Getting married in Egypt - Part 2.5

In the past week, while preparing for our last step towards getting legally married, we learned that it's possible to have someone from the Ministry of Justice come and perform our marriage at home. It's not yet 100% confirmed, but it opened up the opportunity to throw a party and make a celebration of it. Now our families have been really excited about arranging something for us, and I've been really excited to have an excuse to make another dress.

I hurried over to my tailor and fabric shop and got everything I wanted, including a commitment to finish the dress in a week. I chose to go for something a bit bridal this time, champagne and white. Up until recently, I struggled with the idea of being a bride and having to plan a wedding. I've always loved to host events and cater to people, but I've learned that when I'm the center of attention and the party is about me, I'm super uncomfortable with that. I also don't want to annoy people with chatter about my wedding. I don't think that anyone really cares what my centerpieces will look like, or how I will wear my hair, what my dress looks like, so I try to keep it to a minimum. But one thing I've really realized is that people do care. In fact, my coworkers and friends are offended if I don't share.

So lately, I'm finding myself more and more excited about it all. I learned that when I do talk about my wedding plans, people get excited and involved. So I try not to hold back as much. We finally met with our wedding planner, I know- finally, we have 5 months to go!, but they said we have plenty of time. I felt really comfortable discussing my ideas with them. They seem to get our theme and colors, and we all seemed to get along great, seeing that we spent 2 and a half hours at the meeting!

I'm feeling more and more excited about planning this wedding now, especially when I get email confirmations from friends from home and abroad. So far we'll have almost 20 friends from 4 continents attending, in addition to all our friends and family here.

Anyway, for this weekend's party, we've been running around looking at balloons, chocolates, cakes, flower arrangements, jars, ribbons, paper, you name it. It's going to be a fun little celebration!

Off to my first dress fitting!