No spiders in the entryway this morning. There was a centipede, or maybe a millipede (at 2 in the morning I wasn't going to hunker down to check its leg-to-segment ratio). But it was minding its own business, moving slowly away from my apartment, and anyway, I'm not afraid of them. So that was a good thing.

Matt and I will be leaving work a touch early today so we can go home and change clothes for a wedding rehearsal. (I've never figured out why people dress up for the rehearsal, but it's their wedding; I'll wear a dress if they want me to.) They've scheduled an hour-long rehearsal, which means one of two things: They're doing something moderately complicated with the processional, or they're worrying way too much.

I suspect the latter.

So anyway, Matt talked to Tristan last night to confirm the plans. And they've got all these great schedules that I'm pretty sure are going to collapse entirely. Matt thought I was being negative when I laughed at the schedules, but I really wasn't. It's just that when you've got twenty or more people to organize, schedules like that just don't work. Twenty to thirty people (I'm guessing at the numbers, here, but they seem reasonable) don't eat dinner at an exclusive restaurant in less than two hours. (Heck, twenty to thirty people can't even travel the mile from the church to the restaurant in the scheduled half-hour.) I don't know why, and it irritates me, too, but Tristan and Heather are already going to be frazzled and irritable when the schedule slides, so there's really no point to me being frazzled and irritable as well. As long as I'm not the one holding up the show!

So Matt and I are leaving work early to change into something nice for the rehearsal. (Matt asked Tristan what the dresscode was, and Tristan said, essentially, shirt and tie, but "not a dress tie!" I'll wait while you finish chuckling at that.) After the rehearsal, we'll head to the rehearsal dinner, which I'm pretty excited about, since I haven't eaten at this particular very nice restaurant since my sixteenth birthday. Then we'll go home and change into jeans again, and we'll meet the younger crowd at the bowling alley for the bachelor party. (Don't say anything. Heather will never have to worry that Tristan did anything untoward or illegal at his bachelor party.)

So, aside from the rehearsal (which will be boring because I'm not part of it) and waiting for twenty or thirty people to get their collective butts in gear, tonight should be fun. I'm not sure about Saturday, though.

The groomsmen are having photographs taken before the wedding, and then they'll arrive at the wedding in a limo. Which means I'll be dropping Matt off at the hotel at about 11, and going to the church on my own, alone. (I don't like being alone. I especially don't like being alone when I don't know anyone else - and I'm pretty sure that the only people coming to this wedding that I know are going to be in the wedding party.) But at least it's a wedding, which is a spectator sport and I won't look like a wallflower if I'm not making conversation. I'm a little more dubious about the reception.

When I was in college, I went with my boyfriend P. to his brother's wedding - P. was part of the wedding party. I had met P.'s brother and his fiancee on several occasions and liked them both quite a bit. This was a seated dinner, and the wedding party was seated at a long head table. I was seated with P.'s family, which was a nice touch since P. and I weren't even engaged. But P.'s grandmother is one of the most disagreeable old ladies I've ever met in my life, and someone who wasn't thinking had seated this two-pack-a-day smoker between two non-smokers. And without coordinating, both of us managed to ask her to move her smoke to the other side of the table. (We were both polite enough not to ask her to put it out, notice.) But I was the second requester (having missed the first) and she blew up at me. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and angry, but I didn't know anyone else present, (except the people obviously having so much fun at the head table) so I couldn't do anything but excuse myself. Due to someone's obnoxious planning, P. was expected to dance first with a bridesmaid, then with his new sister-in-law, then with his mother, then with his awful grandmother, and only then was he excused to either dance with whoever he pleased or not dance at all - so I was left alone and miserable all the way through dinner and for about forty-five minutes afterward. It was one of the worse experiences of my life, actually. (This memory was, by the way, the one that spawned my side of the table argument.)

Now, I'm sure this won't be anywhere near that bad. For one thing, I'm not as emotionally dependant as I used to be, so I'm sure I can survive some time without my husband. And my allergy to smoke isn't as bad as it used to be, and I've figured out since then that no one is going to care if I discreetly move to another seat if the one I'm assigned isn't working out. (Actually, this is a mid-afternoon reception, so I'll be surprised if there are assigned seats at all.)

It's just that I'm a terribly introverted person, and even more so when I don't know anyone I'm trying to talk to. So I worry about things that really aren't that important, like whether I'll find anyone to talk to or dance with or if I'll just spend the whole afternoon sitting in a corner. Stupid, I know, but what can you do?

Anyway, I'm sure I'll feel better when I actually get there. And I've been told that several girlfriends of groomsmen are coming along to the bowling party, so maybe by tomorrow I'll have met some other people to hang around with. I just wanted to whine a little. Just in case.