Conclusion: I should probably chill out.

I designed my wedding invitations today.

No, I'm not engaged. No, I don't have a boyfriend. No, I've never even been mildly close to having a boyfriend and I've never even been kissed (oops did I say that out loud no calm down you're only eighteen it's going to happen someday just maybe not soon oh no what if my first kiss is over the altar that would be so embarrassing). I just, you know, designed my wedding invitation and named my first child and all that. No big deal.

This isn't actually a new thing for me; after all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl is going to plan her wedding long before she can legally drive. Or get married. It probably depends on the state.

I designed my first wedding dress in fourth grade. I kind of went through a dress-designing stage. Somebody gave me an awesome pack of mini colored pencils for my birthday, and I filled two whole legal pads with one dress design after another, each colored in to perfection and representing the height of fashion, at least in my nine-year-old mind. I still remember the white A-line dress with wide straps and strawberry-printed fabric. Man that would have been a cute dress. I had scruples that it wasn't modest because it didn't have sleeves; at this point I can't actually remember my justification for designing it anyway. Probably wearing a sweater over it, although come to think of it I'm not sure that type of layering was really in style for that season and my age. Ponchos were really more the thing. I counted 17 ponchos on the playground on the first day of fourth grade; the only way to top a poncho (mine was pink with a sparkly butterfly on the front) in the hierarchy of fashion was to wear a miniskirt over your jeans, even better if the miniskirt was also denim. If you had all three? Dang, girl, you is in style.

Somehow my sleeveless scruples were forgotten in designing my wedding dress. The only pretense at sleeves for this masterpiece were little petals of chiffon, designed to look like butterfly wings as they covered the shoulder (I guess it was a thing. What fourth grader doesn't love butterflies?). I wouldn't have known it was chiffon at the time, but I certainly knew exactly the kind of fabric I would have used for each portion of the dress, down to the dandelion-yellow matelassé for the bodice. Yeah, you heard that right. Vera Wang in the making, right there.

Wedding Dress 2.0 was a little more elegant: see-through lace covering the whole arm, shoulders and collarbone (see, sleeves! still modest.) with a sweetheart neckline of white satin coming down the body, the longest full skirt you can imagine, with the bottom coming out in a smooth train. This design came with a groom in mind: my fourth grade crush (and fifth. and sixth. and seventh.). I made the mistake of drawing us together and naming the man to the entire class, him included. We're still friends, actually; in his note to me in my yearbook he said that the day I drew a picture of us getting married he went home and talked to his mom about it and decided it was something he was cool with. He has a girlfriend now.

(An aside: the other day I walked in on my aunt watching Say Yes To The Dress. Soon enough my aunt comments: "I would kill my daughter if she ever wanted to wear a see-through wedding dress." Noted: 2.0 is officially out of the picture, as well as 1.2 which had see-through lace instead of the matelassé. Come to think of it I'm not her daughter, but I think I should still respect her opinion. Also, does anyone know how people actually get on that show? Is it as difficult as finding North Dakota?)

Version 3.0 was inspired by my love of wedge heels; I had the cutest black pair with little bows on the toe in seventh grade and decided that nothing else would do for my wedding except the same, but in white. If you're going to wear wedge heels on your wedding day you must, of course, show them off and your lovely calves to boot (a pun, because soon enough the design changed to white boots worthy of the go-go era) and hence, a knee-length wedding dress design was soon drawn up. Er, slightly below the knee. Knees really aren't that attractive. This one was also satin, but with actual short sleeves, a sweetheart neckline (it was a phase) and the fullest crinoline you can imagine. Again, I didn't know what a crinoline was at that point (still didn't know, actually, until like four months ago), but the principle was there and gosh darn it my wedding dress was going to have a big skirt with visible tulle. Still might, actually; Version 4.0 has yet to be imagined, although I may trade the white wedges for some pumps in the wedding color (coral, if I'm married in the spring or summer, and a rich aubergine if in the fall; either season will include roses in the appropriate color and a reception with an actual program so that I can dance with my dad like in What A Girl Wants, shut up that's a great movie). Color blocking is all the rage.

Hence, it was no strange thing for me to be daydreaming about my future wedding invitation. I've already got the party nearly planned; we've got to get people there somehow! So here's my idea, and guess what, someone else already thought of it.

You know that thing that tech-savvy and young couples do, where the wedding invitations look like a movie poster? It could be a totally made up movie, or they've edited the original to fit their own names, story, etc., or they have a series of posters that tell a story (ending with "Reception," of course, with Leonardo's silhouette). So, I'm totally taking all of the above ideas to make one brilliant, graphically-impressive fold-out wedding invitation that uses Comic Sans exactly zero times.

And it all started because my current crush kind of looks like the guy from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. No, not Keanu Reeves. Hey, my mom met him in an elevator once. Keanu, I mean, not the other guy or my current crush.

So get this: we take a photo like the one on the cover of the DVD my family owns (both of them. We have two copies, it's that great of a movie), the one with the guys looking through the windows of the phone booth all confused. Then, we title it "_____ and Ellyn's Excellent Adventure." Get it? Like, getting married is an excellent adventure, right?! Shut up, it's a brilliant idea.

That would be the first image you see, and then it would fold out with a couple of other our favorite movies, some of the ones that we have watched together and cried over, like The Princess Bride. And we could totally dress up in different costumes and pose like the actors do in the poster, oh my goodness he would SO totally go for this I can't wait to tell him about it, I'm going to go ask him right now--

Oh. I forgot we aren't actually engaged. Or dating. Or even been on one date. Come to think of it, I don't even know if he's seen The Princess Bride. That might be an issue.

And it's all because (the dating part, not the movie) when I try to talk to him, or joke with him, or even look at him, I get all sorts of butterflies and I feel like a dork and I don't know what to say and I think "he must like that other girl", and then I want to sit next to him but then he like walks away and I stand there awkwardly, or I end up placing myself so that I can sit and look at him, but then I end up staring creepily and still don't know what to say. Then I try to be all flirty and bump shoulders with him or something but end up almost knocking him over.

I communicated some of this angst to my friend through text the other night. Her advice? "Stop staring, be chill. Let's come up with a strategy. I think first you must get him interested and then play it cool for a little bit so he gets all worried and nervous and then you marry him."

Brilliant. Couldn't have come up with better myself.

Earlier, she had said something along these lines: "Step up and do something! Put your flirtatious Ellyn to work, then invite him to hang out. You never have any problems asking people out!"

Okay, but here's the problem. Those times I never had problems asking people out? I didn't actually like those guys. No, not that I didn't like them, just that I didn't like like them. I was happy to go on a date and just hang out as friends, but I didn't get all butterfly-y and nervous and want to go sit in a corner but at the same time want to sit really close and link arms and go stargazing. See, here's my issue: when I actually like the guy, I can't joke, I can't flirt. If someone who knows him talks to me about it I get beyond embarrassed. Remember fourth-fifth-sixth-seventh grade crush who I was going to marry? It has taken me eight years to joke with him about it. Eight years.

So I have to tell myself to chill out. Chances are, I'm not even really going to have as big of a crush in two weeks. I didn't two weeks ago. We might not even see each other that much in the future; we'll be going to different colleges in the fall, I'm thinking about going abroad next spring, I'm thinking about a mission, he's thinking about a mission. I'm eighteen and one-third; if we were to start dating, then what? That dream wedding invitation is years out. Recently somebody asked me if I was going to attend the Singles Ward, and in my head I went, "Am I allowed to go the Singles Ward? I don't know. I think I am. I'm not sure I want to," so obviously I am not quite ready for wedding bells, or maybe even the dating scene. Beyond that: dude, I'm not in fourth grade anymore. It's probably time to stop getting embarrassed about a crush. I am in truth a rather practical person, and I can see the ridiculousness of writing an entire blog post about how I'm too nervous to talk to a boy. I am resolved; I will henceforth chill out.

But that doesn't stop the fact that inside I am super nervous about writing this all out and putting it on the internet. What if he reads this and knows I'm talking about him? I can feel anxiety rising at the very thought, there's no way I could look him in the eye. What if he reads this and thinks I'm talking about someone else? That would be even more embarrassing; he'd see me tomorrow and think that I have a huge crush on some other guy and not even try, fingers crossed he'd even try in the first place and that he in turn doesn't actually have a crush on some other girl. Oh my goodness, what if he reads this and knows I'm talking about him and decides I am way too dramatic and stays as far away from me as possible? I take it back; this isn't a huge crush, just a mild like because you've got a cute face and are really funny and fun to be around and I really want to be your best friend. ugh I'm such a teenage girl.

But I watched a Bollywood movie today and you know what somebody said? "Bad luck and a sharp mind, it's a dangerous combination, Priya."

Oh wait that wasn't it. Let me go rewatch part of the movie again.

And I can't even find the quote I was looking for. I'm not even sure if somebody actually said what I got out of the line, or if I just came to my own conclusion on what the message was: Communication. If nobody ever tells the other one their feelings, then for one we have a dramatic movie, and for two we have a lot of confusion and heartache and all that. In most movies and TV shows, if they would have just confessed their feelings earlier then everything would have turned out great. Except for Playful Kiss where she confessed her feelings in a letter at the very beginning of the show and he returned it to her with all of her mistakes corrected in red pen and a big F at the top. Oh wait, I'm not sure that was a good example because 16 episodes later everything does turn out all right in the end. Come to think of it I don't think I ever actually finished that show. In conclusion, I now stand by my decision to post my feelings on the internet.

I'm not sure that was the conclusion I should have come to.

Man, if this isn't a roundabout way to confess your like to someone, then I don't know what is. Has my life become a Korean soap opera? Or do I just watch too much Bollywood? Probably both.

oh my goodness what if he reads this what if he reads this CHILL OUT ELLYN