Things that kept me happy during the wedding planning process

1. How I Met Your Mother: I had never watched it before this spring, but started taping syndicated episodes off of Lifetime and eventually started back at the beginning. I love Barney Stinson. Love him. Austin does not participate in this guiltiest of pleasure.

2. Patient coworkers: I work at the coolest company in the world, where no one ever once said, "Are you sure you need to take that 9,000th personal call?" in the midst of the planning and re-planning frenzy. Jesse especially was so, so awesome about never giving me a hard time when I was constantly having to leave early, step out for calls or just gripe.

3. (On a related note) Anna Talley: Not only do I work at the coolest company in the world, but I get to work with some of the nicest, smartest, most clever people on the planet. One of them is Anna Talley, who is so crafty, patient and generous that I'm not sure anybody, except her lovely husband Brad, deserves to be in her presence. Anna listened to every one of my crazy ideas, went crafty shopping with me, gave me advice and did independent research on projects. She made all of our fabric boutonnieres, made 15 six-foot-long table runners out of brown burlap fabric, and painted window shutters (from her own house) for our place card display. So many other coworkers helped with so many other things (Emily, Jake, Kelli, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Heather, I'm sure I'm forgetting others) but Anna was just such an asset to an event planning roster. She's a jewel.

4. Bowling: While it seemed crazy originally, Austin and I signed up for a bowling league (ok, once again, this is through my work, so seriously) that started three weeks before the wedding. I thought, "We won't have time to bowl!" but I'm glad I was wrong. I know it's not exactly exercise, but at least moving around and being competitive felt so good every week, even when I was just a ball of stress. And Austin's been learning how to do the spin bowl move where the ball curves, so he's pretty much obsessed with bowling right now. It was a good choice.

5. Sistie trip to NYC: As I previously mentioned, Casey and I got up to Brooklyn for a weekend visit to see Jenny in March. Sister time is the best time.