We are almost to the wedding day... when I say almost, I still mean we have months to go but it is close! We have been engaged for 13 months and sometimes I feel like I've been planning our wedding forever and other times I'm like wait, didn't we just get engaged yesterday?!
I just had a meeting on Monday at our venue to nail things down and my dad snapped the photo above for me! The meeting made me feel even calmer and more relaxed. One of the things I'm happiest about is that I chose a venue that 'handles it all'!
Since we are getting so close, I thought I would do a sort of brain dump to bring you all up to speed and share my emotions/thoughts with you guys since I haven't really done much Wedding Wednesday stuff since before the holidays!
Thankful
It is an overwhelming feeling to know that people are making all of these reservations and travels and effort to be there for us. It is a huge reminder of all of the wonderful people we have in our lives and how lucky we are.
Non-Traditional
I would consider myself pretty traditional in a lot of aspects of life and even down to my personal style and home decor. On paper, our wedding will be pretty traditional- at a church, then at a private club, we'll have dinner and dancing, etc. etc. But I think what has surprised me in a big way throughout planning our wedding is how there are a lot of traditions that just don't suit me or me and my fiancé as a couple. I'm not going to name them or go into detail because I obviously wouldn't want to offend anyone! I have found that a lot of them feel antiquated. It's not the really 'big' traditions because, with a lot of the bigger traditions, I get that they are to honor the past and more of a symbol than anything else, but it's more of the minutiae or smaller traditions that I have found just aren't my vibe. This truly surprises me because, for the most part, I really like traditions!
Lots of Work
Planning any event is a lot of work and I 100% knew that because it was literally my job at one point. However, I had no idea about all of the stuff we would have to do for our church ceremony- that was never anything I coordinated during my job so this was all new to me. I just wasn't expecting so many tasks and meetings and all of that! Just as a small example, we each had to take a 175 question quiz and that alone took a few hours for each of us. It was an insightful survey but it was time-consuming! The one nice thing about the church, though, is that you are not permitted to bring anything in from outside- so like flowers, etc. So this made the planning side of things easy since we aren't allowed to decorate or whatnot. This is not really a complaint, just an observation of something I was not expecting! I would guess this varies heavily from church to church and even more so religion to religion.
To-Do
We don't really have too much left to do! It's a lot of little things (that likely didn't even make the list) and things you can't do until certain days and times. For example, I have my first dress fitting in February (I'll have at last 3 fittings) which is so fun and exciting!! I did a 'what we've done so far' post back in May and I am SO glad I did it because it is neat to look back on it and see how much more has been done! Here is what was left to do in May and I'll cross off what we have done since...
What needs to be done:
- Seating chart
- Dress fittings and alterations
- Rehearsal and shower dresses altered
- Rehearsal and shower dresses altered
- Pre-Cana
- Choosing Linens
- Groom Tux (he has a tux but he wants to get something different/special for the wedding)
- Rehearsal dinner outfits for both myself and Andrew
- Invitations
- Calligraphy (invites, escort card, etc.)
- Wedding paper (ie. church programs, escort cards, menu cards, thank you cards, etc.) Everything is picked out, just waiting to move forward.
- Morning of wedding outfits for my mom, sister, and I
- Honeymoon (we have started researching but haven't done anything in terms of actual planning- we probably won't book anything until around the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday)
- Registry list made public (we have registered at two places but haven't made the registries public just yet (too soon)
- Meet with florist to discuss what we want (scheduled but hasn't happened yet)
- Edit verbiage for church programs and discuss with priest/ music director
- Welcome bags for out of town guests
- Gifts for MOH/BM and MOB/FOB, MOG/FOG, and ring bearer/flower girl
- Playlist for when the band takes breaks (they do this on their own, but instead we requested to make the playlists... I've started this but won't finalize until very close to our wedding day)
- Best Man needs to be asked (waiting for this to happen in person!!)
- Ask readers and ushers for the church (we have chosen who we want to ask but have to actually ask!)
- Decide on First Dance/ FOB dance/ MOG dance songs
- Marriage License
- Figure out what we are going to do with Henry (if anyone has any ideas, let us know! If we have to board him, we will, but we are trying to figure out something different because we prefer not to board him and we are also still trying to figure out a way to get Henry in some of our wedding photos so if he is boarded we wouldn't be able to do that).
- Lots of little touches that I will leave out because this list is ridiculously long (and I want an element of surprise, ha!)
Hindsight
I've mentioned this before, but I originally envisioned a 12-month engagement as we got engaged in December and I thought we would have a December wedding. However, that didn't work out due to church/venue availability so we are having a longer engagement. I was a little annoyed with a longer engagement as 'over a year' sounded like sooooo far away, but in hindsight, I am SO happy the timeline worked out this way. I truly can't believe we have already been engaged for almost 13 months. We have had ample time to plan and it's all been very 'chill'. I have never once felt rushed to make a decision or anything of that nature.
1 comment:
This post was great to read! As someone who has also been engaged for 13 months and having a fall wedding- it seemed so far away! I am still planning some of the bigger items (flowers, video) and just want to get everything done. i don't know how people do it all so quickly!!
Bianca
https://navyismyneutral-biancab.blogspot.com/
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