I haven't talked about what Johnny's been contributing as much as I should because, in part, I didn't know just how much that was until this weekend. It all kind of came clear to me on Saturday night while we were over at the Outlaws' house, the second night we stayed over, visiting. Johnny pulled me aside in the bedroom with his Mom's laptop.
"I thought we could work on our registry," he said.
I'd been going round and round trying to figure out this registry business for a few weeks by now. First I just wanted to have no registry and accept cash gifts without actively asking outright for cash because that would be super-rude. Then Mom convinced me we had to do some sort of traditional registry because a lot of our older family members would find it rude of us to not include at least a few traditional options. Then I started learning about honeymoon registries and wanted to do that. I'd made us a joint Amazon account and signed up for an Amazon registry, which allows you to select items from their site as well as to add things from elsewhere on the internet using a "Universal Registy" button you can put on your browser.
In the three weeks since I'd created the registry, I'd put a total of seven items on it -- a family bible and some other marriage books (you see where my priorities lie).
At first, Johnny had been as baffled as I was about what to do, but on Saturday, he took charge. We realized we could use some sheets and started from there. When he took the laptop into the living room and we sat together in the dark watching a movie with his family, I drifted off to sleep noticing that he was adding more items -- getting past the "we don't have room for stuff" mental block that had kept me feeling ambivalent about adding anything for fear that those items would be unneccessary and too hard to store.
When we went to bed, he showed me the things he'd added -- an awesome moderately-priced knife set, a window fan, a rice cooker, good pillows, "man food" cookbooks -- all things that we can use right where we are, in Mom's house, as well as whenever we have a house of our own. It was clear from his selections how much he'd thought about what we could really use.
That really opened my eyes to how Johnny approaches wedding planning, and planning of any sort. I'm a blabbermouth - I talk through all my steps, over and over again, working them out verbally. He mulls over things in his head until he has a clear direction, then he takes that direction thoughtfully, purposefully. That purposefulness gives all the projects he works on a stable and solid feeling that I love and respect.
What else has Johnny been working on?
- He figured out the main "dish" of our wedding -- biscuits! Biscuits are perfectly country, can be sweet or savoury, and his Mom has already agreed to help us make them in mass quantities. The first time I met Johnny's family was in October 2009, when he invited me to come make apple butter with them. I didn't know at the time that Johnny himself was the driving force behind this mission - he paid for the apples, gathered the firewood, poked and prodded his folks into helping out with their efforts and expertise. He'd love to have more homemade apple butter at the wedding, along with some jams and country ham and other biscuit-fillings. He's also given me directions to go with other food ideas: flavored sweet tea, a S'more bar, different types of cakes.
- He researched a ton of hotels in Charleston and has found all kinds of options of things for us to do, see, eat, and experience while we're there. Dinner boat tour of Charleston Harbor? Yes sir!
- Not only did he research honeymoon stuff -- he figured out how to turn the Amazon registry into a hybrid of traditional and honeymoon registries! Now we can have the best of both worlds!
lies!
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