Um, wow. Pressure

I really liked the Melissa's restaurant place in Bloomington when I sketchily scoped it out a week or so ago, so getting more info on it was definitely high on my to-do list. Especially since I expect that weekend free time might be a fleeting commodity, and I would really like to get this location thing nailed down asap.

You might think I'm getting a bit worked up about nothing, with regard to the timing, but I assure that it's not so. I remember getting distinctly miffed about planning for prom back in the day: what do you mean you don't have any hair appointments available next week on the afternoon before prom?! People make those appointments more than a WEEK in advance?! My reaction then is the same as it is now: way to ruin it for the rest of us.

It's like models of the evolution of cooperation in society (excuse the geeking out for a moment), where everything is getting along swimmingly until one person cheats and messes things up for everyone - only cheaters of the system survive, edging out the cooperators, as long as there's no punishment for cheating. Add in social ostracization for the cheaters, for example, and everything works out fine.

All right, apply this to hair appointment example: there's no punishment for making your appointment 85 weeks in advance. So everyone cheats the reasonable time scale, ruining it for the naive cooperators. Like me.

It's exactly the same thing for weddings, only magnified about a billion times. Everyone's so stressed out that not everything's going to be perfect and that they won't be able to get EXACTLY the arrangement of swans that they want, etc, that they plan/reserve everything way in advance. Waaaay in advance. Like, me looking for a May wedding date in early September is almost ridonkulously late.

Case in point: Mapleridge, the place I like in Clarion, is booked already on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Sunday is still open, but only because getting married on a Sunday (even though there's another day after it on that weekend) is so un-traditional as to be inconceivable. I even had a hard time talking my mom around to the idea.

Melissa's restaurant is worse: their banquet facility (as of Saturday) was available May 2nd, and not again until the middle of July. JULY. Fortunately, they also have the Sunday of Memorial Day open, so it's not out of the running completely, but how long can I expect that to last when literally every other day in the surrounding months is taken?

Good Lord.

So you can see why the pressure's on: I need to make a decision soon, or it'll be made for me. Made as in, 'how big can the pumpkin centerpieces be without making the tables sag?'

(OH, and Melissa's can handle an ice cream wedding cake for us, as long as it's sectioned and not tiered. Since I'm not sure you can do tiers with ice cream, no problem. Yay!)