Wedding themes: simple, elegant and a touch of North Dakota.

With 200 invites in the mail and 50 still in the works, the wedding date quickly approaches. The rate I'm going, everyone with a North Dakota driver's license will dine on my dad's dollar.

If there's one thing I can't complain about, it's the financial arrangement. I had to verbally abuse my old man yesterday: NO, YOU'RE NOT PAYING FOR ANYTHING ELSE. Stick a dollar in my account and the first words of our first born will be the lyrics to the USC fight song!

A threat like that will shush a Notre Dame fan right up. And that's a good problem to have.

Between my parents, aunties and Cowboy's family, the wedding arranging is relatively stress free. Everyone's been more than generous offering time, labor and mucho dinero.

My only drama was the RSVP cards... those annoying little numbers I receive and always forget to return even though they're already stamped and post-office ready. A co-worker designed mine for me using my font choice, size and graphic-y squiggle. When she printed the final draft, I winced.

"Is it OK if I don't like it?" I said, waiting for a ruler rapt upon my head and cringing because I deserved it.

"Yes it's OK!" she said like I totally didn't waste her time designing the first rendition. "It's your wedding."

So we designed them anew. And cut them. And glued them. And I loved them, all for the low, low price of not $500 like I would have paid if I'd ordered them online.

Success.

In other news, Cowboy Sr. *will not* be wearing the black shoes Cowboy and I selected to match the tuxedos. Instead, he'll wear his brand new cowboy boots, he said. Precious.