{photo by Ashley of Texas Prep}
I love to host a good party. I love how my home feels when it is full, when people are coming back and forth from kitchen to living room, when laughter and music fill the air we breathe, and late nights become very early mornings.
But I also love quiet. I love sitting on my couch and sipping hot chocolate. I love listening to silence and reading a good book and folding hot piles of laundry when I know there’s really nothing better to do.
This month, as I’ve been pounding away at the keyboard, sharing my thoughts on this thing we call celebration, I have been in the middle of planning one of the very best kinds: the wedding of a friend. My childhood kindred spirit, the maid of honor in my wedding, called me back in March, asking if I could help her sister as she planned her big day. She is my best friend, and so I said yes. Since then, there have been hundreds of emails, a few scattered phone calls, weekly coffee shop meetings, and details that I don’t think I gave a second thought when I planned my own wedding nearly three years ago.
It has been a learning experience, and next Saturday, it will all come to fruition. I am nervous. I am anxious. I am concerned that I cannot make all of the dreams and the details and the design come together just as she has wanted. It is pressure to plan someone else’s day for them. When it is your own, catastrophe and chaos are your own fault, and somehow, everything always seems to work out anyway. But when it is someone else, the game changes entirely.
This weekend marks the final Saturday before my friend’s sister walks down the aisle, before I work diligently to make her visions come to life.
I am determined to stay quiet.
The past few weeks have been chock full of planning and preparation, but this Saturday, I want silence. I want to sit in my home. I want to bake. (It should be known: I rarely want to bake.) I want to cook a nice meal for me and Jordan. I want to read the book I started a month ago. I want to take deep breaths and not think about aisle runners and rainy forecasts and ushers who forget their tuxes. I want to take naps when the sun hits the couch just right. I want to watch football. I want to buy a pumpkin. I want to sit in the house I have worked so hard to organize and clean, and I want to enjoy it.
Celebration, when done right, encompasses so much of this life. Every day, if we want it to.
This weekend, I want to celebrate the calm before the storm, the quiet before the chaos. I want to take deep breaths and enjoy this all-too-brief season before it passes me by.
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What are you celebrating this weekend?
P.S. - The winner of the CD giveaway was commenter #10, Meagan from Mo Pie, Please. Meagan, email me your address and I'll send a CD your way!
5 comments:
This sounds like my very favorite kind of celebration. Calm. Quiet. Peaceful. I hope your weekend is full of sweet rest.
I love "me time". I love having a list of little but huge things I want to do at the end of the week. I love finding joy in the smallest thing such as a clean home. Sounds like a wonderful weekend!
The weekend you have planned sounds fabulous. It's just what you need before the big celebration!
I know the wedding will be wonderful, because I know you! :) Can't wait to hear how it goes!
I know I haven't been commenting much, I've been so busy, but I have been reading your posts and they are inspiring! This was such a great idea! Hope you enjoy this calm before the storm!
P.S. I'm having a music giveaway over at my blog! Stop by and enter!
I hope you have a fabulous weekend of rest these next few days, and a fabulous weekend of loud, exciting celebration after that!
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