H: "You don't have to worry about the wedding anymore..."

When Josh uttered the above words to me last Monday, I was a bit confused and then frightened and then confused again when I realized that he was of course not saying that the wedding wasn't going to happen. He was saying that I didn't have to worry about it. You know, THE "it". The one that plagues every bride and groom with a budget on the brain. That's right, folks. You guessed it. The odds are very, VERY good in our favor that we won't have to worry about money.
Let's back up, shall we?

*wavy lines and squiggly sounds*

For those of you who don't know, Josh is a veteran of the Iraq war and as such emerged with what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. It's formerly known as "shell shock".
Last year sometime, Josh applied for benefits that he's entitled to because of his disability and was denied, so he let it rest. Then at the urging of his therapist, he re-applied. We got the letter on Monday that his benefits have been approved effective July 2008. You read that right. 2008. They retroactively set his benefit (on purpose) and sent a corresponding payment, enough to cover the majority of our wedding and enough to make us believe that with our plans and budget we'll have no trouble paying for the rest ourselves.

We're hardworking people and we believe in ourselves, each other, and our ability to work together beautifully so we knew that we'd do it somehow, but still a huge weight has been lifted.
We have now paid our amazing photographer and we sent the check to our fabulous DJ this morning. Incidentally, because of his kindness and generosity we decided to pay fabulous DJ his full amount and you know what he said? That he'd be happy to stick with our original agreement. Seriously. How fabulous is he? So we sent him the original agreed upon amount plus a donation to the Joe is Awesome Fund, and organization that is dedicated to injecting money into our ailing economy. :-)

Part of me is worried that the other shoe will drop. That a man in a dark suit with a coiled wire running up his neck into his ear and dark sunglasses will knock on our door and demand that money back under penalty of complete ruination. Who wouldn't worry about that?
But there's no sign or indication that that will happen, and all in all it's one more thing to add to the pile o' events that constantly tells me that this wedding is going to be as amazing as the man I'm going to marry, as wonderful as our relationship is, and as beautiful as he makes me feel.