I went to my first wedding in a pink crocheted dress and a  headlock. I was only two. My fidgety, noisy self was deposited in the back pew, and mom kept me under tight, but loving wraps. The message to Little Miss Evel Knievel (at this point I weighed about 25 pounds but was called “The Big M”) was clear: This is a sacred day, and you aren’t going to mess it up.

Dancin' with daddy at wedding no. 12.

As I grew up, weddings became a mainstay of my life. My favorite song was called “Dance Little Jean” and was about a little girl dancing at a wedding–and I sure loved to dance at weddings myself. For my large Italian family, weddings are like the food that the family grows on.  I have enough cousins that there have been a plethora of weddings. There was always a placecard with my name, a dance with my daddy and a Shirley Temple. And I never messed it up.

But the most important wedding yet is coming up: My sister’s getting married, and I’m the Maid of Honor. Enter panic.

Wedding shopping in Paris.

We’ve been subscribing to and leafing through bridal magazines since we were in middle school, so you’d think that I would be prepared for this. Plus, my other sister, Virginia, who seems to be good at everything, is going to be a second Maid of Honor, and the other bridesmaids are so awesome I consider them my friends as much as Sarah’s. But there is just so much to remember.

If we were in ancient Rome, I would be asked to witness Sarah and Seth’s wedding, and to also dress like Sarah to confuse spirits wanting to curse her on her wedding day. Today, me dressing like the bride would  be both tacky and incredibly creepy.

As things stand today, bridesmaids confuse any evil spirits by wearing notoriously hideous dresses instead of dressing like the bride. When shopping for bridesmaid dresses, Virginia and I would have quiet whisper fights about who had to wear which dress out to show Sarah. We would emerge as sea creatures turned into fabric form, and then be subjected to poking and prodding.

Mom, Virginia and I waiting for the bride. This is before the tears in the dress shop.

I hate poking and prodding. After years of being fitted for costumes and having people assigned to change my clothes for me backstage, I’m not a fan of the pinning process. I get especially nervous when you start pinning around that really ticklish skin next to my underarm.What can I say? Bad things have happened. To make things worse, some sales ladies act like you aren’t there. I mean, I know the day is about the bride, but I’m more than a living dummy. “Well this doesn’t look good on her. Maybe it’s the color? It definitely looked better on the other girl. If we put some heels on her, she wouldn’t look so short.” Great for your psyche.

Fortunately, Sarah has a penchant for style and the desire to look like she is accompanied by human beings rather than living table cloths. I love the dress she picked out for us.

Speaking of table cloths, the Maid of Honor is supposed to help pick those out. We went to a meeting about tables, chairs, and linens today. I snagged a rivet on the rear of my jeans on the dining chair. Then I got up to go to the bathroom, got the top of my boot stuck on the bottom of the chair, and drug the whole kit and caboodle around with me for a few seconds.

“That’s the Maid of Honor,” Mom said, helpfully.

Caught in the act: perfect example of Sarah getting me ready for a wedding.

I accompanied Sarah to a bridal show the other day, which was a little terrifying. Crazed vendors grab at you and say “Congratulations, when is the big day?” over and over again. Gosh darnit, look at my hand. Do I look engaged to you?

“Oh, I’m just the Maid of Honor.”

They pushed so many little cups of cake samples at me that I think they were in collusion with the dress alterers who were there. Or the personal trainers. Or the skin specialists. Is all of this really necessary?!

Of my remaining responsibilities, the chief ones are the bachelorette party, helping Sarah get ready on the day of the wedding and giving a toast. After the wedding, I’ll take care of her presents and get her dress cleaned ( I consider this payback for the time I wore her prom dress and stained it).

It’s ironic that I’ll be helping her get ready on her wedding day: She’s always been the one to help me get ready for weddings. In addition to jumping on the bed and burning my ear with the curling iron, she would tell me which shoes to wear and fix my hair.

And how do you toast one of the people who you always practiced your speeches for? In my head, she’ll be sitting there with a piece of paper counting my “umms.”

After three hours of wedding meetings today, I can’t tell you what my name is, but I can tell you this: Nothing can mess up my sister’s wedding. Not even me. I finally get that. I might feel like life is spinning on, with everyone around me changing and growing up and me left in the middle completely incapable of fulfilling my new roles, but maybe the ways I haven’t changed are my saving grace. I can barter with the psycho cake vendors, pick out perfect playlists  and debate about the finer points of different fonts, but I can also still feel like I’m sitting with Sarah in my bedroom, playing dress up bride in consignment shop slips and orchestrating the perfect big day for Barbie. My love for my sister hasn’t changed a bit–and love is what weddings are all about. 

A New Years celebration at sea last year.

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” ~Benjamin Franklin

I hate odd numbers. I always have. I recently read that this is a symptom of OCD, but if you could see                                                                                                                                       how messy my room is, you’d realize that I’m probably fine. Still, I’m happy to see nice, even 2012 arrive.

In case it’s not already abundantly obvious, I’m a bit of a goal person. Thus, I always have a list of New Years resolutions. Upon further deliberation, however, I have realized that they are sort of a strange notion to begin with. Your life starts over every time your eyes flutter open to meet a fresh new day. It will be a year until that day rolls around again. Why not make some daily resolutions?

For me, the things I’ve failed to accomplish don’t really bother me in the long term. It’s the things that I did when I was trying to get them done. I could accomplish everything on my life list and meet every resolution and still utterly fail at life. Why? Because I was a jerk with no purpose, depth or character. Maybe I’m realizing that life isn’t so much about what you do, but how you do it. Attaining goals is meaningless if you lose sight of who you want to be in the process.

So, I have decided to set some negative resolutions. What on earth do I mean by that? Well,  these are the things I’ll strive not to do in the next year (I talk to myself, so work with me, here):

1. You will not throw your clothes around your room. This is a despicable middle school habit. You should be ashamed of yourself.

2. You will not snap at your family members. A borrowed toothbrush, disrupted night of sleep or stolen article of clothing are funny, not upsetting. Act accordingly, darnit.

3. You will not lose touch with the friends you now have scattered around the globe. You miss them every day, so you know they are still important to you. Now that even nursing homes and preschools use it, you’ve finally figured out skype. Mozel Tov.

4. You will not rush. Seriously.  Watch that sunset, and don’t feel bad about it.

5. You will not reestablish the habit of going for runs at midnight. The only thing brilliant about that idea is the moon. At least carry pepper spray.

I love my heels.

6. You will not drive in high heels. This has always been a bad idea.

7. You will not cut your hair with craft scissors in a fit of frustration. Come on. That was just dumb.

8. You will not forget that you have a cell phone. Losing it five times a day, remembering to text people 3 hours later and confusedly insisting that that awful ringtone is someone else’s, all suggest that you do not, in fact, belong in this century.

9. You will not harden yourself to suffering. Let it make you sick whenever and wherever you see it.

10. You will not dismiss and accept things that are wrong.

11. You will not try to do anything on your own. That is always a trainwreck. Pray all the time.

Now it’s not to say that I won’t have other personal goals, too–but what if rather than having a weight goal, I asked myself to consider the weight of my character every time I stepped on the scale? What if rather than having goals about the grades professors give me for my work, I asked myself what grade my family would give me on my attitude while I was doing final edits on a paper? What if instead of having monetary goals I asked the swim team kids how much money they think Coach Martha’s attention was worth after 6 hours on a pool deck in July? I guess my point is that maybe I’ve been looking at resolutions in a new way. Being resolute isn’t enough. You get each day once, and you might as well focus on the things that count.

I will now introduce the new adventures expected in 2012 (DRUMROLL PLEASE!!! I’m so excited….). This list will be taking over the “Current Adventures” page now that I’m back from my big trip around the world.:

1. Being a maid of honor in my sister’s wedding.
Yeah. Big changes.

2. Teaching high school students.
Miss Martha will be teaching “Dance in the 21st Century” to over 60 high schoolers. Can you say ADVENTURE?

3. Figuring out post-grad plans
Right to work? A year of service? Grad school? Joining a rural jungle tribe? (ok, not really)

4. Traveling
You know I’ll be going somewhere.

5. Graduating College
Strange stuff happens in college. From being forced to do interpretive dance in front of the Classroom Building to having someone run into economics class in a gorilla suit, I have some memorable experiences in the rear view mirror. I’m in the home stretch at the best university in the world.

6. Working on my Life List

I have to check 5 things off this year. Fortunately it’s a long list.

7. Living at Home
I’ve heard I’m missing out by sticking around. They clearly don’t know my family. A sister navigating high school and learning to drive, another sister getting married and buying a house, a mom on chemo and a dad teaching college and being issued patents…I’d be missing the biggest adventures of all if I wasn’t here.

8. Working as a researcher
This is both one of my jobs and part of my school. One project is for someone else, and the other is for a thesis I’m writing. Nerdy that I find this exciting? I know. But hey, I’ve seen crazy stuff go down at the library. Flash mobs,a guy crawling around under the tables giving people puncture wounds? We are UK.

9. Working as a swim coach

Summer.Ninety kids ages 4 to 18. Co-ed. It’s wild. It’s the best job ever. I hope school/work let me do it again.

10. Studying journalism

I’ll just be taking whatever stories the paper needs. You go some fun places and meet some crazy people.

11. Living in Kentucky

Love where you’re at. If you’re me, that means a rope swing, a terrifying Wal-Mart, starry skies and drawling accents.

12. Hanging with the Spicy 7  

The now-famous gang of friends that has been getting together monthly since Junior year of high school. Now there are a lot more of us, but there always end up being seven when we get together. We’ve grown, flexed, gotten married and scattered all over, but we still have a blast.

13. Hanging with other awesome friends without alliterative names

Drives with no destination, bottle rockets, skype dates, midnight movies and who knows what else.

14. Meeting new people

One of my favorite things.