Today is exactly one month until my wedding day. Uno. Single. ONE.

I may or may not be officially panicking.

When we first got engaged I was determined that I was not going to plan all the details of my wedding right away, because I was afraid that over 14 months (kill me) my tastes and ideas would change, and I would be stuck with my early decisions. So I browsed blogs and wedding magazines, and tossed lots of ideas around. Lots of “maybe this would be fun” or “we could always do…” followed by, “we don’t need to decide now – we have tons of time!”

Well time is up, and my little hiatus from wedding planning that I took for oh – ten months – is back to bite me in the bum. One month sounds like a long time when you really think about it, but throw in a full-time job, five weekly training runs and three weekly weight workouts (that I will not skip), and all the normal last minute wedding stuff – it doesn’t leave much time for catch-up-wedding-planning.

I have a fierce and loyal team of bridesmaids and friends offering to help and keep me sane – if only I knew how to do that! But I do have faith that I’ll get it all together, even if I go slightly mad in the process. I have mapped out a schedule of the next month, pretty much down to the hour. Friends and family lookout. Last-Minute-Bride-zilla has 30 days to pull off a miracle!

All that said, I’m also just really overwhelmed emotionally. With every RSVP card we get back, I get a little more excited to see my friends and family. I have a great friend coming in from San Diego that I haven’t seen in almost two years, family coming in from all over the country, a good friend of Casey’s I haven’t gotten to meet yet – it’s actually a little daunting to think that all these people are coming to Cincinnati just for us, and I want to make sure they all have a wonderful visit. My biggest fear is that the weekend is going to fly past waaaaay too quickly, and I won’t have time to visit with everyone and take it all in. One thing at a time I guess.

With so little time left, I’m trying to keep my focus on the reason behind all this insanity. I am one hundred percent in love (obsessed) with Casey. I cannot wait to marry him. But if I have to, I will. It’s only one month, right?

I had big plans for a Friday afternoon blog post detailing my excitement about my upcoming bridal shower, but that was curbed by an unexpected bout of food poisoning. Instead, Friday afternoon was spent rotating between laying flat on my back in bed trying not to move and retching over the toilet bowl. Baaaaad strawberry yogurt – enough said.

Moving right along, by Friday night I was feeling normal again, enough to get out of bed and get on with all the things I had planned to do before the yogurt took my body hostage. Most importantly, I had to finish getting the hostess gifts finished for my bridal shower, which was happening Saturday afternoon!

I knew they had put a ton of time and energy into the shower, and I wanted to give them each something personal and nice to show them how much I appreciated it. After much deliberation, and many ideas, I ended up ordering three LL Bean tote bags in each girl’s favorite color, and with their individual monograms. Inside the bags were a dozen of each of my (healthy!) Pumpkin-Raisin Mini Muffins and Banana Bread Mini-Muffins. These gifts don’t say nearly enough for how grateful I was to the three of them, but they turned out cute and I think that they liked them!

Saturday, I woke up and felt like it was Christmas morning – I was so excited! I got up super early and had breakfast with Casey, who was getting ready for his own day of fun – his bachelor party! His friends drove in from all over, and it was fun to see them all together, even if just for the few minutes before they headed down to Lexington. Once the bachelor brigade left, I was treated to a short visit with Kim and Hannah, who was smiley and precious as usual.

My shower started at 2pm, so I headed out around 10:30 for my 12 mile training run. It was a breeze! I was super excited that the run went so well. I’ll attribute it to bridal shower excitement, really nice weather, and the new Keith Urban album that I’ve listened to non-stop since Tuesday. Either way, it was a great run, and it gave me a lot of confidence going into this weekend’s 20-miler (eeeek!).

I got showered and ready in my new bridal shower duds, and headed over to Lindsey’s with my hostess gifts in tow. I realized on my way over that I had forgotten to wear my engagement ring (left it on the windowsill), so I ended up having to detour back to my house, making me a few minutes late to my own party – whoops! When I did finally get there, I couldn’t believe how great Lindsey’s apartment looked! The girls had decorated, moved furniture, and gone all out – it was beautiful!

There were gorgeous, huge paper pomanders hanging from the ceilings and doorway, and I’m pretty sure that you will now see these resurrected at my wedding – i LOVE them! Chef Lindsey had made all sorts of amazing food – caramelized onion puff pastries, ham and egg bites, the famous “texas caviar” dip, fruit salad, coconut cake bites, mini cheesecakes, and more! I pretty much hovered around the food table 90% of the time.

Sarah organized a fun game where we made words out of my name and Casey’s name, and then all the shower guests used cute crafty supplies, and a bunch of pictures of me and Casey, to put together an awesome scrapbook of pictures and warm wishes – I loved it! Then I did the obligatory present opening and tried to go as fast I could do so no one died of boredom. Everyone was so nice, and Casey and I got all sorts of fun things off our registry!

I felt sort of ridiculous and spoiled with all the attention, but I was so grateful to all the girls for making me feel so special. It also made me realize just how soon the wedding is coming up – one month from Thursday – aaaah! I am in waaaay over my head with last minute wedding meetings, plans, and prep, and also organizing my biggest fundraiser of the year at work. Oh right, and training for a marathon. I’m going to do my best to keep blogging regularly, but give me a break if I start to slack.

Coming up this weekend – lots of wedding meetings and a 20-mile run! Wish me luck!