sometimes, vanity really hurts

in preparation for my wedding, i went through quite a few of the usual rituals: choosing the right hair style, getting some new make-up and getting a mani/pedi. what i consciously skipped, though, were the acrylic nails. i had always admired the look, but never wanted to ruin my natural nails. nor did i want to sit in the salon every two weeks or so to get fill-ins. unfortunately, i forgot my reasons for not getting acrylics in the days before my hubby came home from deployment. i call it temporary insanity due to the excitement of everything that was about to happen. i had a set of "pink and whites" put on my already decent looking nail beds and although i was near tears during the entire, painful process, i really loved the end product. i even kept up the nails until our trip to visit the in-laws in california, because i wanted to have my mother-in-law's nail lady apply "glitter nails." you see, we don't have glitter nails out here. i had never even heard of them until meeting my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. for those of you who don't know, they are basically french manicured nails, but instead of having the white at the end, it is glitter. and boy, do they have an insane amount of glitters to choose from. i chose a light pinkish glitter that was subtle. i loved those glitter nails and showed them off to anyone who would look.
i haven't had my nails done since then, and that was at the beginning of august. there are several reasons: i couldn't find anyone who could do the glitter nails again; my mother-in-law's nail lady told me to only go to people who use a certain product and no one uses it here; i really do like my natural nails and i want them back; i hate sitting in the nail salon and paying someone to do to my nails what i could do on my own (if you haven't seen isabel's post on giving yourself a french manicure, here it is); oh and i usually pay a really big tip because i just do... and i could be putting that money to much better use.
so not only have i not had my nails done since then, but i haven't had the nerve to go get the old nails taken off! oh, i've been filing them down like crazy so that they are super short and i've even buffed until exhausted, so that the acrylic parts of my nails are so thin that you can barely see that they are still attached. at least i thought that was the case. this weekend, while my hubby and i were running errands around town, he grabbed my hand, held it up so he could look at my nails closely and said, "what is that?" i sheepishly said, "my nails from when we went to california. i'm too chicken to take them off completely because i know that my nails will be super thin underneath, so i'm just trying to let them grow out." that explanation worked for him and he could care less. but now, i'm worried. you see, we have a wedding coming up near my hubby's alma mater, and i will be meeting tons of his friends that i've never met before. how on earth am i going to make my nails presentable? anyone have any suggestions?