Is any bride truly sane?

In a past life, I was an event planner. Today, I organize a high-powered Hollywood executive's life. I am a planner. I am detail-oriented. I am good at this. These are my strengths. When I told a friend I was getting married, she, a wise, married woman, told me to forget my life until August because I will eat, sleep and breathe wedding. I scoffed at her citing my planning expertise.

My apartment and my fiance's are littered with wedding magazines (all mine). I am madly ripping pages out that inspire me or have a good idea on them like making my guests dress up in costumes to have their pictures taken for the guest book. How fun! Escort cards clipped to a clothes line? Love it! And thank god Martha told me about escort cards because I had 1) no idea they had a name 2) were so bloody important 3) had to coordinate with the rest of the stationary/theme. Yes, I used to plan events. Did I mention I am a little non-traditional and I mainly did the food and flowers?

Because I am an organizer, I made the requisite "wedding planning binder" complete with tabs. It doesn't have one real contract from a vendor in it yet, but is starting to burst with ripped magazine pages. I'm thinking that if I get all of the ideas in there, shake it up and sprinkle it with fairy dust, my dream wedding will manifest itself. Maybe mice will sew my dress and Jimmy Choo will courier over some glass slippers.

On Sunday, I woke up early with ceremony ideas, flower arrangements, dress patterns and chicken satay floating around my mind. By the time my fiance woke up an hour later, I had moved the wedding from North Carolina to Hawaii's North Shore. There is a house in Haleiwa I know of that we could use for a wedding. I could wear a bunch of leis and my fiance could wear a mali'i leaf one like the old kings did. We could be barefoot. We could have fresh ahi from the fish market and my dad and brother could sashimi it. But wait. If we did it in Hawaii, a lot of people couldn't afford to come. We would have way too much ahi left over so who would cater the food? That's when I realized it didn't matter where we had the wedding. I'd still have to deal with the minutia of planning.

My fiance still had his eyes closed when I said, "I think it might be cool to have a candy bar at the wedding with traditional German (he's German) and American candies." He opened his eyes and stared at me. It was at this point that he told me I needed to put the wedding magazines away. I wouldn't say he banned them, but I can tell he's ready for his sane woman to return. So am I, sweetie, so am I.