So Fiance and I have been hard at work on wedding planning. Since I am the web genius of the couple (yeah right), I'm in charge of the wedding website and Photoshopping the invitation PDF, among other things. We decided a while back that we wanted to incorporate old photos of our families into our decor. For example, we'd like to find a nice way to put up our parents' wedding pictures at our venue. We also decided - not to give a spoiler away to those of you who will be receiving invitations - to put old family photos up on our wedding website. I have been working on that, and it's a lot of fun.

The problem is that every time I look at an old picture of me and my father, I want to vomit. That sounds bad, but there's no other way to describe it. He has been dead for over 2 years - not that long, actually - and I have succeeded in living in denial and rarely thinking about it for just as long. Now my wedding is here. He will not be there. My father and I had a very difficult relationship and I never really fantasized about him walking me down the aisle or having a father-daughter dance with me before. I just kind of assumed he'd be there. And he won't. And that's kind of a big deal.

Sounds like I'm stating the obvious but when you make a strong effort not to think about someone for several years, it can surprise you that he is all you think about when your wedding's coming up. It is bringing up all kinds of feelings for me. Guilt about living in another state when he died unexpectedly one morning. Guilt about not spending his last years with him. Guilt about not appreciating him and what he had given me until after his death. It's a lot of guilt.

The easiest thing to do is to quickly click away from the pictures, but for some reason I can't look away. It's painful but I have to do it. There's only so long you can pretend that someone is still alive out there somewhere. One day you have to grow up, and maybe the day you commit to a lifelong, legally binding relationship with someone is the day for growing up.