Wedding Planning

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been so busy with wedding planning, I completely forgot about blogging! The truth is, planning a wedding is hard work – even moreso when it’s your own wedding you’re planning! Less than two months from the Big Day, and every weekend is filled with wedding-related activities. Every night, I look for ideas, try to make decisions about things, and search the internet for things I need. And I manage to squeeze it all in between my EverQuest 2 raiding!

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve managed to find a dress and get it ordered, choose bridesmaid’s and matron of honor dresses (which no one but my daughter ordered, so now we’re going to have to look for “off the rack” dresses), design, print and put together our invitations – and send them out! I’ve also made our reservations for the wedding weekend “mini-moon” and my hotel reservation for the night before the wedding at a hotel local to the location. We’ve found C’s wedding shirt also. Still left? A million little things, each more picky and detailed than the last. A few examples …

Guest book. Several girls on my wedding board are doing wine bottles instead of a guest book. The idea is that the guests will sign bottles of wine the couple has chosen. The couple will then drink those wines on various anniversaries. It’s a cool idea, but one that doesn’t really appeal to me, for all that C and I love wine. I wouldn’t want to have to drag them around and try to find a place for them once they’ve been emptied. Another idea is to take engagement pictures and have them made into a book that people can then sign. Another girl is using her favorite coffee table book – which has some significant sentimental value to her – for the guests to sign. I’ve seen ideas for signature platters and signature mats for pictures. I’m not sure that any of these really appeal to me much, but I’m not sure I want to do a plain old guest book either.

Shoes. I need shoes to wear under my dress. My mother and I have been having an ongoing “conversation” about this. My first idea was to go barefoot. She said I couldn’t do that, being that we’re getting married in a public park, so I grudgingly agreed. She also shot down my idea of wearing flip flops and the one about colored Converse sneakers. Now I have an idea to wear cowboy boots under my dress – lace up ropers, to be exact. I’m thinking I might keep this idea to myself, because you just KNOW she’s going to have something to say about that too!

Music. Since we’re having a non-traditional wedding, we’re going with non-traditional music. For the processional, I’m thinking possibly Feelin’ Good by Michael Buble or maybe his Come Fly With Me. Then there’s the list of songs we want to play – the song we want for our first dance – the songs we’ll use to dance with our friends and family. The song we’ll walk back down the aisle to as husband and wife. Songs for cutting cakes and making toasts and … well, you get the idea.

So yeah, there’s still a lot to do.

But in the end, it will all be worth it. I’ll be married to this wonderful man who I know loves me, and who knows I love him. I think we’re ready for the idea to become the reality. We’re ready to move on with our future plans and make the best of our walk through this world, together.

Even though this is my second marriage, this is the first time I’ve looked forward to a future with a man, knowing full well that we can make it happen. It’s the first time I’ve looked at someone and thought, I can’t imagine life without him. It’s the first time I didn’t want to imagine life without him.

And that … that is a very good feeling indeed!

 

Time Flies

I can’t believe it’s been more than a week since I last posted. But so much has been going on, I guess I just forgot to write anything. Well, that’s not true. I thought about it, often, but never at a time that was conducive to writing. Oh well … onward!

Chris and I have been looking for a place to hold our wedding for months now – ever since Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston Island, where we originally planned to marry. After looking at dozens of places and talking to all sorts of people, we finally found our dream spot entirely by chance. On Saturday we were out driving around – it was such a beautiful day, it would have been a crime to stay inside. My parents expected us for dinner, but we had a little time to kill, so we took a drive down into the area where I grew up … along the water off Galveston Bay, in the La Porte/Shoreacres area. I am sad to report that the devastation is just unbelievable; months after the waters receded and clean up began, it looks like they’re just beginning to make headway.

It made me so angry, too, because these people are down there, facing the probability of having their houses completely demolished due to new requirements and the total devastation, but we’re not hearing anything about any of that on the news now. Four years later, you still hear about Katrina and the victims, but less than six months after Ike roared through … dead silence. But that’s another post for another time.

Anyway, we drove through Sylvan Beach Park, which was full of folks, and down the road, where we found the cutest little neighborhood park, right on the water. There’s no sand or beach there, but there is a cute covered pavillion, playground equipment, a nice lawn sloping down to the water, and plenty of parking. After consulting with the city and finding that we can’t reserve it but we CAN use it, we have decided to hold the wedding and reception in that spot. It is exactly what we wanted – picturesque, on the water and it has plenty of room to spread out. YAY!

And since we’re getting married outdoors, we have decided to move the wedding up to avoid the hot weather of July. Our new and improved date is April 24, 2009. So that means I have about two months to plan the whole thing … YIKES! I think this would be a good time to start looking for a dress …

 

TGIF!

So much going on right now … I’m just not sure where to start. Hmmm …

Well, I’ll start first by saying that so far, my Weight Watchers effort is going fabulously. I’ve stayed on plan all week, and even if I haven’t lost a lot of weight (and I don’t think I have) it’s been nice to be aware of what I’m eating again. I think that as time goes on it’ll get even easier to stick with it. It certainly helps that Chris is doing this with me, so I don’t have to worry every night about whether or not he’ll want to eat something off plan.

The upcoming wedding is on my mind as well. I think that we have the major decisions just about ironed out – we know what kind of wedding we want, and we have a couple of venues in mind. What I like most about our plan is that it will be an intimate ceremony with those who are most important in our everyday lives invited to join us. No big poofy dresses or 300 guests … just a small, intimate ceremony with my wonderful husband to be and our family. Later that evening, we’ll host a reception for friends – beer and BBQ all around!

With the wedding, even a small wedding like ours, comes all the planning, though. Right now I’m working on our gift registry. At first I was against it, since I’ve been married before. Chris hasn’t been married, of course, but I have. Anyway, some friends suggested we register anyway, or possibly receive the dreaded chili-pepper lamp as a gift. I’m not so worried about gifts as I am about people having fun, but if some folks are bound and determined to bring a gift, I suppose we can give them some items from which to choose. The problem with that is, when we went to do our registry, we found a LOT of things we’d like to have. So our registeries (we’re registered at four different places – one main, one that has a lot of our “fancy” stuff, one online and one that … well I dunno why we registered there LOL) look really huge. But the fact is, most stores give you “completion discounts” after the event. So we will get 10% most purchases made from the registry lists after the wedding. And at BB&B, if you get a 10% registry completion discount AND use their 20% off coupons … well that can be a lot of money saved. I just hope people don’t think we’re being greedy, because we don’t care much if we get a single present. This is just a discounted way for us to buy stuff ourselves.

Oh well. It’s Friday and I’m in a fabulous mood! Let’s get this weekend started!