Jen & Derek's Wedding

Microsoft Excel to the Rescue

The College of Liberal Arts offered some free computer classes last Fall to anyone who was a CLA student, so I decided to take their Intro to Excel just for the heck of it. While I don't know everything there is to know about Excel, I do know how to do three things for our wedding:

*How to Maintain the Guest List
*How to Organize the Budget
*How to Tick Off the Boyfriend

Items one and two should be self-explanatory, but item three is something that I gained from the class that was completely unexpected. Who would have thought that in a short three-hour class I could learn how to drive my intended absolutely up the wall?

I'll explain: I am highly-organized and even considered a career as a professional organizer...really. I love having access to information at my fingertips. Derek, on the other hand, is not terribly organized. In fact, the first time I came to his house he said, "Don't come over until 4 o'clock because I want to straighten up the house a bit first". I came over at the instructed time and, I kid you not, the house looked like a bomb went off in the middle of the living room. There were magazines, unopened mail, old Christmas presents (we met in March!), baseball hats, water bottles...you name it, it was on this floor!

By September of that year, I had pretty much done the best I could to help him out, but it was clear that drastic action would have to take place. I told him that we should have a Vikings party to celebrate the beginning of the new football season, but that in order to do that (and provide places for people to even sit) we would have to clean up the house. I volunteered my services.

I cleaned, I scrubbed, I opened six-month-old mail...the place looked great, and has more or less stayed organized since then. The other day, our friend Steve came over for a barbecue and said, "Jen, you moved in just in time...this place was a disaster before you came into the picture".

But I digress....Excel....it's caused a few problems.

I get teased alot about being nerdy, too organized, too rigid. But since I've started using Excel for the wedding planning, I've been teased even more. Call me crazy, but I like having our guests' full names in the database, not their fraternity nicknames. Maybe I'm wierd, but I like to know exactly how many groomsmen there will be, not "a couple, I don't know". I ask for too much detail apparently, and Excel, with its rigid parameters is to blame.

I think Derek just doesn't understand how liberating it is to know that at any moment you can visit your system tray, click on your Excel Workbook and see your wedding at a glance. The only system trays he pays attention to are the ones that have "CounterStrike" and "Half-Life" in them (video game reference, ignore please).

So while I plan the most expensive 24 hours of our life, I'll let him continue to ridicule me. After all, she who has the knowledge has the edge right? Maybe we will have enough money left over for our chocolate fountain at the reception after all!

Posted by tsch0020 at May 26, 2005 2:51 PM