Now It’s Katie The Married Lady

By the time this column hits the stands, I will be a married woman. It’s strange to think that as I write this, in a matter of days I will no longer be “single,” that I will have to get used to a new last name and, in a way, a new identity.

I will be someone’s wife. No longer accountable for just myself and Mr. Pono, the wiener dog. All my decisions about life will now include someone else. I think the title of “wife” carries with it a tremendous amount of responsibility and a great deal of honor, just as “mother” or “father” does. I plan on being the best wife I can be.

That aside, after months of planning for the big day, I’ve decided I certainly never want to have to plan another wedding again - at least not my own.

“That’s the idea, right?” my fianc joked.

“Yes,” I said, a couple of weeks ago, “but I am just expressing how very stressful it is to plan your own wedding!”

Now, by nature, I am a very detailed, organized person. I like things in order and completed efficiently. But perhaps this is a bad thing when it comes to planning a wedding because there are a whole slew of things that you have to be prepared to “roll with.”

I felt like a complete mess. I was disorganized and scatterbrained. In my sleep, I kept thinking of things I had to do, then I’d forget to write them down the next morning.

I was trying to save as much money on the little things as I could, which is why I didn’t hire a wedding planner. But oh, how I wish I had.

Things as seemingly simple as ordering my favors online turned into stressful situations when days turned into weeks of waiting by the back door ready to ambush the mailman, hoping he had the package I was looking for.

I also ran into a near-disaster with my wedding dress when the size I ordered was not the correct size for me. This was no fault of the wedding dress shop - I had been measured wrongly at another place, and those measurements made my ordered gown one size too small. And again, this would have been a good time to relax and roll with it, but my need to have all the details fall neatly into place made me want to have a nervous breakdown. There is nothing worse than feeling like a pig in a tightly wrapped blanket on the one day you’re supposed to feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. All I can say about that is thank goodness for alterations.

My dress fiasco also spurred a rather frustrating attempt to lose weight, which is not terribly fun when you’re already trying to fit in work and wedding planning with little time left for exercise - and you’re the type of person who eats more when stressed.

So I’d have to say that my biggest stressors when it came to the wedding had nothing to do with a fear of being married, but rather all the details that weren’t as easy as I thought they’d be.

First of all, the RSVP cards. The first few that arrived in the mailbox were exciting. But once the RSVP deadline passed and we had a lengthy list of all the missing responses, things became stressful. We needed to know who was coming so we could figure out how much money we were spending, but we also needed to know so we could start work on the table seating arrangements.

We spent two weeks trying to track everyone down, and even after we thought we had our final count, things changed again. My best friend warned me that this is one I’d really have to “roll with” because it would probably change again even on the day of the wedding.

Then there were the table seating arrangements to deal with - so-and-so can’t sit by so-and-so, this person wants to be with that person, we have a table of six and a table of 12 and we can’t combine them into two tables of nine. And then you have to figure out where on the floor plan each group was going to go so that no one would be offended. (I’d definitely recommend having a bunch of long tables and no seating arrangement so people can seat themselves. It will save you the hassle.)

Finally, there was the music, which I had a hard time with because I couldn’t think of what songs we should play for the walk down the aisle. Live music or recorded? Sappy song or upbeat? Instrumental or with lyrics? I must have spent hours listening to different songs just to find the right one.

In the end, my friend told me it was OK to stress with the planning but that I really needed to remember that on my wedding day, I should leave the details to someone else. At that point, it was out of my hands. Whatever happened would happen.

And whatever happened would be OK because the most important thing in the end would not be about the decorations, the music or the seating arrangement. The most important thing was that on Nov. 10, 2007 at 10 o’clock in the morning, I, Kathrin Matsuko Young, would marry the man of my dreams.

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