With This List, I Do Shop

I will be leaving for work in a few minutes off to some location to turn a young girl into a bride.  She and her friends will talk while I work.

They will talk about the dress, flowers, rings, honeymoon, and possibly some inside family gossip.  I will ooh and ahh when I see the dress, as I do every single time I help prepare a bride for her big day.

Her big day.  Weddings are considered to be the big day for the woman.  It is assumes she has dreamt of this day her entire life.  I have heard clients, friends, and coworkers describe their wedding down to the detail long before they even have met a partner to marry.

I had my own wedding dress picked out in high school, and years later when I did get married that was the dress I wanted.  I walked in the store with the picture I had ripped out of a magazine during high school and handed it over.  It was the only dress I tried on.

I was told recently by someone that I need to make a list of everything I want in a partner.  Down to the smallest of details of what kind of books do they like to read.  Then this same friend said, "Or make a list of everything you do not want in a partner."  I found it interesting that she said "Or"  and not "and".

Last night a friend of mine went out with her best friend to cheer her up after a failed attempt at a relationship.  My friend told me that she does not understand why her friend keeps picking the wrong person, or why they people she chooses do not immediately fall for her.  Her friend is smart, funny, cute, hard working, and would be "a total catch."

Maybe she needs to make a list as well?  Maybe we all need to make lists?  Would it help to meet someone and be able to mentally cross things off the list, or check them as you got to know them?

There would have to be room in the list for flexibility.  Bargaining of sorts.  Yeah, okay so they don't like dogs, but they really love their parents.  That has to count more than the dog factor.

I think the idea of making a list of what you want from a partner is smarter than making a list of which guests will be invited to the wedding.  Eventually it will not matter if your dress cost five thousand dollars or seventy five dollars. What will matter is how excited you are each day to see that person.
When you are laying in bed with the flu you will not care what flowers you held on your wedding day, you will care more that your partner is sitting lovingly next to you rubbing your back.

Make a list.  Make many lists.  Just know that lists are made to be changed.  When you have met your "one" you will throw that list away faster than the rice is being tossed as you walk down the aisle.

My friend of a friend may not have met the perfect person yet, but I can tell her with certainty that there is someone somewhere with a list that describes her and only her.