What a joyous time of year, and a wonderful excuse to forget about wedding planning for awhile. "They" say that you should always plan "no wedding zones" so that you can remain sane during the planning (and retain some form of a life once the BIG DAY is over). Keith and I are pretty good at that. In fact, most of our time these days is spent in the "no wedding zone". I keep waiting for the stress to take me over once my sub-conscious realizes that this wedding is less than five months away.

   The major wedding thing we did this month was to order the invitations. What a project! Keith and I sat on a big black leather couch in Melinda's office. (Melinda owns Bridal Affairs, a discount bridal service which has been so wonderful for us!) We had ten giant catalogs of invitations around us. We went through each one slowly and deliberately putting bookmarks on the pages that we liked. After 1.5 hours we had about ten bookmarked invitations. Then we did the process of elimination. The styles of the last two contenders were completely different. We wound up with a very traditional ivory card invitation with an ivory border. As Melinda and I started to do the paperwork, I looked at Keith's face. I could tell he wasn't really happy with that decision. We went back to the books. After about another hour, we had two more candidates on the floor. We looked at them in different lights, we touched them, we polled the room to get everyone's opinion. I decided to release all control. This was obviously important to him. He wanted to make a statement about who we are and what we are about. So, he drove from that point on. He selected the invitation, he chose the font, we chose the invitation wording together. And since we were lucky enough to choose an invitation that had space for a verse, Keith chose that as well. It is very sweet, and I thank my lucky stars that I have a groom who is so interested in this major milestone in our life.

   So, the rest of the month we tried to prepare for the holidays. We bought a tiny little evergreen to put in Keith's apartment. We set aside a night to go to his place after work and decorate it. Keith, not quite prepared yet to plunge into the holiday completely, decided to burn incense and listen to Indian chants instead of Christmas Carols. I would like to think it is because he doesn't own a Christmas CD. We will have to change that next year. Or, maybe we will build a new tradition out of listening to Indian chant music while stringing the tree with garland.

   We agonized over how we were going to split the holidays. Both sets of parents really wanted to know, but none of them were pushing us. I have been carrying so much guilt around with me that I don't get home to see my parents often enough. Especially now that I live with Keith's parents, I think my family feels left out of a lot of things. Keith and I talked about what our favorite part of the holiday was and for both of us it was waking up in your PJs on Christmas morning and cuddling up with your family. That was hard. We knew we could only wake up in one spot. Finally, we decided to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning with my family in Poughkeepsie and then race back to Ridgewood to be with his family early in the afternoon.

   Keith finally shared in all the Carroll family traditions. Sadly, he slept through most of them - poor pumpkin was so exhausted from racing around the entire week. We had a GLORIOUS Beef Wellington for dinner. Mom never ceases to amaze me with her cooking talent. We made up a new game for opening a present on Christmas Eve and then Dad read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'. The next morning was the first Christmas morning that Keith and I have brought in together. It was so wonderful. Mom made breakfast and I ran around waking everyone up. That's MY Christmas morning tradition. I don't thin k anyone at home appreciates it half as much as I do! My sister and brother growl and whine every Christmas morning that I rouse them. It gives me such pleasure to be the first person they see on Christmas morning. I'm REALLY going to miss that next year.

   In Ridgewood, we arrived just after Lauren, David and Hannah. Lauren is Keith's sister and Hannah is our first niece. She spent her first Christmas wide-eyed at all of the activity. It was so nice spending Christmas with a baby. It brings back all those memories of Christmas's as a child. We had the best time taking pictures of Hannah enjoying her first Christmas. She made out like a bandit! One of our gifts was 6 pieces of our crystal that we chose for our registry. Keith and I looked at each other with a little twinkle in our eye remembering that our wedding really was coming faster than we thought. We smooched, and blissfully walked out of the "No wedding zone".

   Now we are off for our New Year's tradition, one that we have built for ourselves. We are going up to a bed and breakfast in the Adirondacks with friends. We will ski, hike, read and just plain old relax. I know we will talk about the wedding a lot, and I am ready. We still have a lot of work to do and we have to get moving!

   We wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year!