The wedding is getting closer and closer. Now is the time most everything should at least be decided on. Of course this is not so. I'm pretty good at procastinating in general, but there were too many things I just didn't want to think about. I'm pretty much doing the planning and everything on my own. And the money.... well Mom has offered, but we wanted to pay for it ourselves. And organizing things and asking mom for money and nailing down how much they should give us... I just didn't want to deal with it. And they can only give us 1000 or so anyway. Which I'm extremely grateful for, but with our zilch and there little bit... that still only leaves a little bit. But the wedding is in July and we've been engaged for over a year now, so it's time to buckle down.
  So we come to todays dilemma. I finally have a theme and mood I absolutley love. I've been all over the place, but since I decided last week to step it up a notch I've come up with ideas completly different to anything I was thinking before. And I love it. It's outside by a river here in Alaska, and I decided it will have a woodsy theme. Lots of moss and leaves and branches and those lovely ivory morrocan inspired lanterns in my wedding idea list. So I want my dress to be in ivory or cream with maybe some brown accents. I want something casual and pretty and flowy, with a sort of wispy almost fairy like quality. Lace and ruffles are always good. But finding it...in my size....... and not hurting my mothers feelings.
She wants to make my dress. She wants to use her old lace curtains and some bridal satin and a pattern she has. It might actually be what I want...but there are a few problems. Not only does it not realy sound like exactly what I want, I son't want my mom to make my wessing dress. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom and she is very talented. But this is my wedding. I want to be the bride. I am looking at a custom dress, and whoever I choose I really want them to give me input and have their own vision, but as the bride I do want it to reflect me and what I want and what looks good on me. Moms vision tends to overrun mine. Someone told me thats because Moms are used to being the boss when it comes to their children. But whatever it is she does things her way. I'll have an idea, she likes it, she changes it, I give input, she thinks about it, and then she does it her way. Which is fine and I get it, but this is my wedding and I want to feel like the bride. I also don't want to hurt her feelings if I want it changed somehow, and I don't want to settle on something thats not what I want because of that. I'm sure she could do a perfect job and make something I loved....but I would rather go to someone else. I feel realy guilty about it though. I think she realy wants to do this. And we don't have a lot of money. So this is realy upsetting me and I can't ask them to pay for a dress when she'd already gearing up to make one.
   I finally told why I'm upset to Mike. His answer was to take out a loan. We're going to do it tommorow. Take out a big loan, pay off the old one and use the money to tie up loose ends and start buying stuff for the wedding. I'm already well on my way to finding that perfect dress. I've even talked to multiple artists already to find the one who can make a dress for this chubby little bride to be at a price I can afford. Not only are we taking out a loan, but now I have to tell my mother that we are buying a dress she could probably make herself. Somebody please tell me I'm doing the right thing. I've found some wonderful artists whose past work is in my price range and style I love. But I keep feeling that guilt.

   I tried posting this using my brand new dsi...but it didn't work. I could write the blog, search for the item.... I can't drag. The blogazine writer wants me to drag...can't do it. But it handled everything else pretty well for such a little machine with very little working memory. I browsed Etsy and added some items to my favorites, read some blogs, did some web searches. And I obviously didn't buy it for it's web browser, so it's a nifty little perk. It's weird to get used to, I normally access the web on a computer...no fancy mobile devices for me. My phone is a phone. It makes calls. That and the alarm are all I need. But I'm enjoying my new toy.
   The point is though, is should I have bought it in the first place? I quit my job recently, after only 3 months no less. Mike works at McDonalds. There is not a whole lot of income rolling in. I Wanted one, and stared at the pictures all googly eyed, but I knew I didn't need one. So when I was trying to ask Mike what things we needed most and what we should spend our little bit of extra money on, I didn't expect him to say a dsi. He had pulled up Target on the computer I was using and there it was staring, and he said buy that or $70 dollars worth of other stuff. He told me that those were my choices and then he left. I agonized over the decision and eventually left the computer, telling my self I needed to not spend any money at all today. I explained to Mike when he got back that I needed to think of all the stuff we need and carefully prioritize. But that new toy was there and I kept saying
  " I want it...or think I do, but we don't need it." And Mike finally said
  "We're getting it." He was incredibly firm and said over and over there was no turning back. And it was pretty easy to give in. We aren't the kind to spend tons of money on silly things. We always talk ourselves out of movies and games and rarely make big purchases that we don't realy need. But with economy the way it is do we need a new toy? I have a ds lite Mike got me the Christmas before last (I think Mike likes the idea of having two) and we have a wii and an Xbox 360. So the question in the end is how much fun money is too much? Where's the line between keeping your sanity with a little something for yourself and being frivolous?