the new eyebrow shaper

Yesterday I shaved Andrew's eyebrows. I am still convinced that plucking would be more effective, but he protests too loudly. Janna Voss (Andrew's mom) brought out the shaver and passed over the responsibility (gladly?). As I took-up my role, as Andrew's official "eyebrow shaper," I got a glimpse into our future. While we like to imagine our marriage full of cute and precious, it will really end up being more about keeping each other well-groomed and fed. And that makes me smile. Never did I think I'd feel okay about picking things out of another person's teeth, or eliminating uni-brows, but somehow it just feels right. This will be good.

The second day I was engaged, older married folk probably laughed as I boastfully proclaimed how capable of planning the picture perfect I was. Up until yesterday I felt as though I was doing quite well. After all, hadn't we picked a wedding date the second day of our engagement? Composed the tentative guest list by the next week? And purchased the perfect wedding dress? Started a registry by adding a tent? Yes, I'm sure they were laughing. And yesterday threw me for a loop.

Andrew and I are in his hometown in Iowa for the week with intent of picking a church, reception and caterer for our wedding. We started yesterday with reception venues.

After visiting three venues (which seemed as though they were hundreds of miles and thousands of cornfields away from each other), we were discouraged by the amount of money we were supposed to dish out to have a reception. Now of course we knew they were going to be expensive, but I suppose we were a little naive. Suddenly we were shuffling through stacks of papers and pamphlets and being bombarded by hidden fees. Chair covers for $2 each is not okay.

Before bed last night, I was about ready to googlemaps directions to the courthouse. The only thing that held me back was that I couldn't think of another occasion where I would get to wear my perfect wedding dress. That would be a waste. But this morning I woke up with a renewed spirit; after surviving a vicious thunderstorm that shook my bed and made me too terrified to fall asleep in case an Iowa tornado hit.

After saying a quick kitchen prayer, Andrew, Janna, and I piled into the moldy-orange juice van and headed out to another day of reception venue hunting. Clearly the prayer worked. We found our two favourite places today and will now continue to debate. Of course we each like different ones. That seems to be a rule. We have seven days to decide, but I'm hoping to make a choice before that.

So I feel pretty good now. I've mastered eyebrow shaping and I'm once again pretty confident I can plan the picture perfect wedding after all.