Pinterest IRL

I’m a big list-maker. I find it deeply satisfying to cross things off, so I’ll frequently pad the lists with no-brainers and micro-tasks. Consequently, my lists are usually 6 pages long.

A wedding, naturally, is list-central. Because I’m new to this, I looked to the wisdom of wedding websites- like the Knot and WeddingWire- to tell me what I’m messing up. They like to send me emails with headlines like, “11 months left! You have 23 tasks overdue.” So I decided to buckle down. I have no fewer than 5 Google docs going-  budgets, guest lists, potential vendors, you name it. A month or two ago, I made a doc with every task I could think of, from catering to the dress to table rentals, typing madly into the early morning with a manic fervor. And of course, my trusty Pinterest (which I’ve gone on record saying is the devil) is overflowing with all the things I’ve been meaning to get started on.

But I’m a little oldschool. I can pin and type lists until my fingers bleed, but unless they could be floating magically in front of my face at all times (Google Glass,maybe? Just kidding, I’m not a douche), I’m going to forget about them. Digital is great, but print is better, because it’s harder to ignore.

We have a weird little 3-foot wide wall in our apartment that serves no purpose other than to exemplify shoddy craftsmanship. So several years ago, when my old job was getting rid of several giant rolling pinboards, I stayed at work late one Friday to disassemble one of them and used a tiny little exacto to try to cut the boards into manageable pieces (still about 5 feet long and heavy as f***), which I carried home with me (on the subway, like an idiot). We covered them with black burlap and voila, we’ve had an 8 foot tall pinboard ever since.

Now, for the first time in its life,  it’s serving an actual purpose. The board is now the wedding command center. Nick etched a calendar for every month from now until next June onto some scrap wood- it’s still nice and clean right now, which is cute, because I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before it’s covered with arrows and crossed out things and crazy notes.

LOOK IT’S OUR WEDDING DATE

The wall is also home to a very small selection of inspiration photos, some pictures we took at the venue, the floor plan, and our working color palette. It’s funny, because the colors very close to what I was initially imagining, although it took me 5 months to finally wind my way back there. There were phases where visions of sugarplums danced in my head. There was a brief emerald green period. Seaglass and gold and pink and cerulean all did their best to tempt me. But at the end of the day, we ended up right where we belong- in the desaturated section.

I have such a b****r for paint chips and color names. Cut Diamond. Aerial View. Chipped Ice.

So now it’s there. It’s in my face, impossible to ignore. It makes me feel like it’s actually happening, even though we still have a long way to go.

Voila. That’s it, right? We can get married now?