited about seeing them and slightly less excited about entrusting them to the mail as I disperse them to Lisa and Alex. Eek!

I've also been ordering all sorts of exciting stuff off eBay -- paper bags, bra, sparkly things... though we did actually find a perfectly acceptable top to wear with my outfit at Costco of all places. Thanks, Gayle, for rooting through a mountain of shirts to find one in my size :-) I'm still hoping Alex and Tracy will make it down in early May to go shopping in Bellingham -- even if I don't find anything better, it will be a tonne of fun (funne?).

I've also ordered a few Turkey tourist brochures and a road map from eBay as we're getting just as excited about the honeymoon as the wedding (plus there's way less stress associated with the honeymoon.

Here we are earlier in the week, having dinner at Molly's Reach and practicing taking portraits in dim light:





Did I mention we were in town last weekend for Easter/my birthday? That's when we went to Costco, among other places. Our wonderful roommate Tania helped us get a carpet cleaner for her wedding gift to us, so I picked that up at Walmart, and got myself a whole wack of capris at Old Navy. Thanks to the boot camp for getting me down a size or two, and thank you Steve for getting me the boot camp for my birthday pressie! On the Friday, after catching the first *yawn* boat into town, we went to Granville Island. We walked some of the Seawall, went to Opus and Steve took some photos of the market to practice taking photos in the markets in Tukey.





Have you noticed a fixation?

Wedding Turkey Wedding Turkey Wedding Hiking Turkey Wedding Turkey eBay Wedding Turkey Wedding Turkey Wedding Turkey...

Tonight I'm sitting at Di's house listening to music: there's Di, Steve, Barbara Lee (whose birthday it is tonight), Erynn, Fraser and Heather all playing amazing Celtic music. This room just rings so bright with all their tunes. Tonight life is its usual normal, magical, glittering self.

Tomorrow it will be five weeks exactly until the wedding and I keep scouring to-do lists to see what I have forgotten. I'd make a list of my to-dos but it would scare you. So I won't.

This weekend makes a good start, though. I'll have clothes, so even if I'm barefoot, at least I won't be naked. We have a marriage licence. We met with Helen last weekend, so we'll have an officient. All we really need after that to get married are two witnesses and a pen to sign the documents. Everything else is gravy.

We know we have a hall with reasonably comfy chairs, awesome food and wonderful music. The gravy looks pretty good, eh?