Let’s Plan a Wedding: Month 2 & 3

Life doesn’t always go as planned! Work has been absolutely insane for me lately, and it has taken a lot of time from Wedding planning. (Side note – I am actually giving away a wedding at work! Someone deserving couple is going to win a $40,000 wedding courtesy of the station! I’m actually getting excited about this whole event as the contract and legal process is done.)

Anyways, the list of wedding stuff is piling on and as of July 22 we are exactly 8 months away! 8 months is INSANE! Especially because save the dates have to go out 6 months in advance and the invitations go out 3 months in advance. I’m already FREAKING OUT. So, this is what I have accomplished in the past two months. Don’t laugh at how little I’ve accomplished!

Finalize a Venue/Secure a Date

We finally secured a venue and a date and placed our deposit! Andrew and I will be getting married on April 22, 2016 at Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa, California!

Choose Wedding Party

We finally choose our wedding party! Meet them all HERE!

Look into Hotel Room Blocks

Hotel room blocks will still happen, but I think we are going to look into

Make a Bridal Dress Appointment

TRY ON DRESSES

SCHEDULE/RESEARCH HAIR AND MAKE-UP

FIND FLOWERS/FLORIST

I have decided that I am going to end up making my own flowers! It’s a very tedious and crazy goal, but I’m crafty and extremely interested in the idea of creating something special that is going to be a part of my very special day. The only fear is that it won’t turn out great… but I am going to practice this month and I will post how that whole process goes!

Photographer/Videographer

We found our photographer and videographer! Today we are finalizing the contract and submitting the deposit for Amanda Collins Photography and Milligans

Schedule Engagement Photos

We are so close to this that I am keeping it in the “already done” section of this post.

What we did not accomplish:

Order invitations – I have not even attempted to look at invitations lately. I took an invitation break… After going through so many different designs, I have to really sit down and look at how I want our invitations to look. And that takes time. (and concentration.)
Book a DJ/MC – DJ’s are expensive! We are trying to find a DJ that isn’t too over budget. We can only really afford to spend a few hundred dollars. Research needs to be done, and I have yet to do it.
Officiant interviews – We have an officiant in mind, but have yet to ask him. Hopefully we can do that in the next few months. Maybe after Hawaii!
Finalize Guest List
Cake Tasting/Ordering

Fearlessly

June 4, 2015December 1, 2016

Let’s Plan a Wedding: Month 1

May 2015 went by in the blink of an eye! I could barely catch my breath! Life stuff happened and Andrew and I were booked up with trips home and a business trip to Disneyland, but still ended up previewing a few venues along the way.

Me being the planner that I am, set aside a bunch of “goals” for the first month of wedding planning and boy, oh boy was I surprised at how much we did NOT accomplish. There are just so many factors that depend specifically on the venue. IT IS SO HARD TO FIND A VENUE THAT FITS WITH THE BUDGET WE SET! It’s absolutely insane how expensive this whole industry is. Rentals are over $5,000, food is over $100 per person, the BAR is astronomically expensive i really hope all of my wedding guests are HUGE alcoholics.

Above all it is pretty fun. It’s exciting to see ideas on Pinterest and be able to completely engulf myself in the idea of a gorgeous elegant event where Andrew and I promise to love each other forever.

Here are the goals for the month of May that I accomplish, and the goals for the month of May that I did not accomplish.

Goals:

Pick Colors

Set a date

Secure a budget

This was probably the hardest part to complete. Let’s get down to it, weddings are extremely expensive. Even the cheapest venue is the price of a car. And yet every year, I see numerous extravagant weddings that are so stunning, so impeccable, I realize I am in the wrong business. When setting our budget we really started with looking at the venue rental fee, the per person food cost, and the bar cost. I reached out to over 20 venues for their pricing. The first thing I did was make sure that each venue was under the venue booking fee. Then I looked into the dinner service and how much it costed per person. Finally, I looked at the bar fee. If the bar fee was too high or required too high of a minimum, I would set that venue aside. This gave me a list of venues that fit our budget to tour, and other venues that just didn’t fit. In the end, we only ended up touring 7 total venues. Even after that, we still went back and looked into different venues, but the first 7 we saw were the only ones that really fit into our budget.

Preview Venues

Chardonnay Golf Club, Napa

Oakmont Golf Course, Santa Rosa

Cornerstone Sonoma

SpringHill Suites, Napa

Paradise Ridge, Santa Rosa

Guest List

This was another tough part of the entire wedding process. There are so many people in both Andrew and my families as well as family friends and our own personal friends. Both of our parents began listing off members of the family and their friends. Some people Andrew and I didn’t even know! That is when I came up with a very reasonable rule.

If these people do not know me and Andrew as a couple, they will not be invited. Andrew and I have been together for 7 years. If these people in our parents lives have not had the opportunity to at least MEET me once, they should not be invited to celebrate the beginning of our life together. It just does not compute to me.

Now this may not fly with your families, but remember, this is YOUR day. And if your parents or your fiance’s parents are assisting with the wedding finances, you can tell them that they can pay individually for anyone they want to come.

It’s all about compromise. That is what planning a wedding is all about.

What we did not accomplish:

Secure a date and/or location – we have still not nailed down exactly when or where we are getting married. We are getting closer, but we still have not decided exactly where we want to spend our extremely special, once in a lifetime day.
Order invites/details cards – because we did not find a venue and we did not settle on a date, we ended up not purchasing any invites or details cards…

Now we are moving forward. I am going to show Missy one of our favorite venues this Saturday and see what her thoughts are as she just went to one of her friends weddings this past weekend. I am, honestly, just excited to get married. I can’t wait to start that part of life with Andrew!

May 4, 2015December 1, 2016

I’m Getting Married!

Andrew and I are engaged!
I have a fiancé!

DSC_2348_ring Let me give you a quick background of our relationship, if you are not aware of this lovely real life “fairytale”. (wink wink) Andrew and I have been together for 7 years now. We met long ago when I was just a baby (on my 18th birthday!). Through distance, many trips from Davis to Rohnert Park, moving in together, adopting two beautiful kitties, college graduations, new jobs, adventures, life altering events, and more, we have only grown stronger as a couple.

On April 18, 2015, we moved forward in our relationship. I was told a few weeks prior that my parents, Amy, Keith, Wes, Debbie, Andrew and I were supposed to go out to a VERY fancy dinner for Keith’s 30th birthday party. There wasn’t any extreme flashing lights of suspicion for me, because our families celebrate a lot together, especially when Keith and Amy are here from Kansas. My lack of suspicion and the amazing planning done by all of my loved ones, made for such a memorable day! Here is how the day played out for me.

8:00am – My morning began with a run with my mom! I have no idea how through this 4.5 mile run she didn’t say ANYTHING about what the rest of the day held for me.
12:00pm – Then I had lunch with Jennifer! I have known Jennifer since I was a baby freshman in high school. She was what I always refer to her as my “big sister.” She taught me so much and has remained such a special person to me. And our lunch was another amazing part of that day.
2:30pm – Then shopping ensued. My mom and I went searching for something for her to wear to Keith’s 30th birthday dinner. We didn’t find anything, but I wasn’t concerned. I had a dress, and I didn’t think there were going to be too many pictures posted or anything. (Funny, I know.)
5:00pm – My dad gets a “call” from his boss telling him that he has to bring him keys for some park at Spring Lake. My dad works for the City, so it didn’t seem strange. We would just drop the keys off before heading to Petaluma for dinner.
5:30pm – We arrive at Spring Lake. Boy, was I surprised there was no one waiting for keys!

From there I was met by my awesome cousin Alex who showed me the most adorable video of Andrew asking my dad for permission to marry me. The video instructed me to follow the purple balloons down the path. Andrew even included a section of the video where our two adorable baby kitties were in it! I did as I was told and ended up at the first group of people – our parents. I got to open my first story board filled with photos from our first year together. The second group held my sister and her boyfriend, Jon and that was it. Or so I thought. As I approached them, out pops Makenna, my cousin who is going to school in Arizona. Seeing her there was so overwhelming, I started bawling. I then got to open another story board filled with photos. The third group was a combination of Amy and Keith (Andrew’s sister and her husband) and Andrew’s Uncle Russ from New Mexico. After lots of tears and hugs, I looked at that story board (the first inclusion of Lillian and Boo!) and then had to hand her my promise ring. (That I wore for 6 years!) The fourth group was a combination of all of our cousins. It was amazing to see them all. As I made my way further down the path, still following the purple balloons I came up to the next group of our best friends. It was amazing to see Aman, Alysia, Amber, Jimmy, Baby Lila, Olivia and Derek. (By this point the tears would not stop.) Then as I continued walking I approached a group of our Aunts and Uncles. It was amazing to see our family together. They showed me another board and I knew that I was getting closer to Andrew. The final group was a combination of Andrew’s grandparents, his grandmother, and my “adopted” grandparents Joyce and Ron. It touched me so much that they came. FINALLY, after what seemed like miles, I walked up to see Andrew. He was standing with a bunch of yellow daises, something extremely significant from one of my absolute favorite TV shows, Gilmore Girls, and purple balloons. He was holding a board that had “7+” on it and “Marry You” by Bruno Mars was playing. After an absolutely heartwarming speech, Andrew got down on one knee.

I have so many people to thank for this amazing proposal. First off, I have to thank my fiancé. I could not have imagined a more perfect engagement. It was absolutely beautiful. Second, I have to thank Debbie and Amy for helping Andrew put together such an amazing proposal. Third, I have to thank all of our family and friends for taking the time to come out and celebrate this huge life event with us. It meant the world to have everyone there. I also have to send out a special thank you to my Aunt Janette. She took all of these amazingly stunning photos. And Uncle Russ, too! He also took some fantastic photos. Photos are the most amazing things to look at and remember how special of a day this was.

I, honestly, cannot stop staring at it.

Now that you know our story, follow my journey to planning Andrew and my wedding! I will lay out our planning goals, our challenges, and as much additional information as I can, so maybe I can help anyone going through this process in the future. If you are getting married soon, and you have any tricks or pieces of advice to give me, PLEASE share them with me! I am always in need of any tools to help make planning this easier!