Three Weddings and a Dissertation

May is officially here. It is alternately the month of weddings, the month of finishing up the first half of my dissertation data collection, and the month of closing a significant chapter of my life (i.e, finishing my job, selling my car, and moving in with TMH). Big month!

The May wedding circuit kicked off on Saturday on TMH's home turf. We went to see his oldest friend (from 2nd grade!) get married. It was really fun to meet a lot of TMH's old friends; I don't know this group very well and many of them will be coming to our wedding. The wedding was at an enormous old Catholic church. I haven't been to a lot of Catholic weddings and I really enjoyed it. The church was beautiful and the priest was really funny, and TMH gave a reading (he kept calling it the Prayer of the People. Um, try Prayer of the Faithful. Of course he did a wonderful job). It was one of those weddings where there was a three hour gap between the ceremony and the reception (Just a note: if you don't want people to get completely wasted at your wedding, that's not a good model. What are people supposed to do for three hours? Clearly those reunioning all decided to go to the bar). TMH and I were of course more responsible. We spent the time visiting with his parents, and THEN we went to the bar where Buffalo wings were first made (Really! It's a good story. I am getting to be quite the expert on Central/Western NY. But the accents...). The reception was nice, except that people were pretty drunk/rowdy and the bride and groom had to do their fair share of corralling the wedding party. Now that TMH and I are getting married we are much more attuned to all the nuances that go into a wedding. I also teared up multiple times. Jeez. I barely know these people and I couldn't keep it together; how am I going to be when it is MY good friend (in 2 weeks), much less myself? Weddings have a new meaning for me now. I also started thinking about TMH's family and how they are becoming my family. I feel really lucky on that front. In addition to his parents, we got to see his sisters and my future niece, who is cuter than ever (Aunt P! Aunt P!).

Next weekend we are going to wedding #2, for TMH's good friend from business school. That will be fun because I know many of those people from when TMH and I lived here together. Of course wedding #3 is the big event for me: MY oldest friend (from 6th grade), and the opportunity to go home and see my mom and many of my old friends, and go to the beach.

So, the May wedding circuit is exciting, but exhausting, and in the meantime I have to focus on all of those other big things going on in May. I had a meeting with my advisor on Friday and I have developed a good plan B and C for the dissertation that I plan to implement later on today (no one wants to get an email on Monday morning, right? Monday afternoon or Tuesday is much better, I think). I just have to keep plugging away. Then I am starting to wrap things up at work and figure out my moving arrangements. So far so good on that front as well. So here we go......