More wedding bloggage

OK so its slow and I had promised more stuff about the wedding and such but never got around to it.

OK - The Planning

The planning was not the nightmare everyone told me it would be. People had told me planning a wedding was like a full time job and how it was horrible and stressful and how you would constantly be fighting with your mother. Despite maybe 2 minor bridezilla moments on my behalf ... I experienced NONE of this. In my world, planning a wedding is easy. You just have to be cool and have a laid back attitude and try not to sweat the small stuff. You have to accept from the beginning that NOTHING is perfect that its just not possible and something will go wrong. The thing is though... I can't think of much in mine that did go wrong. There were a couple of minor snafus but they were corrected and ... yeah... no harm, no fowl.

So we got engaged and maybe two weeks later I went home for a visit and OH MY GOD... was it not non-stop from my mom?! As excited as I was about it, she was even more so. We went here, there and everywhere! I couldn't believe it. I mean, I guess I couldn't believe that you get engaged and BAM! just start planning. A part of me really just wanted to sit around and relish just being happy about being engaged for a bit but my husband and I had decided that we really weren't going to do that, we wanted to be married and we were going to get to that as soon as possible.

Well, as soon as possible pretty much meant deciding on the where... we didn't have our hearts set on any particular "when". All of the important dates or annivesaries or whatever in our relationship are in the winter and we knew we didn't want to get married in the winter and I really didn't want to get married in the spring (plus that probably would have meant waiting a year or more to do) and I knew I didn't want to be a JUNE bride so... it was going to have to be summer or early fall. Either one of those I was more than happy with. So then it was like where where WHERE?!

Well, I had originally imagined that we would somehow get married in the Chicago area although I wasn't quite sure how we were going to do it. The thing was, I like really wanted to get married in a church and if not a church, then probably outdoors but outdoors weddings are tricky and I wasn't sure I wanted to risk the weather. And, we technically aren't really members of any church up here (yet) and lots of churches are sort of particular about who can and can't have weddings in them - usually they only allow member weddings. So we probably could have pulled it off finding a church but it would have been a challenge. Of course you have all of the other Chicago type options - hotels, banquet halls, museums, restaurants, etc. etc. but none of that would have meant diddly squat to me (this is just my personal opinion). I thought outdoors could have been cool cause I could have made it churchy or whatever but ... well, you know. The reception wouldn't have been that difficult to figure out - just the timing - but up here it would have meant major buckage. Sean was against a Chicago wedding or at least a big Chicago wedding because of the major buckage. And ... well... I wanted a big wedding - or at least what I considered a big wedding.

I started thinking about it though and decided that maybe Chicago wasn't a good idea after all cause I wasn't sure how many of my friends and family who live elsewhere would have been able to make it. At this point, I was willing to compromise.

So I went to college at IU in Bloomington, IN, and on campus is a cute little church that holds maybe 50 people. One of my sister's "friends" had recently been married there and I had seen it advertised in the alumni magazine so I got to thinking about that because IU means so much to me, and it was close to where I grew up, and a smaller wedding might have made Sean happy and I thought... OK, so small wedding at the little church and bigger reception at the Union in one of the nice rooms. The idea was actually starting to grow on me.

But then, out of the blue, he comes home one day and says basically anything I want- a huge wedding and anywhere was fine with him - he just didn't want anyone spending some major $$$ on it. This was like a big turn around for him. What I figure is he went to work and was talking to some of the girls he worked with and they probably scolded him about how I had probably been planning my wedding my whole life and he couldn't tell me now what I could or could not have - ha ha ha! (Thanks girls!)

So this, of course, puts a whole new spin on it. Although I wasn't too concerned about the $$$ issues, I had decided that a wedding in the Chicago area - at least for us - was too complicated - and that I wanted the people who mean the most to me to be able to attend and I just wasn't sure if they could in Chicago so...

My parents had recently attended a wedding in a town nearby where I grew up and they had gone to a reception at a pretty much brand new reception hall that I wasn't aware existed and I had no idea about. My mom was raving about the place and how she believed it was exactly the setup that I wanted. What did I want? Well, I have pretty much measured every wedding I have ever been to since like college against one of my cousins weddings which was everything I ever wanted. I knew regardless our ceremony would be nice but I really really wanted a nice reception and I had been to nice receptions in my hometown but not what I would have wanted.

Perhaps the things I wanted were silly but I wanted them - sit down served meal, seating chart, actual dance floor, nice bar, something newer with a bit of elegance.

So this place had all of that. So we talked about it and agreed. We were going to get married in my hometown - in the church that I grew up in and the same church my parents were married in; and have the reception at this place in a town about 30 miles away. I called my mom and told her to get a list of available dates for the place. We picked a date and booked it sight unseen just trusting my mom's judgment.

So when I went to visit my parents a couple of weeks later, that was like the first place we went and I loved it. Way way classy for southern Indiana country folk. I would have picked it out myself if I would have seen it. It was just as nice as anything in the Chicago area.

You know, I can't even think of what all we did that day but she drug me all over the place - to the florist in my hometown who we knew was the only person who we would ever want doing the flowers - he's amazing! He has clients all over the state and is not your typical small-town florist. Honestly, I probably couldn't have found anything as nice in the Chicago area and I am not overstating that. Where else, where else? We went into one bridal shop but I knew it was sort of pointless for me to get a dress down there with the fittings and all. Man, I just can't think of everything now. We even got a cake baker - although we cancelled her later. Oh yeah, we got the photographer too! Yikes - Mom was dragging me all over the place. I felt like I couldn't keep my head on straight.

It was so funny cause other than this day and the dress search (which was nothing) and the bridesmaid dress search (which was a little more dramatic)... we felt like we did so little planning and work the entire time. Maybe its cause mom really was on the ball and knew just to get it done so we wouldn't have to worry about it. LOL! I don't know.

Anyway.... that was the whole start of the plans. I'm going to go over it bit by bit as I get to it. I'm not writing this to be all like look at me, this is what I did for my wedding! I am more writing it for myself so I have something to keep about it and just the details and my thoughts and such.

I may be back with more later.