(from ShowKnows.com)

The last thing I wrote about my upcoming wedding was this list of the Top 10 Weirdest Things About Being Engaged and this way-too-long essay on how to find a wedding dress.

Those were both written almost three months ago – a time when I was still totally and completely consumed with the planning process. I spent more hours per day than I’ll ever admit (fine, 5-6) scanning Brooklyn Bride (amazing but typically too Brooklyn-y), Style My Pretty (amazing but typically too costly), and Save On Crafts (juuust my speed). Then in August R and I visited our wedding town (yes, we’re taking over the entire town…) and crossed everything from venue contract and welcome party location to man-who-will-marry-us, DJ, florist, photo locations and all guest accommodations off our list. Oh, and duh R and I walked the entire town to pick which special spots we’ll list on the hand drawn map my friend Carly is creating.

And then the minute we got home, we stopped. And I don’t mean that I reduced the wedding blog procrastinating to 1-2 hours per day. I mean that we completely and totally ceased the planning of our wedding. And It. Felt. Awesome.

Every once in awhile R would mention something about looking into a trolley to transport guests to and from the hotels. I think I batted around the idea of creating a file for table decor ideas. If we thought of it, we’d add a song randomly heard on the radio to our on-going Wedding Songs iPhone note (I believe the latest was “Everybody, Everybody” by Black Box, which, if you instantly know what I’m talking about you’ve just earned yourself an invite to my wedding).  But seriously, we did nothing.

A few already-married friends (hi Carly, Michelle, Heidi, Kristen, Lindsey, Sarah, and Matt!) checked in around this time to see how we were holding up. “Awesome, “I said, “We’re doing absolutely nothing!” I said, which is when I first heard the term Eight Month Wedding Slump. Apparently people have been where we are, and one of them gave it a super cute name (though we can all agree that Seven Month Slump would be way better, right?).

The Eight Month Wedding Slump – I now know – is that valley between the mad cap early planning of months one through seven-ish and insanely overwhelming final planning of months nine through twelve of a one year engagement (I think. Math is not my forte). You could call it the calm before the storm, but I like to think of my own slump as more of an Ignorance Is Bliss phase. As far as I was concerned, this wedding was locked and loaded. I could get married in six weeks given all the planning we’d already done (somewhere my mom just broke out into hives)!

That is – that’s how I felt until my first wedding nightmare. Apparently this is a thing too…

My bridesmaids and I were all in the bridal suite (which in this case was a room at the Magic Castle here in LA, of course). Everyone was stepping into their dresses (which were costumes from Downton Abbey, obvs) as we prepped to meet R and the groomsmen (one of whom was Fred Savage, hahaha). It was somewhere around 30 minutes before the wedding. And then my sister Dani turned to me and said, “so, when are we going to get our hair and make-up done?” at which point I looked directly into a standing mirror (Californians from SNL-style) and screamed bloody murder. I had forgotten to make appointments! Everyone’s hair was still wrapped in post-shower towel turbans!! It. Was. A. Disaster!!!

The next morning I made a new to-do list and looked into all the salon options in town and that night I spent roughly three hours trolling the wedding blogs.

As of October 1st we will be approximately seven months out. I’m going to fight falling back into full-on planning for at least another month, partly because I’m not sure I can handle go-mode quite yet but mostly because Seven Month Slump really does sound much better…